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When A Country was Remade · Ebbs of History

• Jason: your microphone next to you or or not. Or bring yourself to the Welcome back, history lovers, to the Ebbs of History, the show where we dig up the strangest, wildest, and creepiest true stories the past has to offer. From dancing plagues to pirate queens, you'll laugh, you'll gasp, and you'll love my impeccable dad jokes. But mostly, you'll learn that history is way cooler than your textbook ever told you. We are history-loving hosts, Zoe, Gavin. And I'm Jason, and this is the Ebbs of History. Zoe, Gavin, how was everyone's week? It was pretty good. Today was the Friday that like I had nothing. It was actually like a true Friday for once. Nice. It was just nice and chill. It wasn't because we've had a heat we've had a heat wave and it was it's just starting to cool down, so I wasn't like sweating out of like my ears today. Yes, it is it the the heat wave finally broke. Yeah. It's been much nicer. I agree. I d agree a lot with Zoe. Like this is a very Friday Friday for me. I've ha I only had one test and after we literally watched Incredibles Short like thing. we watched Hamilton in social studies class. Which is awesome. I'm so happy you guys are doing that. Like we di played a game and in like a math game in math. It was a very fiery Friday. Eighth grade seems very unserious. It is. Juxtaposed with junior year. But yeah, it has been very hot. We literally went on rainy day schedule because it was so hot. That way we split up the lunches. You split up the lunches. And what was that what did that do? it allowed for more spaces for like for people in air conditioned rooms. 'cause our school isn't fully air conditioned. Like and they don't put a rainy day schedule on when it rains. I know. So like putting rainy day schedule on when it's that hot actually means that like it was bad, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I bet you the people that are listening to this not in Southern California are like, rainy day schedule? What? What? Because we have outdoor school from the movies. See, I feel like it's been hotter and we've been completely fine. Yeah. Like I and it's just being in school when doing it. It's a different type of like torture. I think we like pretty much miss like our entire like Fisbee unit, which is like the one sport that I do kind of play. Yeah. And I was like, come on. And we didn't even do one last year. Alright, let's start, shall we? Yes, let's shall. Welcome to the final episode of our Norman Conquest series. We left the newly crowned King William the First alone at his coronation in Westminster Abbey on December twenty-fifth, ten sixty-six. Because everyone else is outside putting out fires and generally running amuck due to a misinterpretation. To say this wasn't an auspicious start to his reign would be an understatement. His coronation would really set the tone for King William's reign. Now before we get into it, what moment from the last five episodes has stuck with you the most? I honestly think the It this was kind of in the fourth and the fifth episode a little bit, but just the waiting out to cross the English Channel to get to the actual battle and then the battle and having just all in one day and just the battle strategies was really interesting. Mm-hmm. Cause like that's not like my Like my brain doesn't work in that way where it's like I just would never think of it. So it was so cool hearing someone that is like such an expert in their field on it. And it was just really interesting. Okay. It was just so planned out. Yeah. And it just like down to the minute everything was like and it just like made my type A heart so happy. I'm like What about you, Gavin? I'd probably say his military strategy, like when he decided to shoot the arrows in the sky to break the shield wall. Yes. That was just a like a great move epic. And that's kinda just stuck with me, even though it was In the last episode is just like insane. And that was his final push to win the battle. Yeah, absolutely. It wasn't it was the last thing that he could do and it was such a genius move that, you know, it worked. It sounds like we're recency biasing it 'cause it's all from the FOSC episode. But like I don't know, it I feel like it's 'cause all it's all built up to this po point and the payoff was worth it. Yeah. In my opinion, it was worth it. Good. Good. I am excited for this episode. All right. Well, this is the final one, so I'm getting nostalgic already. Like I'm sad. We're done. It's felt like so long. Like six whole weeks. Yeah, absolutely. And I missed so much. There was so much more that I could have put into these episodes. What's one thing that like what would be next on your list to put in? yeah. Or even like do a s a spin off, like a not like a spin off, but like a separate episode about it. The bayou tapestry. Mm-hmm. For sure. I'm gonna go into it a little bit here, right now, actually, as part of this episode. but I would love to do an entire episode on it. 