Talk:Harrying of the North

Problems
There are a whole lot of problems with this as it stands. It's obviously historically distorted by a strong point of view. I know different cultures at that time had different attitudes to kingship, with Scandinavians often having some degree of choice when it came to a succession, but William had some right to believe he was Edward the Confessor's legal heir and therefore the rightful ruler of the whole of England. The idea that Harold Hardrada brought an army over to provide security for people in the north of England is laughable - he wanted the throne. --Andrew Norman 09:12, 11 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Firstly, Harold Hardrada was before the Battle of Hastings, he was not the Danish king (or nobleman) who attempted an invasion.


 * The main point behind the article, as I read it, is that William's claim to the throne was not supported by the people of England, and that in the north they simply accepted (or would have done, had they the chance) the kingship of a Dane. The main grounds for having a king at that time was to provide physical protection. William clearly took the legalistic view you have taken, thought himself the only rightful heir, and moved to 'quell' the 'rebellion'. Culturally, the northeners were only doing what they had always done - accepting or rejecting a king (see the Kingdom of York for more of the same).

From the article:
 * The new king brought with him an army

Which new king? AxelBoldt 18:00, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Here is a odd point in the article: their kings members of the House of Munsö of Sweden or the Fairhair Dynasty of Norway, or the Anglo-Saxon House of Wessex - the first one, no Swedish claim for England has ever been establish. The writer must be thinking about the Danish king (so many Nordic nations, hard to keep 'em apart I guess) - Finn Bjo --85.165.99.39 00:52, 15 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I really do have a problem with persons talking of The People of England [ or of France, or of China ] as if they were one homogenous clear-sighted wise mass, able to collectively decide and direct.  For some reason the decisions ascribed are always those the writer would prescribe. Claverhouse (talk) 16:33, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

How many harrys?
Reading I've done, (the History of Ilkley by Collier) suggests there were two Harryings, with about 10 years between them. Can anyone comment on that assertion? thanks --Tagishsimon (talk) 16:22, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

There was annother revolt in 1075 involving Hereford, Northumbria and Norfolk. I believe this was the event in which Countess Edith betrayed her husband to the king and became one of the first female land owners in England?Narson 15:20, 25 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Which sounds a bit like Revolt of the Earls ... but it my recollection tallies with your "betrayed her husband to the king and became one of the first female land owners in England", which does not seem to be covered by that article's "Meanwhile the Countess held out in Norwich until she obtained terms for herself and her followers, who were deprived of their lands, but were allowed forty days to leave the realm. Thereupon the Countess retired to her estate in Brittany, where she was rejoined by her husband". I'm sure there's an article on her somewhere in wikipedia... the Revolt of the Earls doesn't sound much like a harrying, more your normal series of battles. --15:36, 25 September 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tagishsimon (talk • contribs)


 * Well, I acctually live in what was Countess Edith's land in Northamptonshire or so I believe... I suspect the problem is that for so many years many chronicles and chroniclers were considered 'unreliable' that we have ended up with quite a few versions of that period of English history. I mean, for the longest time the Anglo Saxon Chronicle was considered unreliable. Blasted historians. They shouldn't revert more than 3 times in a 24 decade period >.< Narson 17:31, 25 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Ooops. Judith, not Edith. Damn, my memory is failing in my old age. Narson 19:51, 5 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, there was a second (some say even worse) Harrying in 1080, conducted by Bishop Odo of Bayeux (who also was directly responsible for much of the damage in 1069-1070). Orderic Vitalis describes Odo as one of the principal oppressors of the English people, so the English must have been relieved when he was imprisoned in 1082, and concerned when in September 1087 the Conqueror on his death-bed ordered Odo's release. Fortunately, Odo rebelled against William II in early 1088 and was defeated - in large measure by the English people, who thus exacted some revenge for 1066, 1069, 1070 and 1080. Zoetropo (talk) 06:45, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

A question
I'm not a historian and just read this page out of curiosity. But was very surprised to see the link between The Harrying and the present day relative poverty of the North. Is that credible? 80.229.137.151


 * I'm not sure that this is entirely accurate. The north's period of greatest began to wane much earlier, with the barbarian raids of the Vikings who sacked Lindisfarne. Wessex in the south became most dominant after that. The Harrying of the North would have had a big effect, certainly but the Normans did a lot of rebuilding afterwards. I think an accumilation of continuous Scottish raids in the Middle Ages and then Herny VIII's destruction of the monastries moving towards to a far more centralised, London dominated state would have probably been the biggest cause of the north being poorer. In any case there are areas of relative prosperity in the north today, I think most sane people would prefer to live in Harrogate than Brixton. - Yorkshirian (talk) 14:05, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Need a map!
As a non-British fellow, the clarity of this article & event would be vastly improved if a map was provided herein! 218.25.32.210 (talk) 03:09, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I've added a generic contemporary north of england map. We could do with a better one, but I don't hold out much hope ... not sure how much information there is to identify the geography of the harrying. --Tagishsimon (talk) 16:41, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

The map is of the whole north of England but the harrying was only on the eastern side of the country. Needs a map showing the modern counties of Yorkshire, Durham and Northumberland. Cassandrathesceptic (talk) 08:33, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

