![]() | This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
![]() | A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on January 28, 2020 and January 28, 2024. |
There are a whole lot of problems with this as it stands. It's obviously historically distorted by a strong point of view. I know different cultures at that time had different attitudes to kingship, with Scandinavians often having some degree of choice when it came to a succession, but William had some right to believe he was Edward the Confessor's legal heir and therefore the rightful ruler of the whole of England. The idea that Harold Hardrada brought an army over to provide security for people in the north of England is laughable - he wanted the throne. -- Andrew Norman 09:12, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
From the article:
Which new king? AxelBoldt 18:00, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
Here is a odd point in the article: their kings members of the House of Munsö of Sweden or the Fairhair Dynasty of Norway, or the Anglo-Saxon House of Wessex - the first one, no Swedish claim for England has ever been establish. The writer must be thinking about the Danish king (so many Nordic nations, hard to keep 'em apart I guess) - Finn Bjo -- 85.165.99.39 00:52, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
Reading I've done, (the History of Ilkley by Collier) suggests there were two Harryings, with about 10 years between them. Can anyone comment on that assertion? thanks -- Tagishsimon (talk) 16:22, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
There was annother revolt in 1075 involving Hereford, Northumbria and Norfolk. I believe this was the event in which Countess Edith betrayed her husband to the king and became one of the first female land owners in England? Narson 15:20, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm not a historian and just read this page out of curiosity. But was very surprised to see the link between The Harrying and the present day relative poverty of the North. Is that credible? 80.229.137.151
As a non-British fellow, the clarity of this article & event would be vastly improved if a map was provided herein! 218.25.32.210 ( talk) 03:09, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
The map is of the whole north of England but the harrying was only on the eastern side of the country. Needs a map showing the modern counties of Yorkshire, Durham and Northumberland. Cassandrathesceptic ( talk) 08:33, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
While we're on the subject, I found this phrase: "Yorkshire and the North Riding" - presumably should be "The North Riding of Yorkshire".
Herbgold (
talk)
16:12, 2 November 2016 (UTC)
the article says the death toll is believed to be over 100,000 but in the article World population estimates about the estimated world population the numbers are around 400.000 for this time and although those numbers are just guesses the percentage seems not plausible. Eeignet ( talk) 11:20, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
There are sources calling this genocide, but not all academics agree. Mark Hagger argues that ravaging territory was not unusual - he quotes Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus who was still the main 'go to' author for war in Williams time, "'the main and principal point in war is to secure plenty of provisions for oneself, and to destroy the enemy by famine'. Hardly surprising, then, that the destruction of the enemy's resources was the aim of Caesar during the Gallic wars, of Charlemagne when lighting against the Saxons, of William the Conqueror in Maine and in both the north and south of England, and of the English in France during the Hundred Years' War. Nor is it clear that the harrying of the north represents an unusually extensive and intensive example of such destruction. The war fought between Anjou and Blois over the Vendomois in the eleventh century left the area ravaged and desolate." ..."This, then, was not a form of war that William aimed only against the north. It was not genocide, as some have claimed. And although William might have been, in the words of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 'stern beyond measure to those who opposed his will', he was no 'war criminal. We should not impose our own standards of morality on William, or on any other medieval person, for our standards were not theirs, and what William did was not in contravention of the standards of his own day." [1] - which seems reasonable. Dougweller ( talk) 15:21, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
The article also uses a large quote from Orderic which I think is WP:UNDUE. Richard Huscroft writs: "Orderic's assessment of the number of people who died as a result of William's conduct in the north is surely exaggerated. If true it would mean that something approaching five per cent of England's population died in the winter of 1069-70. It is a pardonable overestimate, however, and reveals the shock contemporaries felt at what can only be described as William's terror tactics.
"There has been much debate about the true extent of the destruction caused by the Harrying of the North, and about its long-term effects on the lands and people of northern England. In Domesday Book, hundreds of vills in Yorkshire were described as 'waste', with no population or value. The conventional wisdom has tended to hold that these areas were devastated during the events of 1069-70.13 It is impossible to be sure that this was the case, however, and more recently it has been argued that major destruction was probably confined to the more remote upland areas of northern England and that only a relatively limited area in Yorkshire was affected. Lands in Yorkshire might later have been described as 'waste' simply because they were worthless. Perhaps they had been ravaged by a ferocious army; but they may have lacked value for other reasons, too. Further questions have been raised about the capacity of William's army, working in winter and for only three months, to inflict the sort of damage traditionally associated with the Harrying." In War and Chivalry: The Conduct and Perception of War in England and Normandy by Matthew Strickland Strickland writes: "Chroniclers were notoriously prone to hyperbole, as Orderic's estimation of 100,000 fatalities incurred during the 'harrying of the North* amply demonstrates. Not only might the severity of local conditions first be exaggerated, but these in turn might then be inflated into broad generalities."
But you wouldn't know this from reading the article until you get down to the bottom of the section titled "The Harrying". The lead doesn't give the reader any hint this might be hyperbole.
