Norman Conquest

God has chosen the Normans to wipe out the English nation. Henry of Huntington, welcome to Ancient Recent My name is Joseph Parkinson, and today we start a new exciting series on the anniversary of William the Conqueror's departure from Normandy to take up what he saw as his right, the throne of England. We'll be covering the causes of the Norman invasion, the process of the conquest, and how William sealed power in his hand and crushed all resistance.

Episodes of the Ancient Recent podcast are brought to you every Friday by the worldofwhiskey.co.uk, the premier place for whiskey cask investment, and are available on YouTube, Spotify, and Aqua Podcast. The Bay Tapestry begins with three men in conversation. Only one of them is seated. He holds a scepter and he wears a crown. He is identified as the King of England. Edward the Confessor After Edward's death, he would be canonized by the Pope.

Miraculous events would be attributed to him that would see the Catholic Church elevate Edward the Confessor to the status of a St. But during his lifetime, contemporary sources don't seem to suggest that he was particularly more religious than anyone else on the Bayer tapestry. He's shown as being an old man with a long white beard. He had lived a long life by the standards of 11th century England, living into his early 60s. But the year of his death is a very important year, very important in the history of England, the British Isles and of all of Europe. 1066, that most important of date, that sliding doors moment in the history of England where everything would change.

There is one thing that is unquestionably miraculous about Edward. It's that he ever became the King of England in the 1st place. But to understand that story, what we must do is you must go deep into the mists of time. We must understand the roots of the country, of the nation, and of the people that Edward the Confessor ruled. The roots of England go back to the Anglo Saxons, the Germanic tribes who landed on the shores of England after the collapse of imperial rule in the Roman province of Britannia. Starting first as Raiders and mercenaries, then becoming conquerors and then settlers, waves of Germanic tribesmen established their rule over the land that one day would be called England.

They displaced the native Celts, they pushed back to Wales or up north to Scotland, and they founded a patchwork of Anglo-Saxon states that would bear their names E Anglia, Wessex, Essex, Sussex, Kent, Mercia. But from the 6th century the Anglo Saxons began to settle down, give up their raiding and marauding ways, settle into a life of farming and to convert to Christianity. Life seemed to be good for the Anglo Saxons.

They seemed to have hit the jackpot. But things changed for them because in 793, in the North East of England, in a place called Linda's Farm, there arrived a people even more fearsome than the Anglo Saxons themselves. And those people history would remember as the Vikings. Initially, just like with the Anglo Saxons, they raided, plundered, raped probe defenses and then wave after wave of Viking Raiders began to land and conquer and carve out their own kingdoms. 1 by 1, the Anglo-Saxon states fell to the advance of the Viking juggernaut. But just as it all seemed to be lost, one Anglo-Saxon Kingdom, the Kingdom of Wessex, led by the greatest hero in all of English history, Alfred the Great, doggedly held out against the advance of the Viking war machine. Stubbornly, Alfred refused to give ground and his determination allowed him to rally the other Anglo-Saxon people and begin the fight back.

The Anglo Saxons began to drive the Vikings back and in 954 AD they captured York, the Viking capital. But as the Anglo Saxons reconquered the north of England, they themselves had been changed as people. The collective experience of the horror of the coming of the Vikings had transformed a patchwork of small, weak, squabbling Anglo-Saxon States and had created from it a national identity. The Anglo Saxons have been transformed into the English and they themselves created a new nation, a new state, England or England.

One state, one nation, one people under one king. Again, fate seems to have smiled upon the English. They had seen off the Viking invaders, but the Vikings were many things. One of the things they weren't though is quitters. And so in 980 AD, the Vikings were back, repeating the same tactics, first in small raiding parties, probing England's defenses, testing the English resolve. And then in 991, ADA large Viking army landed, faced the English at the Battle of Malden and emerged victorious. It's seen for the English that all was lost. So why was it that the English, who'd been able to so comprehensively defeat the Vikings only decades before, could lose it all?

