Norman Conquest

Invasion and settlement of England by the Normans, following the victory of William (I) the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. The story of the conquest from the Norman point of view is told in the Bayeux Tapestry.

William, Duke of Normandy, claimed that the English throne had been promised to him by his maternal cousin Edward the Confessor (died January 1066), but the Witan (a council of high-ranking Anglo-Saxon advisors, churchmen, and landowners) elected Edward's brother-in-law Harold Godwinson as king. Harold II was killed at the Battle of Hastings in October 1066, and Edgar the Aetheling was immediately proclaimed king; he was never crowned, renouncing his claim in favour of William. There were several rebellions against William's rule, especially in the north, which he ruthlessly suppressed in the harrying of the north, when villages and crops were burned and livestock killed. Another notable rising was led by Hereward the Wake in the Isle of Ely. The construction of around 50 castles between 1066 and 1087 helped to establish Norman power in England.

Under Norman rule the English gradually lost their landed possessions and were excluded from administrative posts. In 1085 William ordered the compilation of the Domesday Book, a recorded survey of land and property in the English shires.