We also have "The wasting of the countryside must have continued for some time, as in 1086 the Domesday Book entries indicate wasteas est or hoc est vast (it is wasted) for estate after estate". That's cited to Muir's book The Yorkshire Countryside and Muir continues "There are, however, considerable problems of interpretation here. 'Waste' was a term that was sometimes applied to commons, and it is not clear whether it was used in Domesday to describe formerly productive land that had gone out of cultivation. Wightman believed that 'waste' in Domesday applied not only to abandoned or worthless land, but was also used to denote manors that had been amalgamated or were in disputed ownership. However, Harrison and Roberts, two leading authorities in northern landscape history, arc quite specific; with regard to the Pickering estate they write: 'One thing is, however, chillingly clear: in 1086 the estate was producing only a fraction of the revenue it had generated in 1066, and the phrase "The rest (is) waste" provides a clear explanation: waste was land which had been devastated.' When one maps the pattern of wasted vills and manors, it seems that only the loftiest parts of the Pennines, the plateaux of the North York Moors, and much of Holderness escaped severe devastation, while the worst of the wasting seems to have taken place in the Bsnnine foothills and the Dales." A bit before this he says "Palliser noted that Ordericus was born in 1075 near Evesham and could have been writing in 1125, some 55 years after the events described, and that his figure of 100,000 victims was used in a rhetorical sense - he also attributed the massively inflated figure of 60,000 knights to William." and notes that some of the undoubted devasatation may have been done by Scottish raiders. Dougweller ( talk) 15:46, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
I think that it was me that used the term 'genocide' in the article, so I thought that I would give you my reasoning behind it. Having looked at the various sources, some that are mentioned above, I thought on balance it should be called an ACT of genocide, which is slightly more ambiguous than just 'genocide'. I think that this is perfectly valid, as I was looking at Williams intent, what was he trying to do? He was fed up with the constant insurgency in the north and wanted to put an end to it. He had faced rebellions in other parts of the country and had dealt with them, but for some reason his action in the north was far more brutal. Most historians seem to agree that the 100,000 dead was an inflated number, the number comes from Orderic Vitalis who was based in Normandy and relied on third parties for his estimate. However, most historians agree that William intent was to utterly destroy the North and it's people - the definition of which is genocide. Wilfridselsey ( talk) 11:16, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
OK. To move this debate forward I have tried to take the essence from what we have discussed here and rewritten the Harrying section. The lead still needs some attention. I also think that we need to say something about the fact that the north of England was redeveloped and became very wealthy once the abbeys arrived. Wilfridselsey ( talk) 14:57, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
Dougweller|Doug This discussion seems to have stalled. The article has been updated in line with the discussion. I think that in the harrying section, there is as much space given to discussing the anti-genocide view as not, so I think that you'll agree that it's more balanced now. In the light of that do you thinkl that it's time to remove the NPOV tag? Regards Wilfridselsey ( talk) 13:42, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
Since William very clearly failed to kill everyone then at most it could only be described as an act of attempted genocide rather than an act of genocide. Furthermore, since genocide is the intentional murder of a whole nation or race or people and is thus dependent upon motive we can't really use the word genocide safely since William's motives were not murder per se but rather to punish and weaken the enemy. Cassandrathesceptic ( talk) 08:52, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
Although its parent abbey, St Mary's at York was founded in early 1088 (just before the Rebellion of that year), Fountains wasn't established until 1132.
It's a curious fact that in 1087, before William the Conqueror headed on his last journey to Normandy, Count Alan Rufus persuaded the King to come north to York to "refound" St Olave's Church as a way to apologise for the damage done during the Harrying. Zoetropo ( talk) 06:28, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
In the background information section there is the phrase "...Edgar Ætheling, grandson of Edmund and half-brother of Edward the Confessor." I read this as stating that Edgar was the half-brother to Edmund, whereas, surly the case is that Edward was the half-brother of Edmund Ironsides. Presumably then Edgar's relationship to Edward is something like half-grand-nephew, if such a term exists.
So, should this phrase read something like "...Edgar Ætheling, the grandson of Edmund Ironsides who was half-brother to Edward the Confessor."?