Well, decades before they'd had Alfred the Great, the greatest hero, the greatest king in the history of England, a man who provided visionary, determined leadership. And that was the one thing that they lacked now. Because now the King of England was Ethelred, or as history would remember him, Ethelred the Unready. Ethelred had put his trust in his advisers, many of whom were convinced that the Vikings were divine punishment for the sins of the English, sent by God to wreak God's revenge upon a decaying and immoral nation. And so these advisers suggested a course of action of prayer, fasting, and giving alms to the church. And if that didn't work, they suggested another idea. Pay the Vikings to go away.

This became called Paying the Dane Geld. And anyone who's familiar with the famous Rudyard Kipling poem, Once you've paid them the Dane geld, you never get rid of the Dane. This policy proved to be a disaster. Why would the Vikings leave the second they turn up, the English give them all their money. So the Vikings decided to stay. Ethelred realized how much of A catastrophe this policy was, and that force was going to be necessary if they were going to drive the Vikings away.

But Ethelred was a terrible judge of character, and he again turned to disastrous advisors. And none could be more disastrous than Edrich Striona, or, as history would remember him, Edrich the Grabber. Edrich concerned himself only with his own personal advancement, cutting down, murdering, eliminating anyone who could threaten his position, his power and his privilege. And so Edricht was hated amongst the English aristocracy. When Ethelred was able to gather together his fleet to sail out and confront the Vikings, the leadership of the English was so divided that the English fleet ended up attacking itself, Faction against faction, Englishman against Englishman. Edrich had managed to convince everyone to hate him more than they hated the Vikings, and so the English fleet destroyed itself.

With no serious organized resistance, the Vikings were able to conquer, colonize, and lay waste to huge swathes of the land of England. In 1013, the king of Denmark himself swine folk beard lands in Lincolnshire, conquering large swathes of England. And Ethelred, seeing the writing on the wall, decides I'm getting out of here, and he ditches England and makes a break for it over the Channel to Normandy. Now, Normandy might seem like kind of a strange place to go if you're trying to escape Vikings, because Normandy itself is a former Viking colony. The name Normandy even suggests it. Normandy as in Normans as in Norsemen. But by the early 11th century, the Normans had shed much of their Viking baggage, had started to speak French, and had converted to Christianity.

Now Ethelred had been wary of Normandy and its Viking links, and he tried everything he possibly could to discourage the Normans from participating in raids on England like their Viking cousins were doing. He had tried force. He had tried getting the Normans to sign a treaty in 991AD. Neither had worked. But he had hit upon one idea that would have very long lasting consequences, Marriage. And in 10O2, Ethelred had agreed to marry the sister of the Duke of Normandy, Emma. The couple had three children, Edward, the future confessor Alfred, and a daughter, God, Gifu. So therefore, it actually kind of made some sense to seek refuge with people who are descendants of Vikings, if those are Vikings that you are actually related to and therefore have an interest in restoring you to the throne. Just when it all seemed lost for Ethelred, he got a little bit of luck.

King Swine Folk Beard suddenly died. And this raises the question, who would be his successor now? The Viking army? They wanted Swine's teenage son, but the English aristocrats left back who'd been abandoned by Ethelred. They agreed to allow him to return if he promised to ditch his bad advisors and start actually behaving himself. Ethelred returns to England, leads an English army into Lincolnshire, where they meet and defeat the Vikings. But with the Vikings now beaten again, Ethelred resorts to his bad old ways.

It seems that he may just have had his fingers crossed behind his back when he promised that he'd behave himself this time. And he immediately begins hunting down and killing aristocrats who he felt hadn't backed him up in the way he felt he deserved to be. And his chief thug in doing this was Edrich the Grabber. By 1013, England is in disarray yet again, and the new Viking king, King Canute, seize his opportunity. And so the Vikings in 10:15, they have their third crack at invading and conquering England.

It's at this point that Ethelred, for the first time in his entire life, actually manages to do the right thing. He does something truly patriotic, truly selfless, truly in the interest of all of the people in whose name he rules. He dies, and he paves the way for someone maybe less unready, his son Edmund, to succeed him. Now. Edmund tries desperately to resist Canute, but Canute is a fearsome Viking warrior and in January 1017 Canute emerges victorious and is crowned king. Edward the soon to be Confessor at this point is a small child and in 10/16 he flees back to Normandy. Canoe reigns with an iron fist, killing anyone who opposes him, including all six of Edward the Confessor's brothers. Edward the Confessor's mother marries Canute. This is a very standard move for the time because by marrying the wife of the former king, you're able to then establish continuity with the previous regime whilst also wiping that previous regime out and so you're therefore able to confer legitimacy upon the new regime.

