Harrying of the North

The Harrying of the North was a series of military campaigns waged by William the Conqueror in the winter of 1069–1070 to subjugate Northern England, where the presence of the last Wessex claimant, Edgar Ætheling, had encouraged Anglo-Saxon Northumbrian, Anglo-Scandinavian and Danish rebellions.

William paid the Danes to go home, but the remaining rebels refused to meet him in battle, and he decided to starve them out by laying waste to the Northern shires using scorched earth tactics, especially in the historic county of Yorkshire[a] and the city of York, before relieving the English aristocracy of their positions, and installing Norman aristocrats throughout the region.

Contemporary chronicles vividly record the savagery of the campaign, the huge scale of the destruction and the widespread famine caused by looting, burning and slaughtering.

Some present-day scholars have labelled the campaigns a genocide, although others doubt whether William could have assembled enough troops to inflict so much damage and have suggested that the records may have been exaggerated or misinterpreted.

At the time of the Norman Conquest the North consisted of what became Yorkshire, Durham, and Northumberland in the east and Lancashire with the southern parts of Cumberland and Westmorland in the west.

[5] In 962 Edgar the Peaceful had granted legal autonomy to the Northern earls of the Danelaw in return for their loyalty; this had limited the powers of the Anglo-Saxon kings who succeeded him north of the Humber.

[7] William faced a series of rebellions and border skirmishes in Dover, Exeter, Hereford, Nottingham, Durham, York and Peterborough.

[10] Back in Northumbria, William changed tactics and appointed a Norman, Robert de Comines, as earl, rather than an Anglo-Saxon.

[19] Writing about the Harrying of the North, over fifty years later, the Anglo-Norman chronicler Orderic Vitalis wrote (paraphrased):The King stopped at nothing to hunt his enemies.

[20] Florence of Worcester writing in the 12th century said that: [King William] assembled an army, and hastened into Northumbria, giving way to his resentment; and spent the whole winter in laying waste the country, slaughtering the inhabitants, and inflicting every sort of evil, without cessation.There are credible reports of survivors being reduced to cannibalism.

In the early 12th century Symeon of Durham wrote: ... so great a famine prevailed that men, compelled by hunger, devoured human flesh, that of horses, dogs, and cats, and whatever custom abhors; others sold themselves to perpetual slavery, so that they might in any way preserve their wretched existence.Refugees from the harrying are mentioned as far away as Worcestershire in the Evesham Abbey chronicle.

The archaeologist Richard Ernest Muir wrote that there was evidence for the "violent disruption [that] took place in Yorkshire in 1069–71, in the form of hoards of coins which were buried by the inhabitants.

The dating is thought to be secure as it is known that Norman lords used similar regular plans in founding new towns in the 'plantation' of rural settlements in other conquered parts of the British Isles.

[29] However, although the Domesday Book records large numbers of manors in the north as waste, some historians have posited it was not possible for William's relatively small army to be responsible for such wide-scale devastation imputed to him, so perhaps raiding Danes[e] or Scots[f] may have contributed to some of the destruction.

[32] Vegetius said, "The main and principal point in war is to secure plenty of provisions and to destroy the enemy by famine", so Hagger's conclusion is that the Harrying of the North was no worse than other similar conflicts of the time.

[32][35] Other historians have questioned the figures supplied by Orderic Vitalis, who was born in 1075 and would have been writing Ecclesiastical History around 55 years after the event.

[36] David Horspool concludes that despite the Harrying of the North being regarded with some "shock" in Northern England for some centuries after the event, the destruction may have been exaggerated and the number of dead not as high as previously thought.

[38][39] Having effectively subdued the population, William carried out a complete replacement of Anglo-Saxon leaders with Norman ones in the North.

The influence of Margaret and her sons brought about the Anglicisation of the Lowlands and provided the Scottish king with an excuse for forays into England, which he could claim were to redress the wrongs against his brother-in-law.

The two kings negotiated the Treaty of Abernethy (1072), through which, according to the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, Malcolm became William's vassal; among the other provisions was the expulsion of Edgar Ætheling from the Scottish court.

In response, William sent his half-brother Odo, Earl of Kent[g] north with an army to harry the Northumbrian countryside.

With concern that Yorkshire could be attacked or invaded by the Scots or Vikings coupled with the threat of further revolts, the Normans reorganised the defences in the area and installed men chosen for their abilities to hold on to whatever they got.

The vigorous Northern literary tradition in the Middle English period and its distinctive dialect also suggest the survival of an Anglo-Scandinavian population.

[51] From the Norman point of view, the Harrying of the North was a successful strategy, as large areas, including Cheshire, Shropshire, Derbyshire and Staffordshire were devastated, and the Domesday Book confirms this, although in those counties it was not as complete as in Yorkshire.