'cause it's very interesting. But there's things I I would have liked to have gone into William and his life in Normandy, making him the way that he was and and you know, really showcasing his military genius. I would have loved to have gone into that. But there was a lot of things that were happening and a lot of people that you guys didn't meet because they're not the main players and they were doing things in the background and you know, there's a lot of I really like going into the how the people received everything. Yeah. Because, you know, History we is just all the kings and all that kind of stuff. You know, they don't have a really a people's history from back in this era. Mm-hmm. you know, there is some, and I would have liked to have gone into that a little bit more and that would be a whole episode in and of itself, but yeah, there's a lot of things that I I had to skip over. Little details here and there too, like yeah. Alright. Before we finish William's story today, we're gonna spend a little time with the Bayou Tapestry. because it's the closest thing we've got to an eyewitness of all the events in the Norman Conquest. I know you two have seen portions of it. It's it's hard not to in our house. and Zoe, you're gonna be studying it in AP Art History particularly. Very, very soon. Very soon. Very, very soon. But do you actually know what it is? Isn't it actually an embroidery and not a tapestry? Yep, that is correct. I'll go into that in a few seconds. isn't it like just like describing the whole like Williams life? It's like pretty much like a William Glaze from the French. It yes, it is a William Glaze from the French side, the Norman side. but it's not his whole life. It just starts around ten sixty-four, ten sixty-five. I'll go into that in in a few minutes also. So we go more in depth than the Bayou Tapestry did. gosh, yeah. yeah. All right. So what it actually is, imagine somebody made a comic book about the biggest news events of your lifetime. Like if they made a comic book about COVID. Now imagine right. Now imagine that COVID comic book is seventy meters long. Which is about 224 feet, made of yarn, and then it survived nearly a thousand years, a revolution, and the Nazis. That's the Bayou Tapestry. It's the comic book of the Norman Conquest. I'm not gonna go through the events that the entire thing depicts as I've already done that in the past five episodes. just know that the story the tapestry tells starts around ten sixty-four, ten sixty-five. With King Eddie sitting on his throne with a crown and a scepter telling Harold Godwinson to go to Normandy. Wait, when did you say it started? about 1064 or 1065. We're not quite sure. but it's King Eddie sitting on his throne with a scepter and his crown and telling Harold Godwinson to go to Normandy. So does that strike you as odd a little bit? A little. What what strikes you as odd about it? It's kind of 'cause if I remember It starts in England. It doesn't start in France. And I don't know like Well no, no, this King Eddie in England. King Edward Eddie the Confessor. Yeah, Eddie the Confessor. Yeah. He's in England, but it's but he's French. It starts with him that's correct. But it starts with him telling Harold Godwinson to go to Normandy to tell William that he wants him that he wants William to be the heir of the throne. And is if I remember correctly, is that the is that the part where they do the relics or is that later on with someone else? That's later on, but like this portion right here is right from the very first stitch of the Bayou Tapestry is Norman propaganda. That yeah. We don't know why Harold Gowinson went to Normandy. Remember, he crashed in Ponthieu Uh-huh. You know, and and Count Guy took him in as a prisoner. We don't know if Eddie the Confessor told him to go and tell William that, or you know, told him to go and tell William something else, or if he even ever told him to go. He could have just gone on a fishing trip by himself and there was a storm. Yeah. So right from the bat, there's Norman Propaganda from the very first stitch of the Bayou Tapestry. and to me, part of why I don't like to call the tapestry a primary resource is that exactly. From the very beginning, it's propaganda and you know it from the beginning. Looking, you know, in hindsight of course. where the tapestry story ends though is a story in and of itself that I'm gonna tell in a few minutes. let's talk about the tapestry itself. The first thing that you need to know is that the words bayou and tapestry are both misnomers. It was not made in Bayou, and as Zoe mentioned, it is not a tapestry. What is it, Zoe? It's an embroidery. That's right. A tapestry is woven. The picture and the cloth the picture is on get made at the exact same time on a loom. This is an embroidery. Somebody wove plain linen on a loom first, then drew the whole thing onto it, and then stitched or sewed the picture on top of the wool. We've been calling it by the wrong word for about three hundred years. See, Bayou Tapachy, it has like a it like flows out the ton, you