Now sources are divided as to why Queen Emma did this. Did she do this reluctantly, or did she actually see this as being a worthwhile way of solidifying her own position of power? We will never know. Edward, at this point, is a teenager. He is the son of a little mourned, discredited and disgraced king of a deposed regime living in exile. There's every chance that Edward would simply slip into the mists of history like so many descendants of deposed royal families. But he had allies, royal allies over in Normandy who had every reason to want to see him descend the throne of England. So his Norman family, it seems, begin to plan for a Norman invasion of England some 50 years before William the Conqueror actually has his go.

A fleet is gathered, Edward is prepared, the troops are ready to go, but as soon as it gets into the English Channel it sails directly into a Gale. So the fleet is diverted to Jersey, which is a small English speaking island just off the North Coast of France, where the fleet then stays, turns round and heads back to Normandy. This is seen by Robert, the Duke of Normandy as being divine judgement. It seems that God just isn't on the side of Edward the Confessor. The ruling class of England was decimated by these constant back and forth wars and waves of invasion. The ranks of the aristocracy would therefore replenished by new arriving Vikings.

But the English aristocrats were not completely destroyed. The Vikings knew that they couldn't rule with the sword alone. They needed to have local native collaborators. And so one of the things that the Vikings were quite willing to do was to promote talented English aristocrats who they thought could serve their interests. And one of them was a man called Godwine. Godwine would make himself King Canute's essential man. He would become so important to Canute that he would even end up marrying into the Danish royal family. Canute had a number of sons by his several wives, Spine, Harold and Half a Canute, but it was never quite clear who was the designated successor and in 1035 King Canute dies. After Canute's death there is a division over who should be his successor and there are two major candidates. The first is Harold, who has the support of the aristocrats north of the Thames, the Thames being the large river that flows through London in the South of England. And then there was Half a Canute. Half a Canute was supported by Queen Emma, the aristocrats in Wessex, but also by Godwin.

A meeting was arranged to decide the successor, but half a canute was in Denmark at the time, so he actually couldn't attend, so a compromise was reached. The decision was to not make a decision. Harold would be the Regent, but half a Canute would become the ruler of Wessex. And then it was decided that at some point in the future when both half a Canute and Harold were available, they can make a final decision on who could be the king of England.

All that was needed was for half a Canute to sail from Denmark to England. Get him in the room and we can hash this out. So the Vikings and their English aristocratic collaborators wait and wait and wait. But no half a Canute, it seemed. Of all the candidates, nobody seriously considered Edward. But with half a Canute, who Queen Emma had supported nowhere to be seen. Emma needed a candidate for herself, someone who could protect her interests, someone who could make sure that she would stay close to power and always with the Royal Air.

So Edward is encouraged by Emma to gather troops, set sail from Normandy, and land on the South Coast of England with a fleet of 40 ships. As soon as Edward lands, he is confronted with a large English army. Edward actually emerges victorious from the battle, but he realizes that this has already taken a tremendous toll on the troops available to him. And even if he's won the battle, he's probably not going to be able to win the war.

So he decides to settle for a bit of a plunder and a bit of a rape and then just to take his booty back to Normandy. Emma's other son, Alfred, he decides to now have a go. He crosses over from Normandy, lands in the South Coast of England, but he doesn't bring with him a large army. He decides that he's going to try and play it subtly. He brings just a few supporters and he makes contact with Godwine, believing that Godwine, being a supporter of Queen Emma, will be a supporter of his and therefore just the man that he might need to take the throne of England.

But Godwine never bare on a losing horse. He knew that the power in the land was the Vikings. And so Godwine has changed sides from Half a Canoe and Queen Emma to Harold Godwine. Has been a major beneficiary of Viking conquest, and I'm not necessarily sure that he really saw a restoration of the old royal family being particularly in his interests. So when Godwin meets up with Alfred, he appears to be friendly. He appears to be a loyal supporter of the one true King.