Graham.Fountain | Talk 12:01, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
The article states that "the land was salted" - I very much doubt that the Normans gathered tons and tons of salt with which to render the entire countryside of the north infertile - "salting the earth" is a reference to an ancient *ritual* act, symbolically rendering a place uninhabitable for future generations, not to a practical method of rendering large tracts of farmland unproductive. This should be edited I think? Mhilhorst ( talk) 09:05, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
I noticed on looking at the cited source for the Orderic quote in the "The Harrying" section that the quoted material does not match the actual source. The quote in the article is a paraphrase of the relevant portion of Orderic's words rather than a direct quote. Doing some digging, I came across what appears to be the source of this paraphrase at a now-defunct site for students about the Norman Conquest (see archive.org capture here); this site was referenced in an earlier version of the article. I can see why this quote was kept, being much more succinct than the original Orderic quote, but it struck me as odd that the quoted text did not actually appear in the source provided. I will leave it to more regular users to determine the best way to handle this issue; but in case anyone decides to use some part of the original Orderic that is cited, I will include a copy of the relevant text below this note for easy access. 108.48.97.105 ( talk) 00:43, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
His camps were scattered over a surface of one hundred miles; numbers of the insurgents fell beneath his vengeful sword, he levelled their places of shelter to the ground, wasted their lands, and burnt their dwellings with all they contained. Never did William commit so much cruelty; to his lasting disgrace, he yielded to his worst impulse, and set no bounds to his fury, condemning the innocent and the guilty to a common fate. In the fulness of his wrath he ordered the corn and cattle, with the implements of husbandry and every sort of provisions, to be collected in heaps and set on fire till the whole was consumed, and thus destroyed at once all that could serve for the support of life in the whole country lying beyond the Humber. There followed, consequently, so great a scarcity in England in the ensuing years, and severe famine involved the innocent and unarmed population in so much misery, that, in a Christian nation, more than a hundred thousand souls, of both sexes and all ages, perished of want. On many occasions, in the course of the present history, I have been free to extol William according to his merits, but I dare not commend him for an act which levelled both the bad and the good together in one common ruin, by the infliction of a consuming famine. For when I see that innocent children, youths in the prime of their age, and grey headed old men, perished from hunger, I am more disposed to pity the sorrows and sufferings of the wretched people, than to undertake the hopeless task of screening one who was guilty of such wholesale massacre by lying flatteries. I assert, moreover, that such barbarous homicide could not pass unpunished. The Almighty Judge beholds alike the high and low, scrutinizing and punishing the acts of both with equal justice, that his eternal laws may be plain to all.
" The influence of Margaret and her sons brought about the Anglicisation of the Lowlands"
This sentence cannot be true in any meaningful sense. The 'Scottish' lowlands, in particular Lothian, had been Anglian or 'English' since the Angles founded the Kingdom of Bernicia (later the northern half of the Kingdom of Northumbria) 500 years earlier.
It might better read: " The influence of Margaret and her sons enhanced the pre-existing Anglic nature of the Lowlands"
Cassandra — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.149.163.219 ( talk) 12:40, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
The Wiki page on the English Kingdom of Northumbria pre-Norman Conquest indicates that it included at least half or even more of the 'Scottish' lowlands. I agree its predecessor, Bernicia, was probably smaller. Cassandra. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.149.163.219 ( talk) 19:14, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
A useful map. But I'm sure we can agree that Margaret and her sons cannot have 'brought about the Anglicisation of the lowlands' but can only have added to that which already existed. Cassandra. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.108.173.183 ( talk) 16:58, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Well then let me quote the DOST. It seems unambiguous:
Analysis of the Anglian names and archaeological evidence in Galloway shows that a succession of different powers – British, Roman, Anglian – were in control of the coastal defences and strategic inland passes. It is uncertain when the Angles took control of Galloway, but they may have held as much as half of the accessible land, and were present as free peasants as well as overlords. They were also well established in Cumberland, on the other side of the Solway Firth (Higham, 1985)...
In an expansion to the west, Kyle was annexed [by Northumbria] from Strathclyde around 750...
Scotland south of the Forth-Clyde isthmus remained part of Northumbria for about three hundred years until, with Northumbria weakened by the attacks of the Vikings , it was ceded to the Scots. Exactly when the Scots acquired Lothian (in the broad sense of Scottish Northumbria from the Forth to the Tweed) is unclear – dates ranging from 973 (Lothian ceded by Edgar) to 1018...
Nicolaisen contrasts baile ‘hamlet’ and achadh ‘field’ names – the absence of the latter in the south-east of Scotland suggests that the small numbers of Gaelic speakers in the east were “landowners rather than tillers of the soil”
It seems clear that Margaret and her sons didn't bring about the Anglicisation of the lowlands - but they certainly did increase it quite a lot, both by offering refuge and by resettlement. Cassandra. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.108.173.183 ( talk) 18:57, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Not at all. I'm simply pointing out that the current wording is misleading since it implies that the lowlands were not Anglic to any degree prior to Margaret and her sons. But clearly their action didn't bring about Anglicisation but rather increased/consolidated/added-to/extended something which already existed in at least a substantial part of the lowlands. Cassandra. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.105.248.97 ( talk) 09:48, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Hey, I've been reading about William (the Conqueror), and found this article interesting. I did stumble over the style of the section "The Harrying" though, since by proportion there are more statements of views taken by some people today (I guess historians - the people have no Bio's here, so I couldn't tell who they are), than actual description of the harrying itself.... I would suggest to move this discussion to a separate section describing different views of the events at the least.
To be honest, my feeling is that the "contrary" views are inserted in a one-sided and/or misleading way, and that current scientific opinion in general probably does not question the fact that scorched earth tactics were used in a widespread manner by William (and to pretty devastating effect). (As at least one of the historians is let to point out, this is something that occurred frighteningly often in history. But that doesn't make it any better, or mean that the act itself needs to be put in question, I think.)
