The Norman Conquest Quotes

“Exeter was a walled city and on his arrival William found the rebels manning the whole circuit of its ramparts. In a final attempt to induce a surrender he ordered one of the hostages to be blinded in view of the walls, but, says Orderic, this merely strengthened the determination of the defenders. Indeed, according to William of Malmesbury, one of them staged something of a counter-demonstration by dropping his trousers and farting loudly in the king’s general direction.”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest

“The English remained paralysed by their own rivalries until the following April, at which point Æthelred made an invaluable contribution to the war effort by dropping dead, clearing the way for Edmund to succeed him.”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

“it is a mark of the kingdom’s political maturity that in times of crisis its leading men would generally come together to debate their differences rather than immediately reaching for their swords.”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

“By 1086 the English were entirely gone from the top of society, supplanted by thousands of foreign newcomers. This transformation had almost certainly not been William’s original intention. His initial hope appears to have been to rule a mixed Anglo-Norman kingdom, much as his predecessor and fellow conqueror, King Cnut, had ruled an Anglo-Danish one. But Cnut had begun his reign by executing those Englishmen whose loyalty he suspected and promoting trustworthy natives in their place. William, by contrast, had exercised clemency after his coronation and consequently found himself facing wave after wave of rebellion. The English knew they were conquered in 1016, but in 1066 they had refused to believe it. As a result they met death and dispossession by stages and degrees, until, eventually and ironically, the Norman Conquest became far more revolutionary than its Danish predecessor.”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

“Lastly, the story that the Tapestry tells is inevitably selective and in places demonstrably inaccurate; some events are left out and others are deliberately distorted. No other source, for example, suggests that Harold swore his famous oath to William at Bayeux, or that it was Odo who heroically turned the tide for the Normans during the Battle of Hastings. The Tapestry, it bears repeating, is really an embroidery.”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

“If we had to sum this new society up in a single word, we might describe it as feudal— but only if we were prepared for an outbreak of fainting fits among medieval historians.”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

“Edward had lived ‘a celibate life’; indeed, ‘he preserved with holy chastity the dignity of his consecration, and lived his whole life dedicated in true innocence’.”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

“Indeed, the point of the famous story about the king and the waves, as originally told, was not to illustrate his stupidity, but rather to prove what a good Christian he had been. ‘Let all the world know’, says a damp Cnut, having conspicuously failed to stop the tide from rising, ‘that the power of kings is empty and worthless, and there is no king worthy of the name save Him by whose will heaven, earth and sea obey eternal laws.’2”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

“according to William of Malmesbury, one of them staged something of a counter-demonstration by dropping his trousers and farting loudly in the king’s general direction.”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

“who witnessed their monasteries being torched, their gold and silver treasures being looted,”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

“were not surprisingly regarded with horror by the settled Anglo-Saxons,”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

“the Vikings, with their lust for blood and glory and their gruesome human sacrifices,”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

“But in the ninth century, this galaxy of competing kingdoms was destroyed by new invaders – the Vikings.”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

“defeating the native Celtic peoples, subjugating them and driving them into the upland regions to the north and west.”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

“Fierce warriors, these newcomers eventually made themselves masters of southern and eastern Britain,”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

“the fifth century.”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

“now collectively known as the Anglo-Saxons, had begun migrating to the island of Britain”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

“its roots stretched back into a distant past, when tribes of Germanic peoples,”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

“England at the start of the eleventh century was a country both old and new.”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

“there seemed little sense in having a Gunhilda in England and a Gunnhildr in Denmark.”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

“Not only did the Normans bring with them new forms of architecture and fortifications, new military techniques, a new ruling elite and a new language of government; they also imported a new set of attitudes and morals, which impinged on everything from warfare to politics to religion to law and even the status of the peasantry. More of these changes could be grouped under the heading 'national identity.' The Conquest matters, in short, because it altered what it meant to be English,”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest

“After a hurried inquiry established that he was telling the truth the protester was appeased by an immediate cash payment and the service continued. But the greatest indignity was reserved until last. When William was finally lowered into the ground, it became clear that his bloated corpse was too big for its stone sarcophagus, and efforts to press on regardless caused his swollen bowels to burst. No amount of frankincense and spices could hide the resultant stench, and the clergy therefore raced through the rest of the funeral rite before rushing back to their houses.7”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

“If we had to sum this new society up in a single word, we might describe it as feudal— but only if we were prepared for an outbreak of fainting fits among medieval historians. The”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

“England had been conquered by the Vikings, and its ancient royal family were in exile – in Normandy.”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

“Indeed, according to William of Malmesbury, one of them staged something of a counter-demonstration by dropping his trousers and farting loudly in the king’s general direction.”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

“Æthelred made an invaluable contribution to the war effort by dropping dead, clearing the way for Edmund to succeed him.”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

“Nevertheless, for all Cnut’s determination to portray himself as a traditional Old English king, his reign had altered English society dramatically.”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

“Remarkably, this Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (as it was later known) was written not in Latin, as was the practice in virtually every other literate corner of Europe, but in the everyday language that people spoke. By the end of the tenth century, this language had a name for the new state: it was ‘the land of the Angles’, Engla lond.4”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England