But instead of taking Alfred to London to be placed on the throne, Godwin takes Alfred to his own encampment, and during the night, after a feast, Godwin's men seize Alfred's entourage, kill them, take Alfred, blind him, and then dump him in a monastery, where Alfred then dies of his wounds several months later. Godwin all along has been seeking to ingratiate himself with, to prove his worth. Tarfa Canute and his Viking masters.

Queen Emma has seen the writing on the wall. Her first son made an attempt at invading, didn't work out. Second son ended up dying without any eyeballs in a monastery. That didn't work out. So she decides to flee and she makes her way to Flanders. She asks Edward to come and visit her, but Edward by this point seemed to have had enough of the Game of Thrones, and he decides to just hang back in Normandy. But half a Canute now is finally starting to make his move.

He sails from Denmark to Flanders to meet Emma, from which point he can then plot his invasion to take on Harold and win back the throne of England. But just at that moment, fate intervenes. Word reaches half a Canute and Emma that Harold has dropped dead. And so the succession crisis seems to have solved itself. Alfred's dead, Edwards disgraced, Harold's gone. The only show in town is half a canoe. So the Vikings and the English aristocrats send word to Flanders and ask half a canoe, please sail across the oceans, land in London and become the King of England.

You'd have thought now half a canoe would be pretty happy here. You'd have thought that the man's just won the jackpot. Dropping into his hands is one of the richest prizes, one of the juiciest fruits, one of the plum jobs of early medieval Europe, King of England. And he still gets to be king of Denmark and king of Norway at the same time. This is pretty sweet, but let's just say the half a canoe. He's a glass half empty kind of guy for him. All he sees amongst the Vikings and the English aristocrats are ungrateful, disloyal enemies.

He knows that for many of them, he was their second choice. For some of them, maybe even third. But instead of trying to win them over, instead of letting sleeping dogs lie, instead of ingratiating himself with them, he decides that he's going to show them all that he should have been boss in the 1st place, and that really, it was his right and no one should have questioned him. So he takes his brother's corpse, digs it up out of Westminster Abbey, beheads it, and has it dumped in a marsh.

And then he decides that everyone is just going to have to pay him a huge amount of money for the privilege of him ruling over them. So he jacks up the taxes 400% just to show everyone who's boss. Prices shoot up. Ordinary people begin to go hungry. Life gets immensely worse. But half a canoe doesn't back down. Half a canoe double s down. You don't like paying taxes? They're doubled. Oh, you still don't like paying taxes? Oh, well, if you just step into this room with me and my buddies, I'm sure that we can figure a way of convincing you to change your mind.

That's his approach to literally everything. So when some people object to the taxation, Half a Canute sends his troops into the countryside to forcibly collect taxes. At the city of Worcester, some of Half a Canute's men are confronted by an angry mob who chased them into the cathedral and kill them. So Half a Canute decides to go full canoe. He sends his army to burn the city down, kill everyone there and raise the entire region. So half a canoe.

His managerial style can be described as carrot in the stick. He's going to take a carrot and he's going to stick it up your arse. And if that doesn't work, he's always got more carrots. Fortunately, the people of the city of Worcester, they got word of the coming of the King's army and they fled. But half a canoe's army still spends 4 days burning and pillaging a completely empty city. It seems to have eventually dawned on half a canoe that may be making every person in the country that he was running from the lowest surf to the highest Lord absolutely hate his guts.

Might not have been the best way of running England. In the year 1041 half a knute decides to invite Edward, his half brother who he has almost certainly never met, to come to England to be his Co king and I am sure that that was as much a surprise to Edward as it was to literally everyone else. Why did he do this? We don't actually know when Edward arrives. The aristocrats of England gather together to swear allegiance to him on the condition that he stays loyal to them and he obeys the law.

On the 8th of June 1041, whilst attending a wedding, half a canute collapses and dies. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle state half a canute died as he stood at his drink and he suddenly fell to the earth with an awful convulsion and those who were close by him took hold of him and he spoke no words afterwards. Anyone at this moment who's thinking about Joffrey? I don't think you're alone. Was he poisoned? Did he die of natural causes?

