The King Is Dead (27 page)

William the Conqueror’s family tree

William the Bastard (The Conqueror)

William II (Rufus)                               Henry I    Adela               Robert (Curthose)

             William               Matilda   Stephen of Blois

                                                                                                                 William Clito

Henry II

The dotted line indicates that they died before they could attain the crown or before they could rule effectively.

The word Fitz shows that the owner of the name is an illegitimate son of a knight.  As such they would not necessarily inherit when their father died. There were many such knights.  William himself was illegitimate. Robert of Gloucester was also known as Robert of Caen and Robert Fitzroy.

Ridley, the father of my hero, was in three earlier books.  There were two regiments of Varangians: one was English in character and one Scandinavian. As the bodyguards of the Emperor they were able to reap rich rewards for their service.

The Normans were formidable fighters. The conquest of England happened after a single battle.  They conquered southern Italy and Sicily with a handful of knights.  Strongbow, a Norman mercenary took a small mercenary force and dominated Ireland so much that as soon as a force of Normans, led by the king land, all defence on the island crumbled. In one of Strongbow's battles a force of 100 knights defeated 4000 Irish warriors!

Ranulf Flambard was the controversial Bishop of Durham who was imprisoned in the tower by Henry for supporting his brother.  Although reinstated the Bishop was viewed with suspicion by the king and did not enjoy as much power as either his predecessors or his successors. He had been something of a womaniser in his younger days and he tried to make up for that by giving to the poor when he was older. He was responsible for much of the defensive works of Durham Castle and was truly a Bishop Prince. He died around 1128. The incident with the Bishop being held captive is pure fiction.  However he died in 1128 and there was a great deal of unrest while King Henry was away in Normandy.  The Gospatric family did show their true colours when the Scottish king tried to take advantage of the internal strife between Stephen and Matilda and invade England.  A leopard does not change his spots. The land between the Tees and the Scottish lowlands was always fiercely contested by Scotland, England and those who lived there.

Hartness (Hartlepool) was given to the De Brus family by Henry and the family played a power game siding with Henry and David depending upon what they had to gain. They were also given land around Guisborough in North Yorkshire.

Squires were not always the sons of nobles.  Often they were lowly born and would never aspire to knighthood. It was not only the king who could make knights.  Lords had that power too.  Normally a man would become a knight at the age of 21. Young landless knights would often leave home to find a master to serve in the hope of treasure or loot. The idea of chivalry was some way away.  The Norman knight wanted land, riches and power. Knights would have a palfrey or ordinary riding horse and a destrier or war horse.  Squires would ride either a palfrey, if they had a thoughtful knight or a rouncy (pack horse).  The squires carried all of the knight’s war gear on the pack horses.  Sometimes a knight would have a number of squires serving him. One of the squire’s tasks was to have a spare horse in case the knight’s destrier fell in battle. Another way for a knight to make money was to capture an enemy and ransom him. This even happened to Richard 1st of England who was captured in Austria and held to ransom.

At this time a penny was a valuable coin and often payment would be taken by ‘nicking’ pieces off it. Totally round copper and silver coins were not the norm in 12th Century Europe. Each local ruler would make his own small coins.  The whole country was run like a pyramid with the king at the top.  He took from those below him in the form of taxes and service and it cascaded down. There was a great deal of corruption as well as anarchy. The idea of a central army did not exist. King Henry had his household knights and would call upon his nobles to supply knights and men at arms when he needed to go to war.  The expense for that army would be borne by the noble.

The border between England and Scotland has always been a prickly one from the time of the Romans onward.  Before that time the border was along the line of Glasgow to Edinburgh.  The creation of an artificial frontier, Hadrian’s Wall, created an area of dispute for the people living on either side of it. William the Conqueror had the novel idea of slaughtering everyone who lived between the Tees and the Tyne/Tweed in an attempt to resolve the problem. It did not work and lords on both sides of the borders, as well as the monarchs used the dispute to switch sides as it suited them.

The manors I write about were around at the time the book is set. For a brief time a De Brus was lord of Normanby. It changed hands a number of times until it came under the control of the Percy family. This is a work of fiction but I have based events on the ones which occurred in the twelfth century.