The Harrying of the North

The plundering of the northern lands of England after the Norman Conquest

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1066

The battle in which William I, Duke of Normandy killed Harold Godwineson and defeated his army on Saturday 14 October 1066 about seven miles from Hastings is a profound turning point in English history.

After his Conquest of England, the English magnates did not immediately surrender to William, but elected Edgar Ætheling, the son of Edward the Exile and the last surviving descendant of the House Wessex. William marched north to London and began a campaign of terror. He secured Dover, parts of Kent, and Canterbury, and sent a force to capture Winchester, and the royal treasury.

The aristocracy and clergy in southern England, rallied to William. Indeed the Archbishop of York, Ealdred, also supported William’s claim. William was crowned at Edward’s the Confessor’s newly built Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066. That might have been that.

The new king tried to reconcile with the English magnates. Eadwine, Earl of Mercia, his brother Morcar, Earl of Northumbria, and Waltheof, Earl of Northampton, were initially confirmed in their lands and titles.

However William had to reward his army. He started to build wooden castles across the countryside and they levied taxes and sometimes robbed the indigenous population. This gave rise to resistance in the west and in the north.

1067

In 1067 the north rose up under Merleswain, Eadwine and Morcar. William led an army to York and the rebels flew into Scotland. York submitted and the Normans built a castle. He left 500 men at York under William Malet and Richard FitzRichard.

William continued to put down rebellions with increasingly violent means. There is an In Our Time podcast, ‘The Norman Yoke’ – the idea that the Battle of Hastings sparked years of cruel Norman oppression for the Anglo Saxons. The Normans built castles far and wide throughout the land (The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle). Castles were built wherever Norman barons took ownership of land. Within a couple of generations there were about 500 castles across the land, to keep the population in check.

1068

In 1068 Eadwine and Morcar rose in revolt again, supported by Gospatric, the new Earl of Northumbria. The King marched through Eadwin's lands and built Warwick Castle. Edwin and Morcar submitted.

William continued on to York, completing York and Nottingham Castles before returning south.

William returned to Normandy late in 1068, feeling his new kingdom was secure.

1069

Early in 1069, Edgar Ætheling revolted and attacked York. Although William returned to York and built a second castle, Edgar Ætheling remained free. And King William came upon them by surprise from the south with a streaming raiding army and put them to flight, and then killed those who could not flee, that was several hundreds of men; and ravaged the town and made St Peter's minster a disgrace, and also ravaged and humiliated all the others. And the Ætheling went back again to Scotland. (The Anglo Saxon Chronicle).

In the autumn Edgar Ætheling joined up with King Sweyn of Denmark who brought a large fleet to England and attacked York, Exeter and Shrewsbury. York was captured by the combined forces of Edgar and Sweyn. Edgar was proclaimed king by his supporters.

This was the last invasion by the Danes. Indeed this was the only time when a Norman castle was subdued. The local population welcomed the Danes.

William was furious. He decided to adopt a scorched earth policy, and this has become known as the Harrying of the North. Then when the king learned this, he went northward with all of his army which he could gather, and wholly ravaged and laid waste the shire. (The Anglo Saxon Chronicle).

William bought off the Danes, retook York and symbolically wore his crown in the ruins of York on Christmas Day 1069.

The Harrying of the North

William marched to the River Tees, ravaging the countryside as he went. He suppressed northern England and started a period of ruthless domination.

One writer described how livestock and carefully harvested crops in every settlement were brought together and burned, and stated that, as a result, more than 100,000 people perished in the famine. The data in Domesday Book suggests that the true death toll was probably even higher. (The Anglo Saxons, A History of the Beginnings of England, Marc Morris, 2021, page 403).

The English Chronicler and Benedictine monk, Orderic Vitalis (1072 to 1142), wrote the Historia Ecclesistica. He wrote about the Harrying of the North, and his account described the campaign as a brutal act of cruelty that punished the innocent with the guilty. Helpless children, young men in the prime of life, and hoary grey beards alike were perishing of hunger. He made no effort to restrain his fury and punished the innocent with the guilty. In his anger he commanded that all crops, herds and food of any kind be brought together and burned to ashes so that the whole region north of the Humber be deprived of any source of sustenance.

The Harrying of the North included recorded destruction in the City and Minster of York, and it has been reasoned that the destruction extended north and south from the city, at least in the lowlands. Other rebellions against the Normans are also recorded, such as around Ely in 1070, and in the Durham area in 1080, but the Yorkshire experience seems to have been the most severe, with lasting disruption here being mentioned by the chroniclers even fifty years later. There has been more recent discussion about of the variable nature of both the Conquest and any recovery, identifying not just the difference between the north and the south, but the multiplicity of regional variations in that process. (Stone Fonts as Indicators of Recovery following the Harrying of the North, Rita Wood and Jeffrey Craine, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 2025, Volume 97 No 1, page 64).

Whilst there can be no doubt that parts of the North Riding suffered the consequences of the Harrying as much as other areas of Yorkshire, its long coastline and more northerly position left it open to other, additional forms of danger. It is known that the Danish fleet was anchored in the Humber during the winter of 1070. (Stone Fonts as Indicators of Recovery following the Harrying of the North, Rita Wood and Jeffrey Craine, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 2025, Volume 97 No 1, page 74).

He then gave orders for the towns and fields of the whole region to be devastated, and the fruit and grain to be ruined by fire or water, especially near the sea, partly because of his recent anger, but also since a rumour had spread that Cnut king of the Danes, son of Swein, was approaching, the purpose of this order being to leave nothing near the seashore which a raiding pirate could find and carry off if he had to make a rapid return home, or use for food if he thought he could stay longer. Thus a province once fertile and a nurse of tyrants was hamstrung by fire, rapine, and bloodshed; the ground for sixty miles and more left entirely uncultivated, the soil quite bare even down to this day. As for the cities once so famous, the towers whose tops threatened the sky, the fields rich in pasture and watered by rivers, if any one sees them now, he sighs if he is a stranger, and if he is a native surviving from the past, he does not recognize them. (Gesta Regum Anglorum, the History of the English Kings, William of Malmesbury, Clarendon Press, Oxford, Volume 1, 1998, page 465).