We don't know. We do know he was quite a sickly person. But still, one minute he's fine, stood there at our wedding feast having a drink. The next minute he's on the floor. It's open to interpretation. At this moment by the strangest, most bizarre, one could almost say miraculous series of events. Edward the Confessor is the only man standing. Before we dive back into the story of Edward the Confessor, William the Conqueror, and the Norman Conquest, a quick word from our sponsor, World of Whiskey.

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Remember to drink responsibly and invest responsibly. And a great place to start is with worldofwhiskey.co.uk in Normandy. Duke Robert has set out for the Holy Land. Now he seems to have a premonition that he wouldn't be making it back and he actually does die in the city of Nicaea. He is not managed to find a suitable wife. He only has one son, a bastard boy called William, born to a peasant girl called her Lava, born on the 8th of November 1028.

When Duke Robert dies, William is very young, 7:00 or 8:00. But because Robert seems to have had this premonition that he wouldn't be coming back, he's made a point of selecting a bunch of key advisors to guide and support William through the task of governing Normandy. Williams claim to the Duke is backed by the King of France, Henry the 1st, and also by Robert, the Archbishop of Rouen. Robert is the main power broker.

But in March 1037, the Archbishop dies, and without his biggest support, Anarchy breaks out in Normandy. But William still has friends. He has Allen, the Count of Brittany, and Gilbert, the Count of Brion, both acting as his protectors. But very soon the Anarchy overtakes them. Allen dies in battle and Gilbert is assassinated. Another one of William's appointed advisors, Osburn, is actually murdered whilst William is asleep as a child in the room.

Now, it doesn't seem that what was happening in Normandy was a direct attempt to overthrow William. It seems instead that it was rival families who wanted to isolate William and to then place their own family members in position of power and authority so that they could then manipulate William. William could be the figurehead, but they would be running the show behind the scenes, all the while weakening royal authority. And there was no better sign of establishing your own independent power base than by building your own castle. Noblemen at this time weren't meant to have castles. The king has a castle.

Castle is a military installation. If a nobleman has got his own castle, that means he's got his own power base. And it's at that moment, when Normandy is in anarchy, that you start seeing other noblemen building their own castles. The coup attempt against William's power, if not necessarily to remove him, seems to have also been backed by Henry the First, the king of France. But very soon the Norman nobles realized that there was very easy to get the king of France involved in Normandy's affairs. Once he's in, it's very hard to get him out. William, however, is able to outmanoeuvre his rivals and he's able, even as a teenage boy, to align himself with people who he believes do have the kingdom's best interests at heart to out manoeuvre the disloyal nobles.

He's able to begin the process of building his own power base free from people seeking to manipulate him. But as he does this, this leads to a backlash from certain Norman nobles centered around 1:00 called Guy of Burgundy. And in 1046, Guy stages A revolt to remove William. But William is able to then play off the role that Henry plays within Norman politics by making himself a basal of the King of France. He's able to then summon the resources, the material, the firepower of the much larger, much more powerful French state and direct that against his enemies. William and Henry joined together and in 1047, near Cannes, at the battle called Valez Dunes, Henry and William defeat die of Burgundy.

William is now firmly in control, centralizing power in his hands, and the first thing that he does in Normandy, he makes sure to knock down all of the castles that the other nobles have built. On Easter Sunday 1043, Edward the Confessor is crowned King of England. He makes one move straight away, a decisive move. Queen Emma, who had been involved in so much maneuvering, backing one candidate and then dropping them when another one seemed to be a better bet, he moved to neutralize her.

He sent his troops to her estates to confiscate her property, her money, her wealth, and to once and for all and her maneuvering and manipulation behind the throne. And there's a very good reason for this, because she was up to her old games yet again. An old threat was stirring across the North Sea once more, a threat that had been visited upon the people of England again and again. The Vikings had a new king, Magnus, King of Norway.

Magnus had been elected by Norwegian nobles 10 years before to act as a rival to half a Canute and had challenged half a Canute for his power in Denmark. That is the exact reason why Half a Canoe had not been able to make his way to England to meet with his brother Harold when King Canoe died. But eventually Magnus and Half a Canoe had come to an agreement. Whichever one of them died would be the other's successor. So in 1042, when Half a Canoe died, as far as Magnus was concerned he was there, legitimate heir to everything that half a canoe had. He already had Denmark, he already had Norway, so England was his two by right.