know? But Bayou embroidery you. Not even bayou, just like wherever it is, blank embro blank embroidery. I know right. I I know it doesn't roll off. I wonder if that's also part of the propaganda a little bit of just like the the misnomer of the name. Well it wasn't called that back then. So never mind. It's not. Okay. it wasn't called the Bayou Tapestry until in the 1400s I wanna say. what was it called before? It was like it was called it was called a tapestry, but it was called like the Great Tapestry and they they had a bunch of different names for it, but it wasn't the Bayou tapestry like it is now. Okay. Here's what the physical object is. Sixty-eight point three meters long. That's 224 feet, which is about the length of a jumbo jet, or three quarters of an American football field. And it's only about 20 inches tall. So picture something the height of a bike wheel and the length of an airplane. It's nine separate panels of linen, some as short as three meters, and one as long as fourteen, embroidered separately and then all sewn together, with the picture stitched straight over where they join two panels together to hide them. And you can tell that they got better as it went on because where panels one and two joined together, the design doesn't quite line up. But by the end you can't find any seams at all. That's cool. Where is like the bio tapestry? Is it in France? Is it in England? Right now. I will go into it, but right now it is where, Zoe? At the British Museum. At the British Museum. for the first time in almost a thousand years it's in England. But it's it's stored in take a guess. Bayou? Bayou? Bayou, France. so how do you think you read it? Right to left. Like you start you start at panel one and you go to panel to right. Yeah. Left to right. You read left to right. So you start from panel one and then you go all the way to the h like whole like airplane length and you just go there. All right. Left to right, like a sentence. That is correct. But unlike a comic book, there are no borders, no boxes, no gutters. It is one unbroken ribbon of action And when the artist needs to say, okay, a new scene, they stick a stylized tree or a building in the way. That tree is the comic book box that you think of. Mmm. Across the top of it runs the comic book dialogue in Latin. Fifty eight scenes worth of captions, about three hundred and eighty Latin words in total. And here's the detail that I find just hilarious. The Latin is bad. Or rather, it's Latin with an English accent. In one spot it says at Hestinga Sestra. Where a proper Latin scholar would have written ad hastinga castra. That's an English speaker writing Latin the way an English speaker talks. It's like saying no problemo today. You're aiming for Spanish, but dressing it up as English. No Spanish speaker is gonna say no problemo. That's just not how they speak. I think there's a actual like term Spanglish. Yeah. That's what it's exactly what it is. in langu I think it was for like a multiple choice like practice or whatever, there was like an article we had to read about Spanglish and it was like talking about how it's in certain communities and how it kind of came to be and like how it blends the two together. It's languish. Languish. Latin and so in the bio tapestry, the Latin is dressed up in English clothes and That turns out to be one of the biggest clues that we have about who made this, but hold that thought for now. Above and below the main comic strip runs two thin decorative borders, kind of like header and footer margins on a piece of paper, which in my opinion is the single most underrated part of the entire tapestry. At the start, they're full of birds and beasts and farmers, and tucked in among them are actual fables. Aesops fables, to be exact. Stitched into the margins. Interesting. The fox flattering the crow until the crow drops the cheese. the lamb who tries to out argue a wolf and gets eaten anyway. A crane who does a wolf an enormous favor and gets absolutely nothing in return. By themselves, they're just kind of multiplot storytelling, right? But the fun part is where those fables sit in the margins. One example is the Fox and the Crow story, sits right above Harold when he sails to Normandy. He sails right into the hands of a much more powerful man who's about to flatter him, knight him, and get something out of him. It's not just decoration, it's the medieval version of ominous background music. The people who made this are telling you what was about to happen without even saying a single word out loud. Further on, when the tapestry gets to Hastings, the borders start to change. The animals vanish, the fables stop, the bottom border fills up with dead men, bent backwards, arms and legs flung out, stuck with arrows, some with their heads gone, and crawling among them men stripping the armor off the corpses to sell. The decoration becomes documentary at this point. The margin stops joking and starts telling the real story. Before I get into the numbers of this enormous comic strip, I want you to know that