What happened in the aftermath of the Battle of Hastings? What horrors did William the Conqueror have to inflict upon his Anglo Saxon subjects in order to consolidate his new realm? And, what role did castles, the Harrowing of the North, and the Doomsday Book play in the creation of a new England? Join Tom and Dominic as they discuss William the Conquerer's new reign in the wake of the Battle of Hastings, and the true nature of the Norman Conquest. _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett + Aaliyah Akude Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Harold had fallen, as his valiant brothers had fallen before him.
The event too truly showed that England had fallen with the sons of Godwin, that as ever in this age, everything turned on the life of one man, and that the one man who could have guarded and saved England was taken from her. Such being the case, it is from that memorable day that we may fairly date the overthrow
what we know to have been only the imperfect and temporary overthrow of our ancient and free Teutonic England. In the eyes of men of the next generation, that day was the fatal day of England, the day of the sad overthrow of our dear country, the day of her handing over to foreign lords.
From that day forward the Normans began to work the will of God upon the folk of England, till there were left in England no chiefs of the land of English blood, till all were brought down to bondage and to sorrow, till it was a shame to be called an Englishman, and the men of England were no more a people. So that was one of the great historians. It was Edward A. Freeman.
It was the man with whom 10 episodes ago we began our account of the Norman Conquest. Now, you can't argue with Edward A. Freeman because he was Regis Professor of History at Oxford. His...
book on the Norman Conquest, the history of the Norman Conquest in England, not just the best, but more importantly, the longest history of the Norman Conquest at six volumes, published to mark the 800th anniversary. And he correctly identified the Normans as the absolute filth of Europe and England and its Teutonic traditions and its traditions of freedom and democracy and love of country.
He identified those, Tom, as the motor of all history. And what is more, he pointed out quite rightly that it doesn't matter about the masses in history and millions of people. It's really about one man, and that man is Harold Godwinson, the one man who could have guarded and saved England. This is the best episode of The Restless History we've ever done.
But are you going to now say that this is all tosh and rubbish?
Yeah, so I'm very much your kind of guy. He loves Harold Godwinson. He writes enormously long books. You just go on and on and on and never stop. Yeah, very much your kind of guy. So clearly he is mourning the death of Harold. He sees the two as being, you know, interfused. Harold is the one man who could have guarded and saved England and now he is dead.
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