Anglo-Saxon Monarchy and Why England Fell in 1066

Introduction: An Unstable Crown

At the time of the Norman Conquest, monarchy in England was an inherently unstable institution. Howarth's account of the throne in the years leading up to 1066 paints a picture of a curious institution: without fixed laws of succession, and with no more fixed governmental assembly than the witana gemot, the English Crown at this point in time seems more like a chieftaincy for a society in transition. Three aspects of the monarchy in 1066 — its lack of succession law, its closeness to the aristocracy, and its political fragility — made England a candidate for conquest.

The Absence of Succession Law

The lack of succession law is perhaps the most astonishing thing Howarth reveals about the English monarchy before the Battle of Hastings. As Edward the Confessor lay on his deathbed, Howarth tells us: "under the unwritten constitution, it was the duty of the assembly, in the name of the people, not only to advise the King in his lifetime, but to choose his successor when he died. It was not the custom yet, as it was in later ages, for the crown to pass to an heir by formal rules of succession… The choice was a matter for discussion and, if possible, unanimous agreement" (Howarth 29). Howarth acknowledges that some basic rules would be observed in this process: the new king was selected on the basis of character, royal lineage, Englishness, and with due respect toward the old king's preferred heir. Nevertheless, this process indicates something fundamentally unusual about Anglo-Saxon kingship.

As Frankforter notes, "medieval kings not only had to work at keeping the masses of their subjects in line, they had simultaneously to struggle to maintain authority over the men through whom they governed. The nobles who served in a king's government often preferred him to be weak. The less power he had, the more they could appropriate for themselves" (Frankforter 257–8). In some sense, however, the religious nature of medieval kingship — with the king being formally anointed by a bishop or archbishop in the coronation ceremony — made this kind of elective succession seem less unusual than it does today. After all, the Pope is a sort of monarch but is chosen by ballot; the difference is that the Pope is sworn to celibacy and thus never produces heirs.

The marriages of medieval English kings, by contrast, seem to have been dynastic insofar as they were intended to shore up internal regional alliances, not necessarily to produce heirs. Edward the Confessor had no children, and William the Conqueror was the great-nephew of Edward's mother Emma, who had been married to two different English kings — Ethelred and Canute. Moreover, Edward had spent a considerable portion of his life in Normandy, making it likely that the more continental notion of inheritance — deriving perhaps from Salic Law — was already on the minds of the Normans when it became clear that Edward would die without an heir.

The Power of the Aristocracy: Earl Godwin

The difficulty a king faced in managing his subject aristocracy is even more evident when we consider the ambiguous role played by Godwin in the period before the Norman Conquest. Howarth notes that Godwin's "genius was for power — winning, keeping, using and increasing it" (Howarth 32). Yet "with his mysteriously humble birth he could not hope to be chosen king himself" (Howarth 36). As a result, the flimsy sense of royal succession combined with the relative power of the aristocracy to create a situation in which Godwin essentially behaved like a cuckoo, placing his own eggs in the royal nest: "For Godwin, the choice of Edward as king had special advantages… he was a bachelor. So it seemed quite possible that every earl of England might be a Godwin, the queen might be a Godwin, the next king of England Godwin's grandson, and he himself the co-founder of a dynasty. Within three years of Edward's accession, Godwin was well on the way to achieving this unique position" (Howarth 36).

It is no wonder, then, that the Norman propaganda quoted by Howarth portrays Godwin as a sinister and wicked figure — it was, after all, Godwin's son Harold who succeeded Edward. If the dynastic imperative was going to assert itself regardless, then William the Conqueror must have believed he had a plausible claim, as the length of his subsequent dynasty confirms that he did.

Conclusion: Why the Conquest Succeeded

As a result of these particular features of the late Anglo-Saxon monarchy, it becomes somewhat clearer why the events of 1066 transpired as they did. Without a fixed law of hereditary succession, and without a Parliament, the death of the childless Edward the Confessor must have appeared something of a free-for-all, with a slightly foregone conclusion that one of Godwin's children would be named heir. Godwin himself represented the disproportionate strength of the aristocracy relative to the monarch. But this very dynamic made Harold look weak in the eyes of the Norman French, who could invoke Edward the Confessor's Norman background to construct a more plausible case for succession through bloodline than the upstart Godwin or his son Harold could muster.

Works Cited

Frankforter, Daniel and Spellman, William. The West, A Narrative History, Volume One: To 1660. 3rd Edition. Saddle River: Pearson, 2012. Print.

Howarth, David. 1066: The Year of the Conquest. New York: Penguin, 1981. Print.