While we're on the subject, I found this phrase: "Yorkshire and the North Riding" - presumably should be "The North Riding of Yorkshire". Herbgold (talk) 16:12, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Death toll
the article says the death toll is believed to be over 100,000 but in the article World population estimates about the estimated world population the numbers are around 400.000 for this time and although those numbers are just guesses the percentage seems not plausible. Eeignet (talk) 11:20, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I think that you meant that estimates for the world population at that time was about 400,000,000? The Harrying of the North article states that the contemporary chronicler Orderic Vitalis said that the death toll was over 100,000, however Orderic was writing his account in Normandy and his information was largely derived from William of Poitiers Gesta Guillelmi. Other chroniclers such as William of Malmesbury described the destruction of the north from, apparently, first hand experience. The Domesday Book provides a fairly accurate survey of the people on the land, figures then have to be estimated for the women and children as well as the town dwellers, this comes out at about 2.25M ( see Bartlett. "England Under the Norman and Angevin kings" for more detail). Domesday compares the holdings under Edward the Confessor to the holdings in 1086, thus the Yorkshire Domesday is a record of the extent of waste due to the punitive measures taken during the winter of 1069-70 and enables a reasonably accurate figure to be extrapulated.Wilfridselsey (talk) 13:15, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
 * my bad Eeignet (talk) 21:40, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

NPOV - genocide?
There are sources calling this genocide, but not all academics agree. Mark Hagger argues that ravaging territory was not unusual - he quotes Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus who was still the main 'go to' author for war in Williams time, "'the main and principal point in war is to secure plenty of provisions for oneself, and to destroy the enemy by famine'. Hardly surprising, then, that the destruction of the enemy's resources was the aim of Caesar during the Gallic wars, of Charlemagne when lighting against the Saxons, of William the Conqueror in Maine and in both the north and south of England, and of the English in France during the Hundred Years' War. Nor is it clear that the harrying of the north represents an unusually extensive and intensive example of such destruction. The war fought between Anjou and Blois over the Vendomois in the eleventh century left the area ravaged and desolate." ..."This, then, was not a form of war that William aimed only against the north. It was not genocide, as some have claimed. And although William might have been, in the words of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 'stern beyond measure to those who opposed his will', he was no 'war criminal. We should not impose our own standards of morality on William, or on any other medieval person, for our standards were not theirs, and what William did was not in contravention of the standards of his own day." - which seems reasonable. Dougweller (talk) 15:21, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

The article also uses a large quote from Orderic which I think is WP:UNDUE. Richard Huscroft writs: "Orderic's assessment of the number of people who died as a result of William's conduct in the north is surely exaggerated. If true it would mean that something approaching five per cent of England's population died in the winter of 1069-70. It is a pardonable overestimate, however, and reveals the shock contemporaries felt at what can only be described as William's terror tactics.

"There has been much debate about the true extent of the destruction caused by the Harrying of the North, and about its long-term effects on the lands and people of northern England. In Domesday Book, hundreds of vills in Yorkshire were described as 'waste', with no population or value. The conventional wisdom has tended to hold that these areas were devastated during the events of 1069-70.13 It is impossible to be sure that this was the case, however, and more recently it has been argued that major destruction was probably confined to the more remote upland areas of northern England and that only a relatively limited area in Yorkshire was affected. Lands in Yorkshire might later have been described as 'waste' simply because they were worthless. Perhaps they had been ravaged by a ferocious army; but they may have lacked value for other reasons, too. Further questions have been raised about the capacity of William's army, working in winter and for only three months, to inflict the sort of damage traditionally associated with the Harrying." In War and Chivalry: The Conduct and Perception of War in England and Normandy by Matthew Strickland Strickland writes: "Chroniclers were notoriously prone to hyperbole, as Orderic's estimation of 100,000 fatalities incurred during the 'harrying of the North* amply demonstrates. Not only might the severity of local conditions first be exaggerated, but these in turn might then be inflated into broad generalities."

But you wouldn't know this from reading the article until you get down to the bottom of the section titled "The Harrying". The lead doesn't give the reader any hint this might be hyperbole.

We also have "The wasting of the countryside must have continued for some time, as in 1086 the Domesday Book entries indicate wasteas est or hoc est vast (it is wasted) for estate after estate". That's cited to Muir's book The Yorkshire Countryside and Muir continues "There are, however, considerable problems of interpretation here. 'Waste' was a term that was sometimes applied to commons, and it is not clear whether it was used in Domesday to describe formerly productive land that had gone out of cultivation. Wightman believed that 'waste' in Domesday applied not only to abandoned or worthless land, but was also used to denote manors that had been amalgamated or were in disputed ownership. However, Harrison and Roberts, two leading authorities in northern landscape history, arc quite specific; with regard to the Pickering estate they write: 'One thing is, however, chillingly clear: in 1086 the estate was producing only a fraction of the revenue it had generated in 1066, and the phrase "The rest (is) waste" provides a clear explanation: waste was land which had been devastated.' When one maps the pattern of wasted vills and manors, it seems that only the loftiest parts of the Pennines, the plateaux of the North York Moors, and much of Holderness escaped severe devastation, while the worst of the wasting seems to have taken place in the Bsnnine foothills and the Dales." A bit before this he says "Palliser noted that Ordericus was born in 1075 near Evesham and could have been writing in 1125, some 55 years after the events described, and that his figure of 100,000 victims was used in a rhetorical sense - he also attributed the massively inflated figure of 60,000 knights to William." and notes that some of the undoubted devasatation may have been done by Scottish raiders. Dougweller (talk) 15:46, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Agreed Johnbod (talk) 15:56, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
 * This is on my list of things to tackle at some point. It and Revolt of the Earls and some bios of leading actors in the Norman Conquest ... Ealdgyth - Talk 18:09, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

