[Music] hi last lesson we were looking at the first uprisings of 1066 to 1068 and this lesson we should be looking at the rebellions in the north starting in 1068 going up to 1070. now the key question of course is how did william take full control of england in those first few years after he became king whether he just used force or whether he used more pleasant methods of taking control just a recap of last lesson so those are the early uprisings see edgar led the resistance even before william was crowned then after that there was edrick the wild at hereford and geetha down in exeter but by easter 1068 william felt safe enough to get his wife to come over from normandy to join him he felt he had just about befriended the english lords enough that it was all going to calm down but william had got it wrong the anglo-saxons kept fighting and so all we need to look at are the reasons for the english to rebel against william the first reason is revenge quite simply revenge for the deaths at the battle of hastings for the destruction from the harrying around london straight after hastings so many families were angry with the treatment they'd received the second reason is loss of land and power now if the the anglo-saxons that have fought against william at hastings had had their land confiscated as had githa after her resistance at exeter but for most of the others they were allowed to keep some land but not exactly the same amount for example the brothers earls edwin and morkar were allowed to keep some land but they weren't as powerful as before and they were angry about this also of course william had promised earl edwin william's daughter's hand in marriage which had never come to pass so that was another reason giving edwin a source of anger he certainly wasn't being given the power and status that william had promised the next reason is high taxation now of course the english paid tax before the normans arrived but william had to pay for his invasion somehow he had to pay for all the mercenary soldiers that he'd employed and the best way of doing this that he could see was increasing taxes on the english final reason for rebelling against william is just simple dislike for the new style of of the people ruling the country obviously they spoke a different language but also their methods were different this use of castles uh castle building everywhere was a shock to the anglo-saxons they became a symbol of what everything that the anglo-saxons hated about the normans they were the basis for norman knights to ride out and harry and destroy the local area before um riding back to hide behind their high castle walls so another reason for the english to rebel so today we're looking at the rebellions in the north of 1068 1069 and going into 1070. now the first was in the summer of 1068. all of them take place up in the north of england now the first one is jointly led by edgar the eighth ling who seems to have been helped by the scottish king malcolm iii but also edwin and morkar now edgar wants to have the crown on his head but edwin and morkar aren't quite so bothered who's on the throne they just want to get their proper lands and power back so they're really trying to put pressure on william to stick to his promises and give them more land and perhaps even william's daughter's hand in marriage which had already been promised the northern lords people like goss patrick were also joining in mainly to support edgar's attempt to retake the throne now william rush is up with an army burning and pillaging as he goes massive destruction building castles indeed that builds a castle in york and the edgar flees back up to scotland edwin and walker submit to william put themselves upon his mercy william hoped that was enough but it wasn't the next year february 1069 edgar the eighth link's back this time of course once again with the northern lord's support and with help from the king of scotland but edwin and mork are absent this time it seems that they have learned their lesson once again william rushes north he builds another castle in york so this is york's second castle and uses a massive violence to try to bring the northern rebels to heal the leaders once again manage to flee to scotland we take a brief move away from the north to go back to the south west to add to williams woes harold's son's return if you remember them they had actually belatedly tried to attack north somerset and bristol and they had failed the local people had uh pushed them back and they'd fled back to ireland well they're back again they know this is a good time to attack because william's busy in the north of england but williams appointed a very capable commander brian of brittany and he with the help of anglo-saxon armies fights harold's sons and they return to ireland then in september the north goes up in flames again edgar the eighth ling's back and this time he's got a danish army sometimes when we say the danes we really mean the vikings now the danish king was called svane and this army is led by his brother asbjorn and the northern lords like goss patrick are up in arms again and and they really want to knock william off his throne so just when william thought it could not get any worse there is another uprising it's edric the wild is back in the marcher lands once again on top of this there's more uprisings in the south west people attacking the walls of exeter and this is the low point for william he's at his weakest many of his soldiers are deserting running back to normandy this isn't what they signed up for they thought it was going to be a much easier time of conquering england than this and williams crown is under threat he has a big decision to make how is he once and for all going to deal with the rebels well he does what you'd expect extreme violence but this time he takes it up a level in each case his army are extremely ruthless and violent with the way they deal with the rebels he increases his castle building he built one castle in york the first time he had to go up north and there's another one the second time he went up north the danes in fact burnt them down but it's not just violence he knows that the danes famously are very happy to go back to denmark if they're paid and he paid them off they went home so there's an example of him using something other than violence and then the final thing is this strange phrase the harrying of the north now this is one of the most infamous or terrible events that's happened on english soil certainly with the way that english people were massacred at the hands of their own king now william carries out an intentional policy of starvation using starvation to kill his own people if you read through this source on the right you can see a bit of more detail about it but the key is he didn't just kill the rebels he killed everyone who had helped them but also he tried to destroy all their food not just the food for that summer but the or or the following winter but the actual crops by putting salt in the soil to stop crops growing for the next year now without a harvest people would starve and it's believed that at least a hundred thousand people died in this what has become known as the harrying of the north now when you think the population was only a little over a million then it shows what a massive proportion of the population suffered as a result of the hurrying of the north