But fate intervened against Magnus because King Canoe's sister had a son called Spine Ericsson, and he raised an army in Denmark and contested Magnus's claim to the Danish throne. After much fighting, it seems that Magnus is about to emerge victorious over Spine. But just as Magnus is about to win out, in October 1047, he dies. The throne of Denmark passes the Spine. The throne of Norway goes to Magnus's uncle and another rival of Edward the Confessor out of the way. Maybe we shouldn't be calling him the Confessor. Maybe he should be Edward the Lucky. But where did this leave Godwin?

Godwin really had his interest wrapped up in Viking rule, and Godwin had been playing a few games himself. He had been implemented in the murder of King Edward's brother Alfred, but he'd also been part of the manoeuvres that had brought Edward to power. So, never one to bet on a losing horse, and it seems that Edward is the man in charge, Godwine yet again turns around 180° and starts to try and ingratiate himself with Edward. He gives Edward gifts.

He pours on the flattery. He declares his loyalty and commitment to the one true king, King Edward. And he even manages to get Edward to marry his daughter Edith. So did Edward fall for this flattery? Did he just say bygones be bygones? Let's forget all about it. Yeah, I remember something happened about where all of a sudden my brother didn't have any eyes after you and him had a chat, and then he died. But let's just all forget all about that. Is that what happened, or was there something else? Was Edward doing a little bit of calculations for himself? You see, Edward had a bit of a problem. Edward was the son of a deposed king, didn't really have any power base in England itself.

He was reliant for support from people who were lending it to him because they thought it was in their interests. He kind of had got the throne by default. It's not that he was the best candidate, it's just all the other candidates were dead. So he needed some muscle, He needed some backing, and that was something that Godwin could provide for him. Godwin had allies and supporters in every town and village, in every Shire and county in England. Godwin was the essential man of the Kingdom. Now, Godwin couldn't remove Edward himself. He knew that he couldn't personally supplant the king, but Edward also knew that if Godwin did team up with a rival Clayman, they would have more than enough to push him out. So by allying with Godwin, he's able to strengthen his own position and also to neutralize a major threat. But by all accounts, that doesn't mean that Edward loved Godwin.

He still remembered. You're the guy who killed my brother. I remember that, don't you forget, because I'm not going to be forgetting anytime soon. And so even though he married Edith, the daughter of Godwine, it appears that it was very much for show. They never produced a child, maybe they never consummated the marriage. We will never know this. The threat from Scandinavia still hadn't gone away. In 1048, the coasts of Kent and Essex were attacked by Viking Raiders. Essex again was attacked in 1049. So Edward knew his position in his own Kingdom was weak. He was on the throne, but he was dependent upon the support of a man who manipulated him and who he hated. And he also knew that the Viking threat was still there. So Edward came up with a plan.

He was going to solve all of his problems at the same time, and there was one person who would be essential to Edward securing the future of his Kingdom, and that one person was William, the Duke of Normandy. Now in Normandy, William had been busy crushing his opposition. Guy of Burgundy had sealed himself up in his castle and William had besieged him for three years until eventually, starved and emaciated, the castle surrendered and William very generously sent him into exile.

With his position in Normandy now secure, William could turn his attention to the one thing that obsessed every dynasty in Europe succession. He needed to get married and he needed to have children and it was decided that William would marry Matilda. The daughter of the Duke of Flanders. But there was a problem. There was opposition to this match. You see Baldwin, the current Duke of Flanders, he was an enemy of Henry the Third, the then Holy Roman Emperor.

And the cousin of Henry the Third was Pope Leo. And there's no way that the emperor and the Pope are going to sign off on making one of their enemies even more powerful. But these are practical people. It's just business. Think Michael Corleone, Think Don Vito, Think Tony Soprano. And so, with enough glad handing, maybe a few brown paper bags, who's to say what's inside them? With enough groveling and ring kissing, Baldwin is able to win over Pope Leo and Henry the Third, and they agree to allow Matilda and William to marry in 10-50. But there's one place, however, that this news is not particularly welcome, and that is the court of King Edward the Confessor of England.