I think that it was me that used the term 'genocide' in the article, so I thought that I would give you my reasoning behind it. Having looked at the various sources, some that are mentioned above, I thought on balance it should be called an ACT of genocide, which is slightly more ambiguous than just 'genocide'. I think that this is perfectly valid, as I was looking at Williams intent, what was he trying to do? He was fed up with the constant insurgency in the north and wanted to put an end to it. He had faced rebellions in other parts of the country and had dealt with them, but for some reason his action in the north was far more brutal. Most historians seem to agree that the 100,000 dead was an inflated number, the number comes from Orderic Vitalis who was based in Normandy and relied on third parties for his estimate. However, most historians agree that William intent was to utterly destroy the North and it's people - the definition of which is genocide. Wilfridselsey (talk) 11:16, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
 * But I do not see any serious historian using "genocide" any more though. Huscroft in Norman Conquest p. 145 says "It is more likely, however, that in late 1069, the king's intention was to make as much of northern England as uninhabitable as he could, at least temporarily, so as to 'make it impossible for the North to revolt after his departure'." (Huscroft is quoting either Dalton Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship p. 24 or Kappell The Norman Conquest of the North p. 117 - he's not clear which work the quotation is from). Clanchy says "This led to the notorious 'Harrying of the North', when King William in the winter of 1069-1070 systematically burned the countryside and destroyed villages so that Danish or Norwegian fleets in future would find nothing to live off. How permanent such damage was and whether the numerous deaths of men and livestock from disease were directly caused by William's policy are matters for debate." (p. 30 England and its Rulers) Barlow in Feudal Kingdom of England (4th ed. pp. 90-91) never uses the word genocide either - "William undertook the repression of the northern rebellion." and "On his way back to meet the Danes he learned that they had re-entered York, so he advanced from Nottingham on the northern capital, and by laying waste the surrounding areas drove the invader out. Devastation and depopulation were the traditional methods chosen by the king to deny the countryside to the Danes and to punish a rebellious people. After Christmas William extended his ravagin up to Durham and as far as the Tees." Chibnall (Anglo-Norman England pp. 18-19) says "By Christmas he (William) had crushed rebels at Stafford and in Yorkshire and had destroyed the Danish forces; he then took terrible punitive measure by ravaging large areas of the north. This was a deliberate scorched earth policy; seed corn was destoyed, houses burnt, and animals slaughtered. It was an act of cruelty that was never forgiven, and whose consequences were felt far beyond Yorkshire; the Evesham chronicler remembered destitute and uprooted fugitive seeking alms at his monastery some years later." Stenton (Anglo-Saxon England p. 605 3rd ed.) "But the operations of 1069-1070 were distinguished from ordinary warfare by a deliberate attempt to ruin the population of the affected districts. From the eleventh century onwards historians have noted the sustained ferocity with which the king set his men to destroy the means of life in northern England. The generalities are abundantly borne out by the evidence of Domesday Book, which shows that within the coutnry ravaged at this time vast areas were still derelict after seveteen years." and "The object of the harrying was to secure that neither Mercia nor Northumbria should ever revolt again. It was the most terrible visitiation that had ever fallen on any large part of England since the Danish wars of Alfred's time." Even Peter Rex in The English Resistance (pp. 91-103) never uses the word genocide, and Rex is definitely sympathetic to the English rebels. Williams in English and the Norman Conquest p. 40 says "The Harrying of the North is perhaps the best-known incident of William I's reign after the battle of Hastings itself. It recieved almost universal condemnation, at the time and later, but its actual effects are difficult to gauge. Obviously (one would suppose) the destruction of the native aristocracy of the north pave the way for the Norman settlement..." and p. 41 "As for the devastation of Yorkshire and the lands of Durham, its long term effects are hard to assess." I think it's pretty clear that most historians would not use the word genocide at all for this event. Destruction, harrying, ravaging, yes. But it doesn't appear that it was a genocide or that it's called such by historians. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:13, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I was quoting from Kapelle. Wilfridselsey (talk) 16:04, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I think it would be better to actually quote him rather than state in Wikipedia's words that it was a genocide. It's pretty clear that many other historians do not use that word to describe the event... so it's probably not a widely held opinion. It's also worth noting that Kapelle calls it "genocide" in the introduction (in fact the very first page of his work) but in the fuller treatment later on in the work (pp. 117-119) he does not describe it as genocide - he calls it "ghastly" and states that William's efforts ended in "destroying native society in Yorkshire and by severely damaging it in Durham". As additional evidence - see Aird's St Cuthbert and the Normans p. 76 where Aird states "In recent years, increasing scepticism among historians dealing with the 'harrying of the north' has served to modify views of the extent and, indeed, the thoroughness of the devastation." Dalton in Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship p. 23 says "Hundreds of vills distributed throughout Yorkshire were described in Domesday BOok as having no population, resources or values; and many of these were termed 'waste'. Although a number of historians have argued that many (or most) of these vills had been devasted by the Conqueror's armies or those of the Scots and Danes, particularly during the harrying of the north in the winter of 1069-70, there are grounds for doubting their conclusions, and for disposing of the myth that the Noramn devastation was almost total." I'm not saying Kapelle's view isn't noteworthy and shouldn't be presented - but it should be attributed to him and it probably should be the more complete view put forth in the body of his work, not the one liner from the introduction. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:32, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Kapelle is already cited, and if you look more at Genocide studies rather than Anglo/ Norman history you will see that there are quite a few references in connection with the conquest. I am not sure that it is worthwhile discussing any of the other points that you make as I pretty much agree with them, there is quite a useful analysis of the Domesday references to waste  here. I agree also with your proposed solution, we could simply say: William's strategy, implemented during the winter of 1069-1070 (he spent Christmas 1069 in York), is what some have described as an act of genocide that became known as the Harrying of the North and probably move the Kapelle citation to the act of genocide clause. What do you think? Wilfridselsey (talk) 17:53, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Ealdgyth suggests that Genocide is probably not a widely held view, Siobhan Brownlie in Memory and Myths of the Norman Conquest pp. 123-124 covers the modern attitudes to the Norman Conquest.  Her source material includes 807 articles collected from ten British newspapers. A quantitative survey for which a representative sample of 2000 UK residents was questioned and a  study of contemporary books and film material, as well as medieval chronicles for comparative purposes. She compares then  rationalizes or puts into context modern attitudes, which generally seem to be very negative about the Norman conquest, not necessarily for the right reasons.