there are two versions of the tapestry. The original, which was embroidered in ten seventy, is housed in Bayeux, France, a small coastal town in Normandy, as we already talked about. But there is a replica in Reading, England, about thirty minutes west of London, that was embroidered in the Victorian era. Your mom and I visited it when we were there and it took up two enormous rooms. It was gargantuan. Was it like the same size? Yeah, it's a it's a replica. There's some small differences which I'm gonna go into in a second, but yeah, it's it's it's the same size. It took up two rooms. That's inter that's crazy. Now I'm not just telling you this to gloat that I've traveled and seen it. You'll see why I told you that there's a reading version in a in a few seconds. But first, the numbers. How many people do you think are depicted throughout all two hundred and twenty four feet? And I'll g even give you a range of one hundred. Range of a hundred? Range of a hundred. So that means that like it's actually a lot, 'cause if there's a range of a hundred I would say five hundred. Okay. Gavin? maybe nine hundred eighty seven. That's very specific. It is. Six hundred and twenty six people. Thirty three buildings, thirty five dogs, more than five hundred birds and animals. And then it gets funny Because nobody can agree on the rest. And this is where my tidbit about the reading version comes in. So we're counting the animals? Yeah. okay. Well, why not? Why not, yeah. Well, they're not real people. Well You don't have to write that down. That's not gonna be a question, but It is. The museum in Bayou counts two hundred and two horses. The museum over in Reading counts a hundred and ninety. Bayou says forty one ships. Reading says thirty seven. Wasn't it forty two ships? That is an excellent point. Wait, no, wasn't it like six? It was no it it was no one's correct. Sixty two it was sixty two. Yeah, it was sixty two ships. I'm going back in my note. So that's in actuality what happened. The Bayou Tapestry is a comic book, so it's not gonna get the exact numbers of ships correct, right? But what I'm saying is that the two versions of the Bayou Tapestry don't even have the same amount of ships. Mm-hmm. But there is one number that everybody agrees on, both versions. Three. Three is the amount of women depicted on the entire tapestry. That's gonna be a question. Thirty-five dogs were counted, but three women. Out of six hundred and twenty-six people, three of them are women. Now one of them. Huh? Is Emma one of them? No. she's she's too old. Yeah, no, she died in what, ten fifty one, ten fifty two? This starts in ten sixty I just thought she was so important to our story. She is. She's the whole re yeah. And then not mentioned. Mm-hmm. Very interesting. Right. So like way more dogs, way more voices, way more. That's right. It's only defeat. Wow. I think it just shows how women were sh depicted in the society. Absolutely. Because it's shown in the artwork. Definitely. Now, to be fair, there are three more women hiding down in the borders. They're unnamed, inconsequential, and are not even part of the story. but that's it. Out of six hundred and twenty six, six hundred and twenty of them are men. Now, who made this thing? Most expert experts. Most experts agree it was made in England, probably in or around Canterbury. Remember that English accent in the Latin? That's one of the biggest reasons why we'd think that, and most experts think it was stitched by English women. Nobody signed it, so that part's kind of an educated guess. But an educated guess that leads me to the subversive nature of the entire tapestry. People have spent centuries hunting for signs that those English embroiderers slip something anti-Norman in without anyone even knowing. We'd think this because Harold, in the tapestry, is weirdly heroic. He's brave, he's dignified, and there's a whole scene of him hauling two drowning Norman knights out of quicksand with his bare hands. That is not how propaganda usually treats the guy who loses. Actually, I would like to counter that. Okay. Because in specifically once especi I think it's this is mostly in Greek art but once the once you defeat someone, you want to show them as actually stronger than you so you look strong in turn. that's really interesting. Yeah. So showing Harold as super heroic and super strong and super brave might be just to really, really enforce the Norman propaganda that they are superior. Right. Yeah. See, I feel like it's like A couple things like respecting the enemy kind of Okay. Yeah. Like they w they did know each other like kind of personally. They did. Yeah. And also I think it's like to show like they were strong. They were a worthy opponent. They were equal. And we were able to best them, kinda like what Zoe was talking about. I'm just talking about art historically. No, no. That's how the enemy is depicted as stronger. So that is a really good point that you made. It's a it's an excellent point. And it's a point why this whole entire portion of the subversiveness has