October 14, 1066. One day of fighting on a hill outside Hastings changed England more thoroughly than any event before or since. The language shifted. The aristocracy was replaced almost entirely. The buildings changed their style. The laws changed. Even the food at wealthy tables changed. William the Conqueror did all of this — but the story of how a duke from Normandy came to be standing on English soil at all is itself remarkable: he was illegitimate, nearly killed as a child by men who wanted his duchy, and claimed the English throne on the basis of a promise from a king who was almost certainly not his to make.
William was not supposed to exist. His father Robert, Duke of Normandy, never married his mother — a tanner's daughter from the town of Falaise. Robert had seen her washing clothes at a stream and fallen in love with the kind of single-minded intensity that causes problems for everyone involved. He brought her to his castle and she lived with him as his companion, not his wife, because the political marriages of Norman dukes did not generally include tanner's daughters. When William was born, around 1027, he was illegitimate by any definition available at the time. In a world where rank and rights passed through blood legitimized by marriage, this mattered enormously. His father recognized him as his heir, which meant something. His father's nobles did not fully accept the arrangement, which meant something else.
The Battle of Hastings on October 14, 1066 lasted from approximately 9 in the morning to dusk. Harold was killed — by an arrow through the eye, according to the Bayeux Tapestry — and England had a new king.
The Boy Duke Nobody Expected to Survive
When William was seven, his father Robert decided to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem and did not come back — he died in Asia Minor on the return journey. William was now Duke of Normandy at seven years old, illegitimate, and surrounded by powerful men who had every reason to want the duchy for themselves. Three of his guardians were murdered in the next few years. The men doing the killing had obvious ambitions and no great patience. William's tutor, who was also his protector, had to get him out of the castle by night when word came that killers had been hired. He hid the boy in the houses of peasants, moving him before anyone could find him, sleeping in different beds every few nights. William grew up knowing that the world was trying to kill him and that the only people he could fully trust were a very small number of loyal men willing to die for the tanner's daughter's bastard son. He dealt with his first revolt at the age of nineteen, leading his own army against the Norman barons who had decided the time was right. He defeated them at the Battle of Val-ès-Dunes in 1047 and made it clear, early and decisively, that the illegitimate duke would not be an easy target.
The Promise That Started a War
The English throne problem began years before 1066. Edward the Confessor — who had grown up in Normandy and had strong Norman sympathies — apparently told William at some point that he intended to name him as heir to England. Whether this promise was a genuine political commitment or a polite thing said to a powerful neighbor, it was the foundation of William's claim. Then, around 1064, Harold Godwinson — the most powerful English nobleman and Edward's brother-in-law — was sailing off the Normandy coast when his ships were wrecked. William received him as a guest. During the visit, Harold swore an oath on sacred relics to support William's claim to the English throne. According to William's account, the oath was entirely voluntary. According to Harold's, it had been extracted under duress from a man who was effectively a captive. Edward the Confessor died in January 1066. Harold Godwinson was crowned king of England three days later, within hours of Edward's funeral. William, who heard the news from a Norman ship captain, prepared to invade.