I've not actually looked into that, but if that were the case, than a lot of the "contrary" views need to be removed as WP:Undue (as they are being undue prominence/ weight).
Regards 37.49.76.172 ( talk) 08:51, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
I did read (most of) that section. That doesn't change the facts that: a) the current state is definitely bad style (more different viewpoints than actual description of the Harrying!), b) I strongly assume there is a view - or at least a certain range of events - which is taken to be most likely by most historians (Whether or not that is genocide was not my point). I've not looked into that myself yet though, so I'll have to wait until I have before I can further argue that point...
Sean Heron (
talk)
17:12, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
P.S. I was the IP above...
William in no actual sense of the word committed genocide, and the fact is that the sources for the Harrying being a genocide are bunk. A throwaway comment from Kapelle there (which is never really explored in depth), a non-academic source which compares the Norman occupation of England to the Nazi occupation of France there (The English Resistance: The Underground War Against the Normans), finish it off with a book by a genocide historian with no background in the period, and you get to pretend the categorisation of the Harrying of the North as a genocide can remotely be taken seriously. You might as well call the March to the Sea a genocide if you're counting the Harrying.
The Harrying was undoubtedly bad, an atrocity even by the standards of the time, but it was not a genocide. Genocide is not 'when a lot of people die'. Say this as someone with an immense fondness for pre-1066 England rivalled only by an immense dislike of historians of post-1066 England, btw, just to clarify where I'm coming from.
This is incorrect. The Doomsday Book clearly indicates a demographic population drop of around 75% in the areas Laid To Waste during "Williams campaigns" , and the intention of William's strategy was to ethnically cleanse the rebellious areas of his new Domain as they were Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, and other culture groups of the at the time ethnically diverse inhabitants of what we now call Great Britain.
The Harrying of the North Was a Genocide, and numerous desperate and varied contemporary scholars, Abbots, Bishops, Monks, oral traditions, folk tales, and indeed in GIS analysis of the main agricultural areas currently found across the north and in areas the doomsday book clearly tells were "laid to waste" In a way brutal and unseen even for the contemporaneous period of 1066 not just in Great Britain but across Western Europe.
I escalate this and contend that to uphold Wikimedia standards the claims of Genocide must be more strongly worded within the article.
What is your response?
Best. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.240.165.210 ( talk) 23:40, 3 August 2022 (UTC)
User:Wilfridselsey - you have reverted this edit from an IP editor today
[4], and although there is an article worthy doubt that gets covered in out sentence on David Horspool, I wonder whether the IP editor is right inasmuch as this doubt is not leadworthy. Our lead, without the disputed material, already has Some present-day scholars have labelled the campaigns a genocide
(my emphasis). We then go beyond what the article actually says by adding although others doubt...
when we only cite Horspool (2009). I would contest that the word "some" already presents information that this is not a universal view. The discussion and unpacking of that belongs in the main, not the lead. Thoughts? Thanks.
Sirfurboy🏄 (
talk)
09:09, 27 October 2022 (UTC)
Thank you, I think your version of the sentence works better. Wilfridselsey ( talk) 11:36, 28 October 2022 (UTC)
![]() | This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Change
Edgar Ætheling, had encouraged Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Scandinavian and Danish rebellions.
To ---> Edgar Ætheling, had encouraged native Celt Briton, Angle, Anglo-Scandinavian and Norse rebellions.
I suggest these changes to increase the article's accuracy, the area subject to the harrying had a substantial diversity in terms of the peoples who lived in this area of Britain prior to 1066.
See the Brittonic Kingdom of Elmet, and the Norse Jorvik. (Modern day Norwegian/Dane/Swedish peoples) 79.70.70.215 ( talk) 19:40, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
![]() | This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Change
Edgar Ætheling, had encouraged Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Scandinavian and Danish rebellions.
To ---> Edgar Ætheling, had encouraged native Celt Briton, Angle, Anglo-Scandinavian and Norse rebellions.
I suggest these changes to increase the article's accuracy, the area subject to the harrying had a substantial diversity in terms of the peoples who lived in this area of Britain prior to 1066.
