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• William had won the Battle of Hastings, but this did not mean everyone in England immediately supported him. He had to establish Norman control in England.
• William faced threats from Viking invaders, people in the north of England who supported Edgar, and potential uprisings from other parts of England. William brutally dealt with this opposition with the Harrying of the North.
• During his reign, William crushed rebellions, controlled Anglo-Saxon women, overhauled the Church and built a series of castles across England to establish control.

After defeating Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings, William of Normandy was crowned King of England on Christmas Day 1066. Taking the crown didn’t mean everyone in England supported him though, and he faced challenges in securing control of England. He moved quickly to deal with those who opposed him and provide protection for his soldiers and supporters.

William is remembered as a harsh king. During his reign, William crushed rebellions, limited the freedoms of Anglo-Saxon women, overhauled the Church and built a series of imposing castles across England to establish control. Looking back on his reign, he is said to have spoken the following words on his deathbed.

"I've persecuted the natives of England beyond all reason, whether gentle or simple. I have cruelly oppressed them and unjustly disinherited them, killed innumerable multitudes by famine or the sword and become the barbarous murderer of many thousands both young and old of that fine race of people."

A supposed account from William on his deathbed, recorded by Orderic years later, translated into Modern English.

They were written down many years after William’s death by a monk named Orderic who had mixed English and Norman heritage. Even if these weren’t William’s exact words, they give an insight into how people at the time thought he ruled England.

Many Anglo-Saxons opposed the Norman Conquest and William faced a series of rebellions. The biggest rebellion was in York in 1069. It was led by Edgar the Atheling, and he was joined by Danish and Scottish armies. They were posing a real challenge to William’s control of the north of England.

William defeated the rebellion, but he still didn't trust the rebels. He came to an agreement with the Danes, paying them to leave the country if they left without a fight. He was significantly less lenient with the English. In the north-east of England, from 1069 to 1070, William ordered villages to be burned to the ground, farm animals to be slaughtered, and crops to be destroyed. This is called the Harrying of the North. Thousands of people were killed and many more died of starvation over the next few years. Edgar survived the slaughter and fled to Scotland.

These events devastated the North and it took many years for some areas to recover. There is some uncertainty over how many people were killed, but the Domesday Book shows the population in the North decreased by 75%. People were either killed, died of starvation or moved away. William was sending out a clear message that he was now in control and he would do anything to stop opposition.

Women feature far less frequently in medieval sources than men, but this does not mean they were absent from William's reign. Some historians have argued that there was more equality between women and men before the Norman Conquest. Before 1066, Anglo-Saxon women were allowed to own and inherit land, but this changed after the Normans invaded.

Many Anglo-Saxon women inherited the land they lived on after their husbands and fathers died at the Battle of Hastings. William only allowed them to keep their land and home if they married a Norman. This put many women in a difficult position as forced marriages were designed to help the Normans control of England by taking ownership of their new wives’ land. The women’s previous husbands were seen as traitors for fighting against William, so if they refused to obey and marry a Norman, they would also be considered traitors.

Many women resisted the Norman Conquest and avoided forced marriages by seeking refuge in nunneries. Other women led a quiet rebellion by teaching their Anglo-Norman children English to keep the language alive, instead of the French spoken by the Normans. Resistance by Anglo-Saxon women can be viewed as a reason why the English language survived the Norman Conquest.

Faith was very important to William. He had been responsible for beginning the building of new monasteries in Normandy in the 1060s and was devout in his religious practice. He had always been a loyal follower of the Pope and placed great value on the Pope supporting his conquest of England.

Having control of the Church also meant having access to power, land and wealth. William waited until 1070 to make big changes to the Church, beginning with replacing English bishops with Norman ones.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Lanfranc, made the organisation of churches much tighter and made sure that the local priests were kept under the control of the central church bishops and archbishops.

The Normans also replaced the small, wooden Anglo-Saxon churches with much larger stone churches. They built huge cathedrals in major towns like London, Durham and York, which could hold hundreds of people. These cathedrals were decorated inside with impressive religious art. The scale of these buildings gave a clear message about the power of the Church in people’s lives, and the leaders of the Church were usually Norman.

William rewarded his loyal supporters with large areas of land in England, which helped him control the country. The Norman conquerors were unpopular with many people in England, so they quickly built motte-and-bailey castles all over the country to protect themselves and send out a warning to people that they were here to stay and keep control.

Castles were built in prominent positions, on high ground overlooking villages or towns. These imposing structures would have been the largest buildings people in medieval England had ever seen. William hoped the building of castles across England would intimidate people into accepting the Norman conquest. Castle design gradually changed over time. Castles would evolve and be improved with new designs, sometimes over hundreds of years. The main designs of castles were: motte-and-bailey, stone keep and concentric.

Motte-and-bailey castles were built from wood and the keep was constructed on top of a small hill, called a motte. At the bottom of the motte, was a bailey, which was an enclosed group of houses and farmland for soldiers and workers to live in. These castles were protected by a palisade, which was a tall wooden fence, and they usually had a ditch or moat around them. The Normans built these castles on the tops of hills so that they would look imposing and intimidating.

These castles weren’t built to last a long time, but they could be built quickly within a few days and then were gradually replaced with more elaborate and stronger stone castles over time. It is estimated over five hundred motte-and-bailey castles were built in the two years after the Norman conquest.

Stone keep castles were often built on the same site as motte-and-bailey castles. Wooden keeps were slowly replaced with imposing stone keeps, which were stronger and more difficult to attack. As motte-and-bailey castles were wooden, they could easily be burned down or would rot over time. Stone keeps didn’t have these problems. The Tower of London is a good example of a wooden castle that was replaced by this type of design.

However, due to their shape and weight, stone keep castles could be attacked by mining underneath them to cause a corner to collapse.

Concentric castles have two or more stone outer walls for protection. Over time, further defences were added to castles, such as stone walls, gatehouses and a barbican. Square towers started to be replaced with round ones. These gave a greater field of vision and were more difficult to attack by mining.