 * As far as the term waste (Latin: vasta) is concerned manors described as waste paid no tax. The Domesday Book records large numbers of such manors, the great majority of which had no recorded value or human or animal resources. If these manors were, in fact, untaxed because they were uninhabited and uncultivated, then the destruction by the Harrying was huge. Thomas suggests that many historians cannot credit that mediaeval armies could wreak such destruction and have sought alternative explanations of the term waste (Thomas. The Norman Conquest: England After William the Conqueror pp.95-96). It has been variously argued that waste signified manorial re-organisation, some form of tax break, or merely a confession of ignorance by the Domesday commissioners when unable to determine details of population and other manorial resources.  The distribution of waste both before and after the Conquest matches almost exactly the areas known to have been those of greatest military activity in those periods; and all the chronicle sources agree upon the savagery of the punishment inflicted on Yorkshire and adjacent counties after the rebellion of 1069.  Probably the most (in)famous was that of Ordericus Vitalis, though a late source,  based his account on a lost portion of the contemporary biography of the Conqueror by William of Poitiers. Ordericus felt so strongly about the evil of what William had done that he told the story twice. On the first occasion, he reported: He cut down many in his vengeance; destroyed the lairs of others; harried the land, and burnt homes to ashes. Nowhere else had William shown such cruelty ... In his anger he commanded that all crops and herds, chattels and food of every kind should be brought together and burned to ashes with consuming fire, so that the whole region north of the Humber might be stripped of all means of sustenance. In consequence so serious a scarcity was felt in England, and so terrible a famine fell upon the humble and defenceless populace, that more than 100,000 Christian folk of both sexes, young and old, perished of hunger (Ecclesiastical history, ed. Marjorie Chibnall, vol. 2, pp 230-33) The second story portrayed the Conqueror on his death-bed, haunted by the memory of his savagery: I ... caused the death of thousands by starvation and war, especially in Yorkshire ... In a mad fury I descended on the English of the North like a raging lion, and ordered that their homes and crops and all their equipment and furnishings should be burnt at once and their great flocks and herds of sheep and cattle slaughtered everywhere. So I chastised a great multitude of men and women with the lash of starvation and, alas! was the cruel murderer of many thousands, both young and old (Ecclesiastical history, vol. 4, pp 94-95) In Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, William of Malmesbury suggests that what had not been destroyed by the Danes, William the Conqueror destroyed. The distribution of waste in Yorkshire in 1086 tells the same story. Sixteen years after the harrying, Yorkshire may still have contained only 25% of the population and plough teams of 1066, some 80,000 oxen and 150,000 people fewer than had been there on the day that King Edward 'was alive and dead'.(Strickland. War and Domesday Waste in Armies, Chivalry and Warfare in Medieval Britain and France. p.273) Kapelle suggest that the  Norman Conquest of the North has never been adequately explained even though the resistance of the northerners was one of the most dramatic episodes of the Conquest. What are the reasons for this? He claims that "It may be merely a side effect of the conviction that the South was the more important part of England. Alternatively, northern history threatens to complicate our picture of the Conquest. A close study of the northern resistance to William the Conqueror inevitably discloses that he made at least two blunders in dealing with the North and that he rescued himself from the results of these mistakes by committing genocide. Emphasis on these events fits poorly into the current appraisal of the Norman impact on England. The behaviour of the northerners in the face of the Conquest may also reveal a distressing exception to the precocious unity of Anglo-Saxon England. The idea of backwoods northerners being so impertinent as not to appreciate the splendid unity offered them by the West Saxon kings with their shires, fyrd, and Danegeld is undoubtedly as unpalatable to some historians as the picture of William the Bastard making mistakes is to others."(Kapelle, The Norman Conquest of the North: The Region and Its Transformation, 1000-1135 p. 3) Henry of Huntingdon in his History of the English Peoples, suggest that the Normans were chosen to destroy the sinful English people.(Bloxham. The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies. p 290)Wilfridselsey (talk) 16:05, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
 * All those quotes from Orderic and stuff do not actually help decide the issue though - we don't use primary sources to decide this sort of content on wikipedia. We aren't historians, we can't interpret primary sources. We relay what the secondary sources (historians) say. Genocide is a loaded term, and it's not used in the sources I pointed out above. If we use such a word, we need to attribute it, not just set it out baldly as if all historians use the word. They don't. A good number may, but not all. When you use the word without qualification you are basically saying that it's not a controversial view and that all the secondary sources agree. They clearly do not. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:18, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I am not entirely sure that Orderic technically is a primary source as he was not contemporary with events and he based his account largely on William of Poitiers. In any case most historians seem to agree that the Orderic account was rhetorical at best and biased at worst. You are right though, genocide is a loaded term and it should be qualified and we already have the Kapelle reference for it. Other historians who do not go that far I would suggest use the 'if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck.. etc', they may not use the actual word but they do define it by describing it as mass murder for example.  Hugh Thomas describes the downplaying of the violence involved, in the Harrying, as an uncoordinated trend to a kinder, gentler Middle Ages! Anyway, as I said we can get round the genocide issue by saying that some have described it as genocide. If William was responsible for 100,000 deaths then it would be genocide, but some historians have suggested that the deaths and migration of people was partly due to Danish and Scottish raiders/ invaders. I already have talked about the waste issue. The fact is that Domesday does not tell us why the land is waste and why 150,000 people are displaced it just reports it. The main body of the article does tell us about some of the alternative views particularly in the Harrying section, I do think the lede needs some attention as it is supposed to reflect what is in the main body. I would suggest that although there are some historians who do dissent from the traditional most do not, so although we should reflect the alternative view, we need to keep it in perspective.  Wilfridselsey (talk) 20:20, 1 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I should also say that the historians who dissent from the traditional view, do not deny that the harrying of the north country happened, rather that the scale of the destruction was so large that it was not possible for William's relatively small army to be able to wreak so much havoc on their own, thus they have developed several hypotheses to explain this discrepancy. You might want to check this from the historian Dan Snow to provide some incite to modern thinking on the subject. Wilfridselsey (talk) 09:08, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I have done a bit of checking on Hagger's assertion. He was directly contradicting Peter Rex's conclusion,  in his book The English Resistance: The Underground War Against the Normans, that the Harrying was genocide. Other historians have agreed that the tactics used by William were entirely in keeping with those of the time, however the scale of destruction was excessive  Morris says "If Hagger perhaps goes too far here – the methods may have been unexceptional, but the death-toll was surely not – in general, his judgements are sensible and sound. Although one could quibble here and there on a particular point, his interpretation of events is convincing and his arguments academically up-to-the-minute." . Interestingly, Garnet critisises Hagger for being "credulous" of the contemporary written sources,  implying that he agreed with Orderic's figures? Wilfridselsey (talk) 10:43, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