See the Brittonic Kingdom of Elmet, and the Norse Jorvik. (Modern day Norwegian/Dane/Swedish peoples)
There's a wealth of academic evidence showcasing that the Saxons never settled in the north. So the article is Wrong stating that Anglo-Saxons (As a combined group) were targeted by the Massacre. Only Britons in Elmet, Norse folk in Jorvik, and Anglian Northumbrians were specifically targeted by King William's Norman, Saxon, and South Anglican Forces during the Northern Harrying. See the Domesday Book, Historia Brittonum, Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, and the Tribal Hidage, in addition to Norse Sagas written in Modern Yorkshire, Sweden, Norway, and North Denmark. as Irrifutable evidence in support of this. 79.70.70.215 ( talk) 13:03, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
![]() | This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
![]() | A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on January 28, 2020 and January 28, 2024. |
There are a whole lot of problems with this as it stands. It's obviously historically distorted by a strong point of view. I know different cultures at that time had different attitudes to kingship, with Scandinavians often having some degree of choice when it came to a succession, but William had some right to believe he was Edward the Confessor's legal heir and therefore the rightful ruler of the whole of England. The idea that Harold Hardrada brought an army over to provide security for people in the north of England is laughable - he wanted the throne. -- Andrew Norman 09:12, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
From the article:
Which new king? AxelBoldt 18:00, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
Here is a odd point in the article: their kings members of the House of Munsö of Sweden or the Fairhair Dynasty of Norway, or the Anglo-Saxon House of Wessex - the first one, no Swedish claim for England has ever been establish. The writer must be thinking about the Danish king (so many Nordic nations, hard to keep 'em apart I guess) - Finn Bjo -- 85.165.99.39 00:52, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
Reading I've done, (the History of Ilkley by Collier) suggests there were two Harryings, with about 10 years between them. Can anyone comment on that assertion? thanks -- Tagishsimon (talk) 16:22, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
There was annother revolt in 1075 involving Hereford, Northumbria and Norfolk. I believe this was the event in which Countess Edith betrayed her husband to the king and became one of the first female land owners in England? Narson 15:20, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm not a historian and just read this page out of curiosity. But was very surprised to see the link between The Harrying and the present day relative poverty of the North. Is that credible? 80.229.137.151
As a non-British fellow, the clarity of this article & event would be vastly improved if a map was provided herein! 218.25.32.210 ( talk) 03:09, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
The map is of the whole north of England but the harrying was only on the eastern side of the country. Needs a map showing the modern counties of Yorkshire, Durham and Northumberland. Cassandrathesceptic ( talk) 08:33, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
While we're on the subject, I found this phrase: "Yorkshire and the North Riding" - presumably should be "The North Riding of Yorkshire".
Herbgold (
talk)
16:12, 2 November 2016 (UTC)
the article says the death toll is believed to be over 100,000 but in the article World population estimates about the estimated world population the numbers are around 400.000 for this time and although those numbers are just guesses the percentage seems not plausible. Eeignet ( talk) 11:20, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
There are sources calling this genocide, but not all academics agree. Mark Hagger argues that ravaging territory was not unusual - he quotes Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus who was still the main 'go to' author for war in Williams time, "'the main and principal point in war is to secure plenty of provisions for oneself, and to destroy the enemy by famine'. Hardly surprising, then, that the destruction of the enemy's resources was the aim of Caesar during the Gallic wars, of Charlemagne when lighting against the Saxons, of William the Conqueror in Maine and in both the north and south of England, and of the English in France during the Hundred Years' War. Nor is it clear that the harrying of the north represents an unusually extensive and intensive example of such destruction. The war fought between Anjou and Blois over the Vendomois in the eleventh century left the area ravaged and desolate." ..."This, then, was not a form of war that William aimed only against the north. It was not genocide, as some have claimed. And although William might have been, in the words of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 'stern beyond measure to those who opposed his will', he was no 'war criminal. We should not impose our own standards of morality on William, or on any other medieval person, for our standards were not theirs, and what William did was not in contravention of the standards of his own day." [1] - which seems reasonable. Dougweller ( talk) 15:21, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
The article also uses a large quote from Orderic which I think is WP:UNDUE. Richard Huscroft writs: "Orderic's assessment of the number of people who died as a result of William's conduct in the north is surely exaggerated. If true it would mean that something approaching five per cent of England's population died in the winter of 1069-70. It is a pardonable overestimate, however, and reveals the shock contemporaries felt at what can only be described as William's terror tactics.
"There has been much debate about the true extent of the destruction caused by the Harrying of the North, and about its long-term effects on the lands and people of northern England. In Domesday Book, hundreds of vills in Yorkshire were described as 'waste', with no population or value. The conventional wisdom has tended to hold that these areas were devastated during the events of 1069-70.13 It is impossible to be sure that this was the case, however, and more recently it has been argued that major destruction was probably confined to the more remote upland areas of northern England and that only a relatively limited area in Yorkshire was affected. Lands in Yorkshire might later have been described as 'waste' simply because they were worthless. Perhaps they had been ravaged by a ferocious army; but they may have lacked value for other reasons, too. Further questions have been raised about the capacity of William's army, working in winter and for only three months, to inflict the sort of damage traditionally associated with the Harrying." In War and Chivalry: The Conduct and Perception of War in England and Normandy by Matthew Strickland Strickland writes: "Chroniclers were notoriously prone to hyperbole, as Orderic's estimation of 100,000 fatalities incurred during the 'harrying of the North* amply demonstrates. Not only might the severity of local conditions first be exaggerated, but these in turn might then be inflated into broad generalities."
But you wouldn't know this from reading the article until you get down to the bottom of the section titled "The Harrying". The lead doesn't give the reader any hint this might be hyperbole.