See, Edward had good relations with William, their family less so with the royal family of Flanders. Flanders had given refuge to Edward's enemies and also was a reliable port for Viking pirate fleets raiding the South Coast of England, as it happened in Kenton, Essex only a few years beforehand, to drop off their booty, sell their slaves and then sail merrily back to Scandinavia. So seeing a closer relationship with Normandy and Flanders wasn't something that necessarily made Edward the Confessor happy in 1051. Relationships between Edward and Godwin are reaching breaking point because Edward doesn't really have his own power base within England.

He doesn't really have any temporal secular power. Power rests with the aristocrats, with the nobles, with the Earls, and the most powerful of them all is his hated enemy, God wine. But there's one area where Edward actually does have influence, and that's appointments to senior positions within the Church within England. Now, this is before the Reformation, so it's not the Church of England. It's still the Catholic Church. But Edward can still wield some influence. In 1050, the Archbishop of Canterbury dies. God, Wine and church authorities decide to put forward one candidate, but Edwards, because this is one of the very few places where he can actually wield influence, decides over my dead body.

I'm having my own guy in that position. And so he instead refuses to appoint their candidate, and he appoints Robert of Jumais, a Norman Bishop, to be the Archbishop of Canterbury. In March 1051, Robert Jumiege is appointed to the position and Edward has another card up his sleeves. His relationship with Edith, the daughter of Godwin, hasn't produced any children. And so the question is starting to come up, who's going to be the King of England When Edward dies, Edward announces that he wants his successor to be none other than William, Duke of Normandy. This infuriates Godwin because Godwin is able to basically control the domestic affairs of England. But if William becomes the king, William's not an isolated figure like Edward is.

William comes with his own power base. William's able to summon troops and cavalry and ships from his dukedom across the ocean in Normandy. William is his own man. William's a man of action. William's not someone that Godwin's going to be able to push around. Things come to a head in 1051 when Edward is visited by his brother-in-law, Eustace of Bologna. While Eustace is in England. He's in the town of Dover, and there seems to have been some sort of event, a scuffle, a confrontation.

The long and short of it is that Eustace is insulted, incense that his relatives should be put upon. Edward orders the town to be punished exactly as half a canoe did with the town of Winchester. The town of Dover is in the Earldom of Kent. And who is the Earl of Kent? Godwine is This is Edward's opportunity. Edward orders Godwine to punish the people of Dover, knowing that of course, if he goes ahead with it, he'll be weakening his own power base. Godwine refuses, and Edward is able to say to the other Earls, the other aristocrats in England. I'm the king.

My family has been insulted. I have made a direct order of which we have a legal precedent for that. The people who are responsible for this insult must be punished. It is my legal right to give this order and to have my honour restored and one of my subordinates sworn an oath of loyalty to me to uphold my laws is refusing to live up to his oath of allegiance. Edward is able to summon the other Earls who bring their troops to support him. Finally, it is Edward's opportunity to put Godwin in his place.

That being said, I don't think there's a huge desire for a civil war in a country that's already been through so many revolutions and turmoil and invasion. The two sides meet. It's very clear that Edward has the backing of the vast majority of the Earls of England. Legally speaking, he's right. He has the law on his side. It's decided that instead of a pitch battle, there'll be a meeting. Godwin and King Edward meet outside of London, and Godwin knows that if it really comes down to it, if we're really going all the way here, the King's going to win, Godwin's going to lose, and Godwin's probably going to end up dead. So Godwin has been out manoeuvred here. He needs to do a bit of groveling. And so he says to Edward, what can I do to have the King's peace?

Edward has got him exactly where he wants him, and Edward looks him straight in the eye. The man who's manipulated him, who's controlled him, who's forced him into a marriage he didn't want. And finally he has him exactly where he wants him. And he says, you could have the King's peace. When my brother walks up out of his grave into this room and forgives you, then, then you could have the King's peace. And until then, never.

The king decides that he is going to break Godwin once and for all. He's going to end any threat that Godwin or his family will ever, ever impose upon him. He strips him of his land. He takes Godwin's daughter, the queen, his wife, and he imprisons her in a monastery. And he forces Godwin and his children and his family to flee the country. Completely defeated, Godwin sails for Flanders. It seems that Edward, against all the odds, has emerged victorious, triumphant.