been discussed for centuries because there's really it's just conjecture, right? There's little things here and there. like the next part I'm about to talk about. But yeah, you're absolutely right. And I love that your brain went there and automatically was questioning this. Because this is probably the weakest part of, you know, the Bayou tapestry at least is this, you know, this it's an idea. It's not a proven theory. Right. you also start looking at into some of the fables that are stitched in and look deeply at their meaning and what it meant to the peasants and the subjugated at the time. The fables lend themselves to these English women subversively thumbing their noses at the Normans. But we talk about that a lot with Romans and the Greeks because they defeat a lot of people. Yep. So in because one of the main themes of our Roman art is propaganda and is showing you and being stronger than your enemy. So like that is utterly fascinating. I've ne I never took art history, so I I've never really looked at art subjectively like that. Mm-hmm. And That is exactly why this point is actually pretty weak. Exactly. I love that you brought that up. my god. We literally talked about this today because we finished Codex Two and it had it had Mesopotamians, it had Egypt, it it had Greeks, it had Romans. and then we were just giving like basically like summaries of like what what their art was mostly about. And for Rome specifically, it was propaganda and there was a lot of like this is not important, but there was a lot of like appropriation they would just take from everywhere. Like one of our Roman pieces was in s like basically like just taken right out right out of Hellenistic Greek Greece. And I'm just like And then for the men dying on like the board, they specifically in like prehistory, they'll show dead people either naked or like on the ground. So I wonder if they are naked in this showing that they are dead. I just wanna s I just would like to see that. They are not. Okay. but no. The beheaded enough is enough to tell that they're dead kind of thing, like There are three penises in the entire thing. Are they all castrated? They are not. They are all from one little character who I he's just a little guy. And they think that he was a dwarf, a little person. and he appears three times completely naked, with his thing just hanging out there nice and big. And it's funny because the in the Victorian version, he's in there, but they knitted on a like a fig leaf to cover up his privates. Isn't that funny? my gosh. but I think it's funny. Not funny, but like interesting. Little tidbit. Little tidbit in it. Alright, so earlier I said I would tell you where the tapestry's story ends. Well, plot twist, it doesn't. Dun dun dun. At least the story doesn't end. Of course the tapestry itself ends, but the story is incomplete. The last meter and a half of the tapestry is completely missing, torn off, lost. The final caption you can read today states rather abruptly, and the English turned and fled. And even that phrase is a fake that somebody stitched on a couple of hundred years ago just to tidy it up a little bit. It doesn't appear in any of the careful copies made in the seventeen hundreds. The real ending is very probably where we left William last episode, at his coronation on Christmas Day in ten sixty-six. We think this because a poet writing around eleven hundred describes a very similar hanging that he saw And he stated that it finished with the crowning in London. So the most famous artwork in the Norman Conquest is missing the one scene that the whole thing was building f toward. It's like watching season four of Stranger Things and then season five just never comes out. That's almost like the Canterbury Tales where it was just never finished 'cause he died. is that that is that right? I didn't know. Yeah. Cool. I think so. I hear. But that's a bunch of different stories. Like you know? It's a little bit different, but I I get what you're saying. So let's stitch the missing panel ourselves. boy. Knowing what you know about what happened between the battle and the coronation from last episode, what would you include if you could design the missing final panel? So it stops at the coronation. It stops at the battle. The b English flea. It stops so Harold has the thing in his eye, which we know is not true. And then about a foot or two later, the entire thing ends. That's it. This is through the perspective of Norman propaganda. So Right, but I'd probably say it's a coronation and the place it's burning and then it ends. I wouldn't put the burning. Because I think that it paints Of Westminster Abbey. Yes. Okay. It paints William in a Almost kind of a bad light. 