We also have "The wasting of the countryside must have continued for some time, as in 1086 the Domesday Book entries indicate wasteas est or hoc est vast (it is wasted) for estate after estate". That's cited to Muir's book The Yorkshire Countryside and Muir continues "There are, however, considerable problems of interpretation here. 'Waste' was a term that was sometimes applied to commons, and it is not clear whether it was used in Domesday to describe formerly productive land that had gone out of cultivation. Wightman believed that 'waste' in Domesday applied not only to abandoned or worthless land, but was also used to denote manors that had been amalgamated or were in disputed ownership. However, Harrison and Roberts, two leading authorities in northern landscape history, arc quite specific; with regard to the Pickering estate they write: 'One thing is, however, chillingly clear: in 1086 the estate was producing only a fraction of the revenue it had generated in 1066, and the phrase "The rest (is) waste" provides a clear explanation: waste was land which had been devastated.' When one maps the pattern of wasted vills and manors, it seems that only the loftiest parts of the Pennines, the plateaux of the North York Moors, and much of Holderness escaped severe devastation, while the worst of the wasting seems to have taken place in the Bsnnine foothills and the Dales." A bit before this he says "Palliser noted that Ordericus was born in 1075 near Evesham and could have been writing in 1125, some 55 years after the events described, and that his figure of 100,000 victims was used in a rhetorical sense - he also attributed the massively inflated figure of 60,000 knights to William." and notes that some of the undoubted devasatation may have been done by Scottish raiders. Dougweller ( talk) 15:46, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
I think that it was me that used the term 'genocide' in the article, so I thought that I would give you my reasoning behind it. Having looked at the various sources, some that are mentioned above, I thought on balance it should be called an ACT of genocide, which is slightly more ambiguous than just 'genocide'. I think that this is perfectly valid, as I was looking at Williams intent, what was he trying to do? He was fed up with the constant insurgency in the north and wanted to put an end to it. He had faced rebellions in other parts of the country and had dealt with them, but for some reason his action in the north was far more brutal. Most historians seem to agree that the 100,000 dead was an inflated number, the number comes from Orderic Vitalis who was based in Normandy and relied on third parties for his estimate. However, most historians agree that William intent was to utterly destroy the North and it's people - the definition of which is genocide. Wilfridselsey ( talk) 11:16, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
OK. To move this debate forward I have tried to take the essence from what we have discussed here and rewritten the Harrying section. The lead still needs some attention. I also think that we need to say something about the fact that the north of England was redeveloped and became very wealthy once the abbeys arrived. Wilfridselsey ( talk) 14:57, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
Dougweller|Doug This discussion seems to have stalled. The article has been updated in line with the discussion. I think that in the harrying section, there is as much space given to discussing the anti-genocide view as not, so I think that you'll agree that it's more balanced now. In the light of that do you thinkl that it's time to remove the NPOV tag? Regards Wilfridselsey ( talk) 13:42, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
Since William very clearly failed to kill everyone then at most it could only be described as an act of attempted genocide rather than an act of genocide. Furthermore, since genocide is the intentional murder of a whole nation or race or people and is thus dependent upon motive we can't really use the word genocide safely since William's motives were not murder per se but rather to punish and weaken the enemy. Cassandrathesceptic ( talk) 08:52, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
Although its parent abbey, St Mary's at York was founded in early 1088 (just before the Rebellion of that year), Fountains wasn't established until 1132.
It's a curious fact that in 1087, before William the Conqueror headed on his last journey to Normandy, Count Alan Rufus persuaded the King to come north to York to "refound" St Olave's Church as a way to apologise for the damage done during the Harrying. Zoetropo ( talk) 06:28, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
In the background information section there is the phrase "...Edgar Ætheling, grandson of Edmund and half-brother of Edward the Confessor." I read this as stating that Edgar was the half-brother to Edmund, whereas, surly the case is that Edward was the half-brother of Edmund Ironsides. Presumably then Edgar's relationship to Edward is something like half-grand-nephew, if such a term exists.
So, should this phrase read something like "...Edgar Ætheling, the grandson of Edmund Ironsides who was half-brother to Edward the Confessor."?