He's seen off Canute Harold half a Canute Magnus now. He's seen off Godwin. He's top of the mountain. He's a real king, not simply a figurehead, not simply being controlled by someone he loathes. He's really in charge, and all he needed to do was to promise the throne to the person he wanted to be King Duke William. Soon after Godwin's banishment, William comes to visit Edward. We'll never know exactly what they talked about, but I'd say we can probably guess what would be at the forefront of William's mind. Once Upon a time, William, a bastard boy born to a peasant girl, was a child being manipulated in a tug of war for control of a small dukedom in the north of France. And soon enough, as soon as Edward the Confessor dies, he will be the king of a major European power. Edward knew that Godwin wasn't going to take this line down, so having confiscated Godwin's lands, he divvied them out. He started giving them as rewards and gifts to other Lords and Earls.

He wanted to use these lands to create his own power base and to therefore seal his position of power and authority. At Edward's very moment of triumph, he makes a major mistake. In March 1051, Edward abolishes a tax called the Geld. And the Geld was a tax specifically for paying for England's mercenary professional Navy. He does this in order to Curry favor, but he also does this because this mercenary Navy is comprised largely of people from Scandinavia.

And another word for people from Scandinavia is Vikings. And if there's one group of people who are pretty unpopular in 11th century England, it is Vikings. These Vikings are considered politically unreliable. If a Viking king should ever try and invade England again, are they going to fight for Edward the Confessor or are they going to switch sides? So he does it for two reasons, Curry popularity and get rid of a potential source of threat.

But he does it exactly the moment when Godwinson has been expelled to Flanders and Godwinson immediately begins to plot to return to England. And if there's one thing that Edward could use to foil that plot, it's a professional Navy. Godwinson begins to raise an army and begins to create a Navy, and his plan is to sail up the Thames and land just short of London, and then March on London and force the king to restore Godwinson to his position of power and authority.

But there's another major mistake that Edward has also made, this rivalry between God, Weinstein and Edward. It's a political rivalry that's largely contained within the halls of power of the English government. It doesn't really affect normal people in England. What is it that normal people, or even what is it that most aristocrats really care about? Low taxes? No Vikings. OK, if I'm getting those two things and I've got enough to eat, I'm happy.

I don't really care whether it's God Winesen who's really running the shots or all this Machiavellian power politics behind the scenes. It doesn't really make any difference to whether the Vikings are turning up and it doesn't really make any difference to whether I've got food on my table. So frankly, I couldn't care less. One thing that most English people could care less about, though, is the nationality of the next king. Edward the Confessor has just made a deal to hand the throne over to a foreign Duke who's also married to a foreign Countess, and they and their foreign children will be the English royal family from this point onwards. A lot of people in England not so crazy about that. Now everything's to himself.

Not a big deal that I've got rid of the professional Navy because I have my vassals, I have my aristocrats, my Earls, and if I ever need troops I can just ask them to raise them for me, because that's the way kings always did it in the Middle Ages. But as soon as Godwinson starts to make his move, as soon as he starts to sail up the South Coast of England, the fact that Edward doesn't have a professional Navy all of a sudden becomes a major problem.

The naval forces he does have are not very well LED, they're not very disciplined and they're not very well trained. They're not able to prevent him from sailing along the South Coast of England, and before Godwine gets to his destination, Edward's naval forces just disperse. And so Godwine lands just South of London. The king succeeds in scrambling together an army and the two sides meet. This time momentum is on the side of Godwine and he is able to force the king to negotiate.

Godwine names his terms. All lands are to be restored to his family. All Normans are to be dismissed from court. The Archbishop of Canterbury is to be removed from his position and a new Anglo-Saxon Archbishop is to replace him. And Oh yeah, that treaty where William the Duke of Normandy is to be the successor that is to be ripped up. The Norman advisors as well as the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert, make their way to Normandy and they tell Duke William the news.

His dream, the dream of a bastard boy born to a peasant girl of one day being king of one of the greatest, richest and most powerful nations in all of Europe has just been torn apart by the God wine family. And that will be the subject of our next episode of the Ancient Recent podcast series. Episodes of the Ancient Recent podcast are brought to you by worldofwhiskey.co.uk, the number one place for whiskey cask investment. Episodes are out every Friday and are available on YouTube, Spotify or Apple Podcasts.