Battle of Hastings (1066): The Norman Conquest of England

The Battle of Hastings was fought on 14 October 1066 between the English army of King Harold II and the invading forces of William, Duke of Normandy. After a day-long struggle on a ridge in East Sussex, Harold was killed and his army broken. William’s victory began the Norman Conquest, one of the most far-reaching changes in English history.

Background: a disputed throne

King Edward the Confessor died on 5 January 1066 without children. The next day Harold Godwinson, Earl of Wessex and the most powerful nobleman in England, was crowned king. His claim rested on his position and, according to English sources, on Edward’s deathbed wishes.

Two foreign rulers disagreed. William of Normandy, a cousin of Edward, said that the king had promised him the throne years earlier, and that Harold had sworn an oath to support him during a visit to Normandy, probably around 1064. Edward had spent much of his youth in exile in Normandy, and his mother, Emma, was William’s great-aunt, so the claim was not implausible, although English custom did not allow a king simply to bequeath the crown to a foreigner.

Harald Hardrada, King of Norway, also had a claim, based on an earlier agreement between Norwegian and Danish kings. He was joined by Harold’s exiled brother Tostig, who had been driven out of his earldom of Northumbria in 1065.

William prepared his invasion carefully. Through the summer of 1066 he assembled ships and an army of Normans and volunteers from Brittany, Flanders and other parts of France. According to Norman writers, he also secured the support of Pope Alexander II, who sent a banner, which allowed William to present the invasion as a just war against an oath-breaker. Contrary winds kept his fleet in harbour for weeks.

Two invasions in one autumn

Harold spent the summer of 1066 guarding the south coast against William, but by September his supplies were exhausted and his forces were sent home. Soon afterwards Hardrada and Tostig landed in the north and defeated the northern earls at Fulford, near York, on 20 September.

Harold marched north with remarkable speed, covering roughly 300 kilometres from London in a matter of days. On 25 September he surprised and destroyed the Norwegian army at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, where both Hardrada and Tostig were killed. Three days later, on 28 September, William landed unopposed at Pevensey on the Sussex coast, after the wind had finally changed.

Harold hurried back south, gathered more troops in London and advanced to meet William, who had built a fort at Hastings and was raiding the surrounding countryside. Some contemporaries, and many historians since, have suggested that Harold moved too fast: by not waiting for more men to gather, he fought with an army that was tired and smaller than it might have been. Others argue that he hoped to surprise William as he had surprised Hardrada.

The battle

The armies met on 14 October about 11 kilometres north-west of Hastings. Each side probably numbered somewhere between 5,000 and 8,000 men, although historians’ estimates vary. Harold’s army, made up of his professional household troops (housecarls) and part-time local levies (the fyrd), fought on foot. They took position on the top of a ridge and formed a dense shield wall.

William’s army combined archers, infantry and mounted knights. Its attacks uphill against the shield wall at first made little progress. At one point a rumour spread that William had been killed, and part of his army began to flee. William is said to have lifted his helmet to show his face and rally his men.

The fighting lasted most of the day, from about nine in the morning until dusk, which was unusually long for a medieval battle. The English shield wall was hard to break: Norman arrows mostly struck shields, and the long Danish axes of the housecarls could cut down horse and rider alike. Norman chroniclers describe retreats, some of them possibly deliberate, that drew English soldiers down from the ridge where they could be surrounded. As the English ranks thinned, Harold was killed late in the afternoon. His brothers Gyrth and Leofwine also died, and the English army collapsed. Many of the survivors fled into the woods as night fell, pursued by Norman horsemen.

Historians usually point to several reasons for the Norman victory. William had a more varied army, with archers and cavalry as well as infantry, and he could use them in combination. Harold’s men had fought a major battle and marched hundreds of kilometres in the previous three weeks. Above all, the death of Harold and his brothers left the English without leaders, so there was no one to continue the fight.

Key people

William, Duke of Normandy (c. 1028–1087) had ruled Normandy since childhood and was an experienced commander. After 1066 he became known as William the Conqueror.

Harold II (c. 1022–1066) was the son of Earl Godwin and Edward the Confessor’s brother-in-law. His reign lasted just over nine months.

Harald Hardrada (c. 1015–1066), King of Norway, was one of the most famous warriors of his age, having served in the Varangian Guard of the Byzantine emperors. His death at Stamford Bridge is often taken as the end of the Viking Age in England.

Odo of Bayeux, William’s half-brother and a bishop, fought at Hastings. He is widely thought to have commissioned the Bayeux Tapestry, an embroidered cloth around 70 metres long that tells the story of the conquest from the Norman point of view.

Edgar Ætheling (c. 1051–c. 1126), a great-nephew of Edward the Confessor, was the last male member of the old English royal house. He was too young and too weak in support to claim the throne in January 1066, and he lived on for decades after the Conquest.

Aftermath

Victory at Hastings did not immediately give William the kingdom. Leading Englishmen chose the young Edgar Ætheling as king, but as William’s army marched around London they gave way, and Edgar submitted at Berkhamsted. William was crowned in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066.

Resistance continued for several years. William crushed risings in the north with great brutality in the “Harrying of the North” of 1069–1070. By the end of his reign almost all English nobles and senior churchmen had been replaced by Normans and other incomers. The newcomers held their lands from the king in return for military service, and they controlled the country through hundreds of castles, beginning with earth-and-timber mottes and later great stone keeps such as the Tower of London.

In 1086 William ordered the Domesday survey, recorded in the Domesday Book, a detailed record of land and resources across much of England. It shows how completely property had passed into Norman hands within twenty years of the battle.

The Conquest also changed culture and language. Norman French became the language of the court, the law and the aristocracy for some three centuries, while Latin dominated government records and the Church. English survived as the speech of most of the population, but it absorbed a huge number of French words, which is why modern English often has pairs such as “cow” and “beef” or “pig” and “pork”. Almost every English cathedral was rebuilt in the new Romanesque style, and abbots and bishops were drawn largely from Normandy and other parts of France.

Myths and facts

Myth: the Bayeux Tapestry is a tapestry. It is actually an embroidery, stitched in coloured wools on linen rather than woven. It was probably made in England, possibly at Canterbury, within a few decades of the battle.

Myth: Harold was certainly killed by an arrow in the eye. The idea rests mainly on one scene of the Tapestry, which may have been altered by later restoration, and on chroniclers writing after the event. The earliest Norman accounts say he was cut down by knights, and the true manner of his death is unknown.

Myth: 1066 was the last time England was invaded. It was the last successful conquest by a foreign army, but not the last landing. A French prince, the future Louis VIII, held much of southern England in 1216–1217, and William of Orange landed with a Dutch army in 1688 and took the throne.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1066, 5 January: Edward the Confessor dies.
• 1066, 6 January: Harold Godwinson is crowned King Harold II.
• 1066, 20 September: Harald Hardrada and Tostig defeat the northern earls at Fulford.
• 1066, 25 September: Harold defeats and kills Hardrada and Tostig at Stamford Bridge.
• 1066, 28 September: William lands at Pevensey in Sussex.
• 1066, 14 October: William defeats Harold at the Battle of Hastings; Harold is killed.
• 1066, 25 December: William is crowned King of England in Westminster Abbey.
• 1086: The Domesday survey is carried out.

Why it matters

The Battle of Hastings is often called the last successful conquest of England. It brought a new ruling class, new castles and cathedrals, closer ties with France and a vocabulary transformed by Norman French. The monarchy William founded shaped later English history, including the conflicts between king and barons that produced Magna Carta in 1215.