Graham.Fountain | Talk 12:01, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
The article states that "the land was salted" - I very much doubt that the Normans gathered tons and tons of salt with which to render the entire countryside of the north infertile - "salting the earth" is a reference to an ancient *ritual* act, symbolically rendering a place uninhabitable for future generations, not to a practical method of rendering large tracts of farmland unproductive. This should be edited I think? Mhilhorst ( talk) 09:05, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
I noticed on looking at the cited source for the Orderic quote in the "The Harrying" section that the quoted material does not match the actual source. The quote in the article is a paraphrase of the relevant portion of Orderic's words rather than a direct quote. Doing some digging, I came across what appears to be the source of this paraphrase at a now-defunct site for students about the Norman Conquest (see archive.org capture here); this site was referenced in an earlier version of the article. I can see why this quote was kept, being much more succinct than the original Orderic quote, but it struck me as odd that the quoted text did not actually appear in the source provided. I will leave it to more regular users to determine the best way to handle this issue; but in case anyone decides to use some part of the original Orderic that is cited, I will include a copy of the relevant text below this note for easy access. 108.48.97.105 ( talk) 00:43, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
His camps were scattered over a surface of one hundred miles; numbers of the insurgents fell beneath his vengeful sword, he levelled their places of shelter to the ground, wasted their lands, and burnt their dwellings with all they contained. Never did William commit so much cruelty; to his lasting disgrace, he yielded to his worst impulse, and set no bounds to his fury, condemning the innocent and the guilty to a common fate. In the fulness of his wrath he ordered the corn and cattle, with the implements of husbandry and every sort of provisions, to be collected in heaps and set on fire till the whole was consumed, and thus destroyed at once all that could serve for the support of life in the whole country lying beyond the Humber. There followed, consequently, so great a scarcity in England in the ensuing years, and severe famine involved the innocent and unarmed population in so much misery, that, in a Christian nation, more than a hundred thousand souls, of both sexes and all ages, perished of want. On many occasions, in the course of the present history, I have been free to extol William according to his merits, but I dare not commend him for an act which levelled both the bad and the good together in one common ruin, by the infliction of a consuming famine. For when I see that innocent children, youths in the prime of their age, and grey headed old men, perished from hunger, I am more disposed to pity the sorrows and sufferings of the wretched people, than to undertake the hopeless task of screening one who was guilty of such wholesale massacre by lying flatteries. I assert, moreover, that such barbarous homicide could not pass unpunished. The Almighty Judge beholds alike the high and low, scrutinizing and punishing the acts of both with equal justice, that his eternal laws may be plain to all.
" The influence of Margaret and her sons brought about the Anglicisation of the Lowlands"
This sentence cannot be true in any meaningful sense. The 'Scottish' lowlands, in particular Lothian, had been Anglian or 'English' since the Angles founded the Kingdom of Bernicia (later the northern half of the Kingdom of Northumbria) 500 years earlier.
It might better read: " The influence of Margaret and her sons enhanced the pre-existing Anglic nature of the Lowlands"
Cassandra — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.149.163.219 ( talk) 12:40, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
The Wiki page on the English Kingdom of Northumbria pre-Norman Conquest indicates that it included at least half or even more of the 'Scottish' lowlands. I agree its predecessor, Bernicia, was probably smaller. Cassandra. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.149.163.219 ( talk) 19:14, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
A useful map. But I'm sure we can agree that Margaret and her sons cannot have 'brought about the Anglicisation of the lowlands' but can only have added to that which already existed. Cassandra. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.108.173.183 ( talk) 16:58, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Well then let me quote the DOST. It seems unambiguous:
Analysis of the Anglian names and archaeological evidence in Galloway shows that a succession of different powers – British, Roman, Anglian – were in control of the coastal defences and strategic inland passes. It is uncertain when the Angles took control of Galloway, but they may have held as much as half of the accessible land, and were present as free peasants as well as overlords. They were also well established in Cumberland, on the other side of the Solway Firth (Higham, 1985)...
In an expansion to the west, Kyle was annexed [by Northumbria] from Strathclyde around 750...
Scotland south of the Forth-Clyde isthmus remained part of Northumbria for about three hundred years until, with Northumbria weakened by the attacks of the Vikings , it was ceded to the Scots. Exactly when the Scots acquired Lothian (in the broad sense of Scottish Northumbria from the Forth to the Tweed) is unclear – dates ranging from 973 (Lothian ceded by Edgar) to 1018...
Nicolaisen contrasts baile ‘hamlet’ and achadh ‘field’ names – the absence of the latter in the south-east of Scotland suggests that the small numbers of Gaelic speakers in the east were “landowners rather than tillers of the soil”
It seems clear that Margaret and her sons didn't bring about the Anglicisation of the lowlands - but they certainly did increase it quite a lot, both by offering refuge and by resettlement. Cassandra. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.108.173.183 ( talk) 18:57, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Not at all. I'm simply pointing out that the current wording is misleading since it implies that the lowlands were not Anglic to any degree prior to Margaret and her sons. But clearly their action didn't bring about Anglicisation but rather increased/consolidated/added-to/extended something which already existed in at least a substantial part of the lowlands. Cassandra. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.105.248.97 ( talk) 09:48, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
Hey, I've been reading about William (the Conqueror), and found this article interesting. I did stumble over the style of the section "The Harrying" though, since by proportion there are more statements of views taken by some people today (I guess historians - the people have no Bio's here, so I couldn't tell who they are), than actual description of the harrying itself.... I would suggest to move this discussion to a separate section describing different views of the events at the least.
To be honest, my feeling is that the "contrary" views are inserted in a one-sided and/or misleading way, and that current scientific opinion in general probably does not question the fact that scorched earth tactics were used in a widespread manner by William (and to pretty devastating effect). (As at least one of the historians is let to point out, this is something that occurred frighteningly often in history. But that doesn't make it any better, or mean that the act itself needs to be put in question, I think.)
