Feb 232022
 

The date of 1066 is often presented to us as the end of Anglo-Saxon rule and the start of (Anglo-)Norman rule. Well that’s not wrong as such, but there is another way of looking at it. If you look at the kings both before and after The Conquest, there were more similarities than you would expect.

Harold Godwinson (the last crowned Anglo-Saxon king of England) was the son of Godwin who had been made the Earl of Wessex by Cnut the Great (a Dane) and Gytha Thorkelsdóttir a Danish noblewoman related by marriage to Cnut the Great. So he was more than a little Danish.

And if you look at his predecessor – Edward the Confessor, he himself was the daughter of Emma of Normandy who herself was descended from Danes with a French accent (i.e. the Normans). And Emma was a relative of the conqueror William.

So whilst it is quite right that 1066 was regarded as a significant date for the country with some very significant changes to law and language, in terms of the monarchs it wasn’t much of a change at all – they were pretty much all related to each other.

King Alfred Looking Down At The Runners