During the Harrying of the North, the Normans destroyed the sources of power, destroying crops and livestock and killing the peasantry. This led to famine. A Norman force ravaged Northallerton, which was almost totally destroyed. The Domesday Book, compiled a few years later in 1086, described the manor of Aluertune (Northallerton) as waste.

1070

The Harrying continued until about April 1070. Sweyn of Denmark returned in early 1070, raiding along the Humber and East Anglia toward the Isle of Ely, where he joined up with the thegn Hereward the Wake. Hereward's forces captured and looted Peterborough Abbey.

The extent, nature and lasting effects at the Harrying of the North are still topics for speculation. There is no record left by an unbiased or contemporary reporter, nor has primary evidence of fire and slaughter been turned up by archaeologists and although planned villages seem credible evidence for reconstruction, they are not found only in the north. In addition, it would have been impossible for William’s troops to have ravaged all of England north of the Humber, or even the whole county of York, in one winter. Since the lowlands would have been the easiest country for horsemen to enter and dominate, the lowlands would surely have borne the brunt of the destruction of harvest stores, lives and property, though conversely they may have recovered more quickly. (Stone Fonts as Indicators of Recovery following the Harrying of the North, Rita Wood and Jeffrey Craine, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 2025, Volume 97 No 1, page 79).

1071

Eadwine, Earl of Mercia and Morcar, Earl of Northumbria joined a final desperate rebellion in 1071, where they were killed. The last of the Godwinsons had been killed. The old English elite were wiped out. Of about a thousand noblemen who held land in 1085, only 13 were of Anglo-Saxon blood.

1072

In 1072 William invaded Scotland, defeating Malcolm, who had recently invaded the north of England. William and Malcolm agreed to peace by signing the Treaty of Abernethy, and Malcolm probably gave up his son Duncan as a hostage for the peace.

1073

William returned to Normandy in 1073 and spent all of 1074 there, to deal with an invasion of Maine. This suggests that England was becoming more secure in its new Norman rule.

1078

A mission arrived from Evesham Abbey, Mercia in York, were joined by Stephen of York, and established a Benedictine monastery in the old ruins at Whitby. Some of the monks went to Lastingham and they partly build a large church there.

1079

In August and September 1079 King Malcolm of Scots raided south of the River Tweed, devastating the land between the River Tees and the Tweed in a raid that lasted almost a month. The lack of Norman response appears to have caused the Northumbrians to grow restive, and in the spring of 1080 they rebelled against the rule of Walcher, the Bishop of Durham and Earl of Northumbria. Walcher was killed on 14 May 1080. In the autumn the King’s son Robert was sent on a campaign against the Scots. Robert raided into Lothian and forced Malcolm to agree to terms, building the new castle at Newcastle upon Tyne on his return.

1086

The Domesday Book recorded the values of lands through the kingdom before the Conquest and in 1086. The comparison in value of the lands in Yorkshire (with many turned from valuable land to wasteland) reveals the extent of the devastation from the Harrying of the North. The considerable drop in the value of estates in the region between 1066 and 1086, as recorded in the Domesday Survey, provides clear evidence of widespread impoverishment (Stone Fonts as Indicators of Recovery following the Harrying of the North, Rita Wood and Jeffrey Craine, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 2025, Volume 97 No 1, page 63). There is an In Our Time podcast, the Domesday Book.

Thomas of Bayeaux, Archbishop of York (1070 to 1100) appears to have begun to rebuild his diocese after the Harrying of the North, first with a flagship cathedral before he and his successors encouraged the recovery of churches across the ravaged communities. This included for the provision of fonts and altars in simple buildings, which is the subject of a recent study to evidence the extent of recovery after the devastation. (Stone Fonts as Indicators of Recovery following the Harrying of the North, Rita Wood and Jeffrey Craine, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 2025, Volume 97 No 1, page 64).

There was one major project in the north which definitively did get started despite the Harrying, and that was the building of a new cathedral in York. It was begun by Archbishop Thomas perhaps around 1075, after the last recorded Danish incursion, and was completed by about 1100. The effort was in step with the rest of the English Church, but in the northern province the only cathedrals begun were in York (c 1075) and Durham (1093), any project at Durham being delayed by the murder of Bishop Walcher in 1080. In comparison, in the southern province, at least ten cathedrals were begun before the end of the 11th century. The York Minster, built by Thomas of Bayeaux, was as ambition in design and construction as any other new cathedral: it was a huge aisleless, cruciform building, a plan unusual for a cathedral, but one commonly chosen for communities of regular cannons. The design must have been decided early, since the whole structure was based on a timber ‘grillage’ of the same plan underlying the stone foundations. On his arrival in York, Archbishop Thomas had taken over a Minster staffed by the remnant of a community of secular canons; he built their dormitory and refractory and reroofed whatever was left of their church. (Stone Fonts as Indicators of Recovery following the Harrying of the North, Rita Wood and Jeffrey Craine, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 2025, Volume 97 No 1, page 80).

Bibliography

Stone Fonts as Indicators of Recovery following the Harrying of the North, Rita Wood and Jeffrey Craine, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 2025, Volume 97 No 1, pages 63 to 87.

The BBC 2025 documentary Lucy Worley Investigates William the Conqueror explores the Harrying of the North.

After 1066: The Harrying of the North, Gone Medieval podcast.