I've not actually looked into that, but if that were the case, than a lot of the "contrary" views need to be removed as WP:Undue (as they are being undue prominence/ weight).
Regards 37.49.76.172 ( talk) 08:51, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
I did read (most of) that section. That doesn't change the facts that: a) the current state is definitely bad style (more different viewpoints than actual description of the Harrying!), b) I strongly assume there is a view - or at least a certain range of events - which is taken to be most likely by most historians (Whether or not that is genocide was not my point). I've not looked into that myself yet though, so I'll have to wait until I have before I can further argue that point...
Sean Heron (
talk)
17:12, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
P.S. I was the IP above...
William in no actual sense of the word committed genocide, and the fact is that the sources for the Harrying being a genocide are bunk. A throwaway comment from Kapelle there (which is never really explored in depth), a non-academic source which compares the Norman occupation of England to the Nazi occupation of France there (The English Resistance: The Underground War Against the Normans), finish it off with a book by a genocide historian with no background in the period, and you get to pretend the categorisation of the Harrying of the North as a genocide can remotely be taken seriously. You might as well call the March to the Sea a genocide if you're counting the Harrying.
The Harrying was undoubtedly bad, an atrocity even by the standards of the time, but it was not a genocide. Genocide is not 'when a lot of people die'. Say this as someone with an immense fondness for pre-1066 England rivalled only by an immense dislike of historians of post-1066 England, btw, just to clarify where I'm coming from.
This is incorrect. The Doomsday Book clearly indicates a demographic population drop of around 75% in the areas Laid To Waste during "Williams campaigns" , and the intention of William's strategy was to ethnically cleanse the rebellious areas of his new Domain as they were Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, and other culture groups of the at the time ethnically diverse inhabitants of what we now call Great Britain.
The Harrying of the North Was a Genocide, and numerous desperate and varied contemporary scholars, Abbots, Bishops, Monks, oral traditions, folk tales, and indeed in GIS analysis of the main agricultural areas currently found across the north and in areas the doomsday book clearly tells were "laid to waste" In a way brutal and unseen even for the contemporaneous period of 1066 not just in Great Britain but across Western Europe.
I escalate this and contend that to uphold Wikimedia standards the claims of Genocide must be more strongly worded within the article.
What is your response?
Best. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.240.165.210 ( talk) 23:40, 3 August 2022 (UTC)
User:Wilfridselsey - you have reverted this edit from an IP editor today
[4], and although there is an article worthy doubt that gets covered in out sentence on David Horspool, I wonder whether the IP editor is right inasmuch as this doubt is not leadworthy. Our lead, without the disputed material, already has Some present-day scholars have labelled the campaigns a genocide
(my emphasis). We then go beyond what the article actually says by adding although others doubt...
when we only cite Horspool (2009). I would contest that the word "some" already presents information that this is not a universal view. The discussion and unpacking of that belongs in the main, not the lead. Thoughts? Thanks.
Sirfurboy🏄 (
talk)
09:09, 27 October 2022 (UTC)
Thank you, I think your version of the sentence works better. Wilfridselsey ( talk) 11:36, 28 October 2022 (UTC)
![]() | This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Change
Edgar Ætheling, had encouraged Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Scandinavian and Danish rebellions.
To ---> Edgar Ætheling, had encouraged native Celt Briton, Angle, Anglo-Scandinavian and Norse rebellions.
I suggest these changes to increase the article's accuracy, the area subject to the harrying had a substantial diversity in terms of the peoples who lived in this area of Britain prior to 1066.
See the Brittonic Kingdom of Elmet, and the Norse Jorvik. (Modern day Norwegian/Dane/Swedish peoples) 79.70.70.215 ( talk) 19:40, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
![]() | This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Change
Edgar Ætheling, had encouraged Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Scandinavian and Danish rebellions.
To ---> Edgar Ætheling, had encouraged native Celt Briton, Angle, Anglo-Scandinavian and Norse rebellions.
I suggest these changes to increase the article's accuracy, the area subject to the harrying had a substantial diversity in terms of the peoples who lived in this area of Britain prior to 1066.
See the Brittonic Kingdom of Elmet, and the Norse Jorvik. (Modern day Norwegian/Dane/Swedish peoples)
There's a wealth of academic evidence showcasing that the Saxons never settled in the north. So the article is Wrong stating that Anglo-Saxons (As a combined group) were targeted by the Massacre. Only Britons in Elmet, Norse folk in Jorvik, and Anglian Northumbrians were specifically targeted by King William's Norman, Saxon, and South Anglican Forces during the Northern Harrying. See the Domesday Book, Historia Brittonum, Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, and the Tribal Hidage, in addition to Norse Sagas written in Modern Yorkshire, Sweden, Norway, and North Denmark. as Irrifutable evidence in support of this. 79.70.70.215 ( talk) 13:03, 2 April 2023 (UTC)