OK. To move this debate forward I have tried to take the essence from what we have discussed here and rewritten the Harrying section. The lead still needs some attention. I also think that we need to say something about the fact that the north of England was redeveloped and became very wealthy once the abbeys arrived. Wilfridselsey (talk) 14:57, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
 * St Mary's Abbey in York "arrived" before Easter of 1088. How long after that did the North become "very wealthy"? What kind of wealth was it? How does one quantify this wealth? How wealthy did it become compared to London, say? How was the wealth distributed? What about factors other than the abbeys? (By the early 1200s, Lincolnshire's sea trade greatly exceeded London's.) Zoetropo (talk) 08:44, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Regarding the areas of "waste", domesdaymap.co.uk records some manors that paid high tax but low rent, and others that paid low tax but high rent. How does one explain that? Zoetropo (talk) 08:44, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
 * They abbeys became wealthy particularly in the wooltrade. Wilfridselsey (talk) 13:34, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Dougweller|Doug This discussion seems to have stalled. The article has been updated in line with the discussion. I think that in the harrying section, there is as much space given to discussing the anti-genocide view as not, so I think that you'll agree that it's more balanced now. In the light of that do you thinkl that it's time to remove the NPOV tag? Regards Wilfridselsey (talk) 13:42, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, I've removed the template. Dougweller (talk) 15:04, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Since William very clearly failed to kill everyone then at most it could only be described as an act of attempted genocide rather than an act of genocide. Furthermore, since genocide is the intentional murder of a whole nation or race or people and is thus dependent upon motive we can't really use the word genocide safely since William's motives were not murder per se but rather to punish and weaken the enemy. Cassandrathesceptic (talk) 08:52, 1 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Genocide doesn't require killing everyone, we (and other sources) define it as " is the intentional action to destroy a people (usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religiousgroup) in whole or in part." Doug Weller  talk 12:50, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Fountains Abbey?
Although its parent abbey, St Mary's at York was founded in early 1088 (just before the Rebellion of that year), Fountains wasn't established until 1132.

