Daily Medieval

When William the Conqueror died, he had already made his wishes clear about the division of his lands. His older son, Robert Curthose , bec...

Odo of Bayeux had it all. He was the half-brother of Duke William of Normandy (they shared a mother ), who made him a bishop. When William ...

When William of Normandy decided to conquer England, he planned carefully. This was going to be a big undertaking, and he needed help and a...

For Edgar Ætheling , landing in Scotland in 1068—whether by accident or design—was fortuitous. King Malcolm III took a liking to Edgar's...

William II, Duke of Normandy, had his forces ready to deploy to invade England. He believed he had a legitimate claim to the throne that H...

While William in Normandy was preparing to take over England after the death of Edward the Confessor and the coronation of Harold Godwinson...

With the change of reign in England in 1066, Duke William of Normandy saw his opportunity to become king of a country, believing that it wa...

When Edward the Confessor died on 5 January 1066, he supposedly made a deathbed statement committing his kingdom into the care of Harold God...

In 1051, when King Edward the Confessor was inviting more friendly Normans to join him in England, Duke William of Normandy visited. Accord...

William wanted to marry the daughter of Baldwin V of Flanders, Matilda, in 1049, but Pope Leo IX did not approve. William was illegitimate ...

Despite his youth when succeeding his father , despite the turmoil in Normandy, William worked hard to rule Normandy properly and make it a...

When Robert I of Normandy died in 1035, while returning from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the rule of Normandy passed to his seven- or eight...

Robert I of Normandy's father, Richard II , had made an alliance with England by marrying his sister Emma to King Æthelred . When Cnut ...

William of Poitiers (c.1020 - 1090) was born into a family of knights, and trained as a knight himself until his late 20s when he decided to...

Taking sole credit for a written work was not always as important as it is to some authors today.  William of Jumièges (c.1000 – post-1070) ...

Anselm of Canterbury has been referred to in this blog a few times by one of his other names, Anselm of Bec. He was born 1033/34 in the Uppe...

Pontefract Castle, where Richard II was imprisoned  by his cousin (although for a very short time), had been begun very shortly after Willi...

The feudal system could include military duties in exchange for tenancy on the land; forty days was a typical obligation. This might be simp...

The image to the left shows Alton Towers in 1880, designed by Augustus Pugin , near the town of Alton in Staffordshire (not the Alton where ...

We have looked at the influence on the language in England when it suffered an influx of Norman-French population and administration. This ...