hi everybody a new voice for you today mr kenneth has handed over the reins to me mr taylor and i'm going to be taking you through the next few videos on our series of videos for the norman's history gcse course for ocr i'm going to be looking at unit 3 which is how did william take full control of england between 1067 and 1071. now william the conqueror is remembered as a very important king of england yet at the time in 1066 there were only about 10 000 normans who had joined him in the journey across to england and there were about a million at least of english people there for him to try to conquer so our course really is covering how he managed to take control of this foreign land was it by the use of force as you can see in the first picture there or did he find other ways of persuading the english people to follow him the first challenge to william as k as king was straight after the battle of hastings the next in line to the anglo-saxon throne was edgar the eighth ling which means a prince or prince of royal blood and the other most important earls of the land edwin and morkar now they didn't want william as king they decided that edgar should be the next king and william didn't like this at all he charged around the outskirts of london the surrounding area burning and destroying as he went this later becomes known as harrying the people of london were so scared they came out and bowed before william and accepted him as king so william gets crowned on christmas day 1066. the second of the three uprisings that we're going to be looking at today was at hereford as you can see there in august 1067 hereford and the marcher lands the marcherlands are the borders between england and wales now this rebellion was led by edric the wild a very war once powerful english thane who'd lost his land presumably he or perhaps he'd fought at hastings and had survived but had lost his land as a result he was fighting to get revenge on the normans he and his welsh friends burnt down hereford but when the norman army arrived it wasn't led by william he was back in normandy by this time it was led by his second in command fitz osborne edric and his friends vanished into the mountains now the next main uprising was in february 1068 and it was in exeter now this uprising was led by geetha godwin she is the mother of harold godwinson obviously had died at hastings but she still wants other members of her family to come back and rule england she's got grandsons harold's children who have fled to ireland who are prepared to meet up with her and try to take williams crown and she starts summoning her forces down at exeter william gets tipped off about this and very quickly organizes an army to ride to the south west they arrive at exeter much earlier than geetha is expecting harold's sons her grandsons have yet to arrive and she's not prepared william though is ready to negotiate he offers clemency which means he'll agree to forgive everybody inside who stands against him as long as they surrender now the people of exeter are divided some are supporting geetha some have heard of william's reputation and simply don't want to die it's that side that send out some negotiators to speak to william and they agree that they will not fight him and will surrender the town and he in his turn agrees to not tax them heavily to only tax them as much as they had been taxed in the past to ensure their honesty william insists that the negotiators hand over hostages which they do however when they return to the city geetha seems to take control and refuses to keep to the negotiated agreement an 18-day siege ensues with and fierce fighting it's so fierce indeed that william decides to take drastic action he takes one of the hostages out in front of the city walls and orders his soldiers to put the man's eyes out and blinding him so that the people of exeter are given a warning of what will happen if they don't surrender now as the siege starts to go in william's favor geetha and her followers eventually flee and the town is surrendered to william interestingly he keeps to his word he pardons the people left behind not geetha and her followers they are made outlaws and their lands are forfeit what this shows is a mixture it seems that william has used force and the threat of force and castle building to frighten the anglo-saxons into obeying him but he is also prepared to show a kinder side a more forgiving side when it suits him now this slide is just a summary of what i've just been saying so i'm not going to take you through it the only thing that it adds is there if you look at february 1068 in the bottom left you'll see that uh harold's sons actually did arrive to try and help keith but they were far too late they didn't get there till the summer and they tried to sort of cause problems around bristol and north somerset but the local people essentially just didn't want any of it and fought them off now you might remember that i said this unit was about the methods william used to take control we've seen so far him being particularly unpleasant such as gouging the eyes out of a hostage and hurrying all the land around london but what other methods did he use well he couldn't control the whole of the anglo-saxon population just with a few thousand normans he needed help of the anglo-saxon thanes and lords and earls themselves so he decided to try to buy their friendship by allowing them to keep their lands for example the the two most powerful girls edwin and morkar even though they'd stood up to him at london just before he was crowned he forgave them and allowed them to keep most of their lands and some of their power he even offered his daughter's hand in marriage to earl edwin now he didn't actually keep to this promise but he was certainly at one stage trying to be nice to these people who had stood against him another example was a lord called goss patrick an anglo-saxon thane who was allowed to take control of northumberland on william's behalf as long as he helped william control the english another example of him trying to be friendly if you like was when with him negotiating with the citizens of exeter he was trying to find a peaceful solution at first before uh it all went a bit pear-shaped because of geetha and even after he'd taken the city he could have told his troops to kill everyone but he didn't he pardoned the citizens of exeter he forgave them apart from geetha who'd run away he made sure her lands were taken away from her but the rest he kept his promises he said he wasn't going to charge him any more tax than they had before 1066 and he kept that promise the event which brings this chapter to a close is in easter 1068 william sends for his wife to join him in london and she is crowned queen he feels that now london is safe enough for her to come and join him and he's hoping that with his friendship of the english earls and the fact that edric and keitha have fled that he is now going to be able to settle down all seems well