St Olave's Church
It's a curious fact that in 1087, before William the Conqueror headed on his last journey to Normandy, Count Alan Rufus persuaded the King to come north to York to "refound" St Olave's Church as a way to apologise for the damage done during the Harrying. Zoetropo (talk) 06:28, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Apparant error
In the background information section there is the phrase "...Edgar Ætheling, grandson of Edmund and half-brother of Edward the Confessor." I read this as stating that Edgar was the half-brother to Edmund, whereas, surly the case is that Edward was the half-brother of Edmund Ironsides. Presumably then Edgar's relationship to Edward is something like half-grand-nephew, if such a term exists.

So, should this phrase read something like "...Edgar Ætheling, the grandson of Edmund Ironsides who was half-brother to Edward the Confessor."?

Graham.Fountain | Talk 12:01, 19 May 2014 (UTC)


 * You are right. I'll see what I can do. Wilfridselsey (talk) 13:04, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

"Salting the land"?
The article states that "the land was salted" - I very much doubt that the Normans gathered tons and tons of salt with which to render the entire countryside of the north infertile - "salting the earth" is a reference to an ancient *ritual* act, symbolically rendering a place uninhabitable for future generations, not to a practical method of rendering large tracts of farmland unproductive. This should be edited I think? Mhilhorst (talk) 09:05, 7 January 2015 (UTC)


 * I agree and have removed the mention. Lumos3 (talk) 11:01, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, the Romans might have actually done this round Carthage etc, but even there it should be mainly considered as symbolic, and the Normans surely lacked the technology and money to do this on any meaningful scale. Johnbod (talk) 11:12, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Orderic quote paraphrase
I noticed on looking at the cited source for the Orderic quote in the "The Harrying" section that the quoted material does not match the actual source. The quote in the article is a paraphrase of the relevant portion of Orderic's words rather than a direct quote. Doing some digging, I came across what appears to be the source of this paraphrase at a now-defunct site for students about the Norman Conquest (see archive.org capture here); this site was referenced in an earlier version of the article. I can see why this quote was kept, being much more succinct than the original Orderic quote, but it struck me as odd that the quoted text did not actually appear in the source provided. I will leave it to more regular users to determine the best way to handle this issue; but in case anyone decides to use some part of the original Orderic that is cited, I will include a copy of the relevant text below this note for easy access. 108.48.97.105 (talk) 00:43, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

"His camps were scattered over a surface of one hundred miles; numbers of the insurgents fell beneath his vengeful sword, he levelled their places of shelter to the ground, wasted their lands, and burnt their dwellings with all they contained. Never did William commit so much cruelty; to his lasting disgrace, he yielded to his worst impulse, and set no bounds to his fury, condemning the innocent and the guilty to a common fate. In the fulness of his wrath he ordered the corn and cattle, with the implements of husbandry and every sort of provisions, to be collected in heaps and set on fire till the whole was consumed, and thus destroyed at once all that could serve for the support of life in the whole country lying beyond the Humber. There followed, consequently, so great a scarcity in England in the ensuing years, and severe famine involved the innocent and unarmed population in so much misery, that, in a Christian nation, more than a hundred thousand souls, of both sexes and all ages, perished of want. On many occasions, in the course of the present history, I have been free to extol William according to his merits, but I dare not commend him for an act which levelled both the bad and the good together in one common ruin, by the infliction of a consuming famine. For when I see that innocent children, youths in the prime of their age, and grey headed old men, perished from hunger, I am more disposed to pity the sorrows and sufferings of the wretched people, than to undertake the hopeless task of screening one who was guilty of such wholesale massacre by lying flatteries. I assert, moreover, that such barbarous homicide could not pass unpunished. The Almighty Judge beholds alike the high and low, scrutinizing and punishing the acts of both with equal justice, that his eternal laws may be plain to all."

the Anglicisation of the Lowlands?
" The influence of Margaret and her sons brought about the Anglicisation of the Lowlands"

This sentence cannot be true in any meaningful sense. The 'Scottish' lowlands, in particular Lothian, had been Anglian or 'English' since the Angles founded the Kingdom of Bernicia (later the northern half of the Kingdom of Northumbria) 500 years earlier.

It might better read: " The influence of Margaret and her sons enhanced the pre-existing Anglic nature of the Lowlands"

Cassandra — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.149.163.219 (talk) 12:40, 11 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Bernicia only extended into one comparatively small portion of what became the Scottish Lowlands, the rest of which was not previously significantly (if at all, for most of it) anglicised.


 * Stop IP-socking and have you still not learned how to sign? Mutt Lunker (talk) 14:32, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

The Wiki page on the English Kingdom of Northumbria pre-Norman Conquest indicates that it included at least half or even more of the 'Scottish' lowlands. I agree its predecessor, Bernicia, was probably smaller. Cassandra. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.149.163.219 (talk) 19:14, 11 June 2019 (UTC)


 * As there is no discussion of anglicisation there, as far as I can see, I'm guessing you are extrapolating from the 700 AD map at the top of the page, with its then inclusion of parts of what had been the Brythonic Kingdom of Strathclyde and before the bulk of this area became Norse-Gael Galloway, independent of Scotland at the time of Margaret anyway. This map pertains to 800 AD, for what it's worth. Mutt Lunker (talk) 10:11, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

A useful map. But I'm sure we can agree that Margaret and her sons cannot have 'brought about the Anglicisation of the lowlands' but can only have added to that which already existed. Cassandra. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.108.173.183 (talk) 16:58, 12 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Only by ignoring that you have failed to establish that much "already existed" for the bulk of the lowlands. The wording as it is is appropriate; your wording is misleading/false. It maybe enhanced the influence from the Lothians to the border but not elsewhere where there was effectively nothing to enhance. Mutt Lunker (talk) 17:25, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

Well then let me quote the DOST. It seems unambiguous:

Analysis of the Anglian names and archaeological evidence in Galloway shows that a succession of different powers – British, Roman, Anglian – were in control of the coastal defences and strategic inland passes. It is uncertain when the Angles took control of Galloway, but they may have held as much as half of the accessible land, and were present as free peasants as well as overlords. They were also well established in Cumberland, on the other side of the Solway Firth (Higham, 1985)...

In an expansion to the west, Kyle was annexed [by Northumbria] from Strathclyde around 750...

