While much of the population probably accepted that the country was, in effect, under new management, not everyone welcomed the change. With the removal of much of the ruling elite, William the Conqueror and his Norman allies (in reality a mixture of men drawn from various regions of France and Flanders) took over the controls of a remarkably centralised Anglo-Saxon state.īut it would be wrong to think that the Norman Conquest ended there. This hard-fought battle resulted in the deaths of King Harold and a large portion of the English aristocracy.
Challenges to William’s ruleĪdmittedly, in the history of medieval military encounters, the Battle of Hastings was unusually decisive. While an interesting piece of historical detective work in its own right, the potential identification of this site is a reminder that the Norman Conquest took years, not days. Historical sources tell us that the 1069 encounter took place at the mouth of the River Taw in North Devon and, by combining this with scientific data, Arnold has narrowed down the location to a spot between Appledore and Northam. Writer Nick Arnold claims to have identified the site of a battle in 1069 which marked the last major attempt of Godwine and Edmund, the sons of the Anglo-Saxon king Harold Godwinson, to regain power following their father’s defeat at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. In fact William the Conqueror faced repeated threats to his power from both inside and outside the kingdom during his reign. The possible discovery of the site of a 1069 “sequel” to the Battle of Hastings is a reminder that the Norman Conquest wasn’t just a case of 1066 and all that.
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