Sunday 20 September 2009

The Harrying of the North

On this day….940 years ago, the army of Svein Estrithson, King of Denmark, with the support of English rebels against William the Conqueror, took the city of York. William had won his famous victory at Hastings just three years before, and his hold on the crown was less than secure.

Now he also faced rebellions in Dorset, Somerset, Staffordshire and Cheshire. Having crushed the rising in the West Country, he turned north. At Nottingham, he learned about the occupation of York, and began his advance on the city, devastating the countryside as he went, leaving no house standing and sparing no man his cavalry could outrun.

Just before Christmas, he reached York and burned it to the ground. Then he paid the Danes to go home and embarked on what became known as the Harrying of the North –the systematic destruction of a huge part of his new realm. The damage was still apparent when the Domesday Book was compiled 17 years later, with scores of villages left uninhabited.

Even some Normans were disturbed, with one monk complaining it amounted to “wholesale massacre” with William destroying “both the bad and the good in one common ruin.” For more details, see A Disastrous History of Britain.

29 comments:

  1. qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm

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  2. considering time and seasonality could it have been one of the largest genocides in history?

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  3. It was certainly one of the worst in British history. I've seen estimates that up to 100,000 were killed, though, the number of victims is unlikely to reach the level of Pol Pot's Cambodia mass murders when perhaps a quarter of the population were killed.

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  4. lots of people died

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  5. INTRESTING HISTORY

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  6. You'll find quite a bit about it in the TV series shown by the BBC - 'The Tudors'

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  7. HISTORY LEGEND11 May 2011 at 18:08

    This was very good, but i still need to know ore detail!

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  8. See my book - A Disastrous History of Britain by John Withington p40-43

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  9. Sorry, that should be P13, though pages 40-43 are interesting too - they tell you about the Pilgrimage of Grace

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  10. Where can I find details of how many Yorkshire folk survived the harrying and the ethnic make up of those who repopulated Yorkshire? Were the majority of Yorkshire folk still mainly of Angle and Norse decent when Yorkshire was eventually repopulated?
    Thanks,
    Nigel Sollitt

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  11. thank you you have helped me with my essay

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  12. come in come in sargent william.

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  13. Nigel Sollitt, did you discover anything on overall casualty figures and ethnic make-up of replacements? Would be very interested to hear if you did.

    Anonymous, glad it helped with your essay.

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  14. Now he also faced rebellions in Dorset, Somerset, Staffordshire and Cheshire. Having crushed the rising in the West Country, he turned north. At Nottingham, he learned about the occupation of York, and began his advance on the city, devastating the countryside as he went, leaving no house standing and sparing no man his cavalry could outrun

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  15. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

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  16. I dont get it

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  17. :p :) ;D :D ;)

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  18. Psychopaths...always among us.

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  19. not much has changed in a thousand years

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  20. very interesting in never knew that !!

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  21. see my book 'A Disastrous History of Britain' for more

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