Scotland south of the Forth-Clyde isthmus remained part of Northumbria for about three hundred years until, with Northumbria weakened by the attacks of the Vikings, it was ceded to the Scots. Exactly when the Scots acquired Lothian (in the broad sense of Scottish Northumbria from the Forth to the Tweed) is unclear – dates ranging from 973 (Lothian ceded by Edgar) to 1018...

Nicolaisen contrasts baile ‘hamlet’ and achadh ‘field’ names – the absence of the latter in the south-east of Scotland suggests that the small numbers of Gaelic speakers in the east were “landowners rather than tillers of the soil”

It seems clear that Margaret and her sons didn't bring about the Anglicisation of the lowlands - but they certainly did increase it quite a lot, both by offering refuge and by resettlement. Cassandra. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.108.173.183 (talk) 18:57, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Why are you backing up something that isn't dispute about an area that wasn't part of Scotland? That Lothian was and was anglicised is also not in dispute. Are you under the impression that the Lothians and the Lowlands are synonymous? Mutt Lunker (talk) 19:30, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

Not at all. I'm simply pointing out that the current wording is misleading since it implies that the lowlands were not Anglic to any degree prior to Margaret and her sons. But clearly their action didn't bring about Anglicisation but rather increased/consolidated/added-to/extended something which already existed in at least a substantial part of the lowlands. Cassandra. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.105.248.97 (talk) 09:48, 13 June 2019 (UTC)


 * In covering the overall picture, no it absolutely doesn't imply this and your wording is intentionally utterly misleading (part of a long multi article IP-sock campaign of related POVs), stating that all the lowlands, rather than just one comparatively small area, were already anglicised, particularly as you are repeatedly lumping in an irrelevant (if then historically and quite possibly still at least partly anglicised) area to bolster your argument when it wasn't even part of the country over which Margaret held her influence. Will you agree to desist from your Galloway red herring? Mutt Lunker (talk) 10:27, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

Repeated statements of contrary views regarding the Harrying
Hey, I've been reading about William (the Conqueror), and found this article interesting. I did stumble over the style of the section "The Harrying" though, since by proportion there are more statements of views taken by some people today (I guess historians - the people have no Bio's here, so I couldn't tell who they are), than actual description of the harrying itself.... I would suggest to move this discussion to a separate section describing different views of the events at the least.

To be honest, my feeling is that the "contrary" views are inserted in a one-sided and/or misleading way, and that current scientific opinion in general probably does not question the fact that scorched earth tactics were used in a widespread manner by William (and to pretty devastating effect). (As at least one of the historians is let to point out, this is something that occurred frighteningly often in history. But that doesn't make it any better, or mean that the act itself needs to be put in question, I think.)

I've not actually looked into that, but if that were the case, than a lot of the "contrary" views need to be removed as WP:Undue (as they are being undue prominence/ weight).

Regards 37.49.76.172 (talk) 08:51, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
 * You should look at the NPOV - Genocide? section on this page, for background. Although it is generally accepted that William did Harry the North, modern historians are split on how much destruction he was actually responsible for, and whether you can describe the action as Genocide, because what he did was regarded by some as the norm for that era. Thus there are many differing views on the amount of destruction, rather than contrary views, which is what is reflected in the text. Wilfridselsey (talk) 09:26, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

I did read (most of) that section. That doesn't change the facts that: a) the current state is definitely bad style (more different viewpoints than actual description of the Harrying!), b) I strongly assume there is a view - or at least a certain range of events - which is taken to be most likely by most historians (Whether or not that is genocide was not my point). I've not looked into that myself yet though, so I'll have to wait until I have before I can further argue that point... Sean Heron (talk) 17:12, 20 June 2019 (UTC) P.S. I was the IP above...

'Genocide'
William in no actual sense of the word committed genocide, and the fact is that the sources for the Harrying being a genocide are bunk. A throwaway comment from Kapelle there (which is never really explored in depth), a non-academic source which compares the Norman occupation of England to the Nazi occupation of France there (The English Resistance: The Underground War Against the Normans), finish it off with a book by a genocide historian with no background in the period, and you get to pretend the categorisation of the Harrying of the North as a genocide can remotely be taken seriously. You might as well call the March to the Sea a genocide if you're counting the Harrying.

The Harrying was undoubtedly bad, an atrocity even by the standards of the time, but it was not a genocide. Genocide is not 'when a lot of people die'. Say this as someone with an immense fondness for pre-1066 England rivalled only by an immense dislike of historians of post-1066 England, btw, just to clarify where I'm coming from.

This is incorrect. The Doomsday Book clearly indicates a demographic population drop of around 75% in the areas Laid To Waste during "Williams campaigns", and the intention of William's strategy was to ethnically cleanse the rebellious areas of his new Domain as they were Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, and other culture groups of the at the time ethnically diverse inhabitants of what we now call Great Britain.

The Harrying of the North Was a Genocide, and numerous desperate and varied contemporary scholars, Abbots, Bishops, Monks, oral traditions, folk tales, and indeed in GIS analysis of the main agricultural areas currently found across the north and in areas the doomsday book clearly tells were "laid to waste" In a way brutal and unseen even for the contemporaneous period of 1066 not just in Great Britain but across Western Europe.

I escalate this and contend that to uphold Wikimedia standards the claims of Genocide must be more strongly worded within the article.

What is your response?

Best. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.240.165.210 (talk) 23:40, 3 August 2022 (UTC)


 * I think we can start by asking what percentage of scholars actually view it as a genocide - at present, the Great Famine of Ireland article states a minority of scholars assert that the aforementioned event was a genocide, which is all very well and true when backed up by good references. Unfortunately, the Harrying has only drawn a fraction of the level of scholarly analysis that the 'Potato Famine' has and is largely discussed in the matter of the north/south divide...1000 years past the event...--SinoDevonian (talk) 21:37, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

Doubts expressed re. genocide label/extent in the lead
User:Wilfridselsey - you have reverted this edit from an IP editor today, and although there is an article worthy doubt that gets covered in out sentence on David Horspool, I wonder whether the IP editor is right inasmuch as this doubt is not leadworthy. Our lead, without the disputed material, already has Some present-day scholars have labelled the campaigns a genocide (my emphasis). We then go beyond what the article actually says by adding although others doubt... when we only cite Horspool (2009). I would contest that the word "some" already presents information that this is not a universal view. The discussion and unpacking of that belongs in the main, not the lead. Thoughts? Thanks. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 09:09, 27 October 2022 (UTC)
 * User:Sirfurboy - I think that you have to look at the history of this article for an answer. When the article just expressed the traditional or Orderic Vitalis description of events then the article had an NPOV template. Some work was done to try an express a more 'balanced' view, hence the inclusion of the word 'genocide' and the possibility that Williams army did not cause as much destruction as originally thought. The discussion around genocide is that essentially it is a modern word and we should not use it, to judge William by modern standards, as he was simply doing what armies at that time did. You quote the Horspool reference, but there is a much more solid analysis by Dalton(2002) which is referenced in the main text. He says that it was only possible for Williams army to carry out an extremely limited campaign.  Historians (not referenced in article)  such as Wightman (Northern History 10. 1975) concluded that estates were written off as waste as an administrative or an accounting device. Palliser (Northern History 29. 1993) suggested that not one of the Domesday Books entries for waste, for Yorkshire, attributed it to military intervention. Also if you turn this argument on it's head, there were a lot of estates listed that were not waste, inferring either there was no or little military intervention. Personally I am not convinced on the genocide label, I think that William's objective was to get the surrender of the Northern Earls. His army was pretty thinly spread across England and Wales and he had other rebellions to put down and castles to guard. However, several historians have used it rightly or wrongly. So my conclusion is that the one sentence about dissent from the traditional view is leadworthy. Particularly as it appears to be evolving into the mainstream.  I would remove or modify the sentence  'Records from the Domesday Book of 1086 show that 75% of the population died or never returned' as it does not provide context.Wilfridselsey (talk) 08:04, 28 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the explanation. On that basis I am content. On that last sentence, would it help to change the mood? "Records from the Domesday Book of 1086 suggest that as much as 75% of the population could have died or never returned". Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 10:45, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, I think your version of the sentence works better. Wilfridselsey (talk) 11:36, 28 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I made the edit. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 12:59, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 1 April 2023
Change

Edgar Ætheling, had encouraged Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Scandinavian and Danish rebellions.

To ---> Edgar Ætheling, had encouraged native Celt Briton, Angle, Anglo-Scandinavian and Norse rebellions.

I suggest these changes to increase the article's accuracy, the area subject to the harrying had a substantial diversity in terms of the peoples who lived in this area of Britain prior to 1066.

See the Brittonic Kingdom of Elmet, and the Norse Jorvik. (Modern day Norwegian/Dane/Swedish peoples) 79.70.70.215 (talk) 19:40, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
 * No - no sources, and this is not the standard terminology for this period (except for "Norse" maybe). Johnbod (talk) 20:08, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
 * That's a Kneejerk reaction, you don't go through the edit suggestions point by point refuting them.
 * Bias perhaps from JohnBod? Not good, Wikimedia holds itself to higher standards. 79.70.70.215 (talk) 12:57, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
 * There's a wealth of academic evidence showcasing that the Saxons never settled in the north.
 * So the article is Wrong stating that Anglo-Saxons (As a combined group) were targeted by the Massacre.
 * Only Britons in Elmet, Norse folk in Jorvik, and Anglian Northumbrians were specifically targeted by King William's Norman, Saxon, and South Anglican Forces during the Northern Harrying.
 * See the Domesday Book, Historia Brittonum, Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, and the Tribal Hidage, in addition to Norse Sagas written in Modern Yorkshire, Sweden, Norway, and North Denmark. as Irrifutable evidence in support of this. 79.70.70.215 (talk) 13:02, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 2 April 2023
Change

Edgar Ætheling, had encouraged Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Scandinavian and Danish rebellions.

To ---> Edgar Ætheling, had encouraged native Celt Briton, Angle, Anglo-Scandinavian and Norse rebellions.

I suggest these changes to increase the article's accuracy, the area subject to the harrying had a substantial diversity in terms of the peoples who lived in this area of Britain prior to 1066.

See the Brittonic Kingdom of Elmet, and the Norse Jorvik. (Modern day Norwegian/Dane/Swedish peoples)

There's a wealth of academic evidence showcasing that the Saxons never settled in the north. So the article is Wrong stating that Anglo-Saxons (As a combined group) were targeted by the Massacre. Only Britons in Elmet, Norse folk in Jorvik, and Anglian Northumbrians were specifically targeted by King William's Norman, Saxon, and South Anglican Forces during the Northern Harrying. See the Domesday Book, Historia Brittonum, Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, and the Tribal Hidage, in addition to Norse Sagas written in Modern Yorkshire, Sweden, Norway, and North Denmark. as Irrifutable evidence in support of this. 79.70.70.215 (talk) 13:03, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Still no, per the above. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 17:57, 2 April 2023 (UTC)