'Cause he was just standing there like helpless. You don't want to see your king helpless with things burning around him. I would just end it at the coronation. Yay! I feel like I do agree. Like I feel like it would paint him and kind of like tyranistic like view. That might not be a real word. But like tyrannical, but yeah. Tyrannical. That's good. it makes him seem like after that England started like going down. It started burning, like metaphorically. That's an interesting point. Yep. Yeah, I definitely wouldn't put the burning of Westminster at the end of it. I think I'd put William burning the villages a little bit. you know, 'cause remember he he was burning villages until they they submitted to him. Yeah. I think I'd put the burning of the villages followed by a bunch of knights or a bunch of lords bowing to him. Okay. And then in the final one have him holding the scepter and the crown like Eddie the Confessor was in the very beginning of the tapestry, in Westminster Abbey, not on fire. Yeah. That's what I do. I think it's interesting including the burning, 'cause it's kind of like showing your dominance in a way. Yeah. Of like, ooh, I'm so strong I defeated you guys now. I'm gonna burn some more buildings. Just cherry on top. Yeah, right. Like see you've seen the tapestry, so you know kinda how it is. Yeah, but that piece is missing. Yeah, but like you know kind of like a template, you know. yeah, I guess so, for sure. I've got pictures of the entire thing if you guys wanna see. I kinda wanna see that. I took pictures of every single like I move I would take a picture, move, take a picture, move. I've got the in I could probably put the whole thing up. It's it's just kinda hard to conceptualize. It is. 'Cause it's it's just it's so much. It is. And the one that I saw in Reading is it's split. It's not one continuous piece. They hack they act Because it's so big and they didn't have the room in the Reading Museum, they had to slice it in half and put one in one room and another in the in the second room, a part part of it. So I wonder how big the room is that it is at the British Museum. I don't know. Gosh. Exactly. Like you've got to just make space for it. Yeah. Huh. All right. So that's the tapestry done. It has nothing to say about what comes next. Because what comes next takes twenty years. It's january ten sixty seven. William's been king for like a week and he immediately has problems. The English nobles who submitted to him on Christmas Day didn't really submit. They just pretended to submit so they could go home and start planning revolts. The North of England barely recognizes William's authority at all. There are Anglo Saxon lords in every corner of the country whispering about the old days and waiting for a chance to strike. Now, remember when Canute took over back in ten sixteen? He did the smart thing and didn't subjugate the people, he assimilated with them, became English basically. But then his son, Heartha Canute, Did the exact opposite and ruled like a despot and is considered one of the most hated kings in all of English history. How do you think William is going to make the country his? Based on what he was doing before, I think he's gonna like kinda be in the middle between Hortha Canu and Canute. Okay. Because he burned down all these villages originally, but that was because he wanted to conquer England. And now he kinda has what he wants. He was strategically burning villages. Yeah. When he first landed he was burning them to bring Harold down from the north. And then after the battle he was burning them to make the you know, the nobles submit to him. So that was strategic burning. He and and it's not like he went and he, you know, burned the entire south of England. It was it was very strategic. There's something kind of Machiavellian about him where he's I I think he's gonna be in the middle, but more towards Hearth the Canute. Okay. Because I think he almost has that mindset of I would rather be feared than loved. Kind of thing. Like I I sense the vibe of he's only doing what's needed to get the what he needs out of them. Like he's not doing any more, not doing any less. Like he's like almost not selfish, but just like just doing it for his own gain. Okay. I like both your guys' answers. You're both wrong. Because he does something completely different. His first move is genius. But it's terrible all at the same time. He decides to replace the entire English nobility. Like all of them. Every English noble who held land of any significance is, over the next few years, going to be dispossessed of that land. Their estates are taken away, they're given to William's Norman knights and French allies. Ooh no. By the time the Doomsday Book is compiled, 20 years later, fewer than Five percent of English landowners are English born. Ninety-five percent of the land has been transferred to a new ruling class that doesn't speak the language and didn't exist in this country twenty years ago. So he went completely opposite of Knut and Hearth of Knut. He just said, You know what? I don't like you guys, I'm replacing you. He just replaced everybody. I mean, that's one way to start fresh. Right? I mean like that's one way to do it. Like I I rather have My best friends in a class, then some randos. That you don't like in my class. He replaced the English nobles with people he could trust. Yeah, definitely. Yep. Like they were definitely conspiring against him, like t like like Caesar. Yeah. Yes? Yeah. What are you gonna say? I was gonna say it kinda sounds like the spoil system with Jackson. When Andrew Jackson went into the presidency, he kind of Not like cleared everyone, but he got rid of ten percent of the people who were working like desk jobs at the in Congress and he kind of replaced them with his like buddies. Yeah. Almost. Yeah. So it's very similar. It sounds kind of like I know this is late way later on in history, but history repeats itself though. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just like we went from Caesar to William to Jackson. Yeah. It all connects. Yeah. So to enforce this new rule by Norman Lords, William Starts to build castles. Hundreds of them. Stone keeps and wooden motton bailey forts on hilltops across all of England. The point of these castles isn't to look pretty, it's to intimidate. Every English town now has a giant new Norman fortress looming over it, full of Norman soldiers controlled by a Norman lord. If you walk into your hometown in 1080 and look up, the most prominent building that you can see is the prison that your conquerors live in. Remember where we ended our night tour in York? It was in like a square with like three different buildings. I remember that. It was at the big hill that had we we sat with the thing behind us. Mm-hmm. It was a big hill with four steep sides and there was a building on top of it and it was all lit up and everything. yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I remember you talking about the castles? It's less of a hill and more of a mound of earth, but yeah. Today it's called Clifford's Tower. It was one of the castles that William had built during this time. It's a perfect example of the Mott and Bailey castle that he built all across England. The Mott is the steep mound of dirt with the castle that sits on top. The Bailey was everything around it. We didn't see the Bailey as it would have been back in the 11th century when we were there, but that whole area, if you can remember it, would have been surrounded by a fortified fence and that's what was called the Bailey. So that's what you're we're saying, Gavin. It was kind of a square and it had a couple buildings and everything. That would have been the Bailey. That whole entire area. And it would have been filled with, you know, tiny little cottages that people lived in and and surrounded by a fortified fence. But the English don't just lie down and take the normification of England. Over the next four years, William is going to face a whole series of rebellions. But what William does to quell one of these rebellions becomes the darkest thing that William ever does. Back in 1069, there was a massive uprising in the north of England, centered on York. The Northumbrians, who were a mix of Anglo Saxons and Danish descended people, hated William. The Danes had even sent an invasion force to kind of try and help him out. William marched north, crushed the Danes, captured York, and then he made a decision that medieval people who were used to a lot of violence would talk about for centuries as the worst thing William ever did. It was something William felt obligated to atone to God for until the day that he died. He decided to make sure the North would never rebel again, by making sure that there was no one left to rebel. In the winter of ten sixty nine to ten seventy, William ordered his army to systematically destroy every village, every farm, every food storehouse, and every animal across hundreds of miles of northern England. From the city of York all the way to the Scottish border, crops were burned, livestock was killed, and Tools were destroyed. Salt was poured on fields to make sure that nothing would grow. People were killed wherever they were found. And the rest were left to starve through the entire winter. huh. That's terrible. Why would destroying a village's food and tools keep hurting people long after the army had left? Because they have no they had nothing to like vogue fops or like no land. 'Cause they you said they destroyed it with the salt. Yep. And you just said they also destroyed their tools, right? That's right. So they have nothing. They have nothing. They cannot grow food. They cannot grow anything for animals to eat. Mhm. So the animals die. It was Complete and utter devastation this is what historians call the harrying of the north, and it is genuinely awful. It's not quite on par with the Holocaust, but it's really not that far off either. The medieval chronicler Orderic Vitalis, writing decades later, said that more than a hundred thousand people died in the famine that followed. Now, Orderic was generally sympathetic to William, because he was a Norman writer who really liked William as a person. Other chroniclers wrote that survivors were reduced to eating cats and dogs, and in some places eating human flesh. The Anglo Saxon Chronicle, which usually treats William pretty neutrally, calls it simply wasted and laid to waste. The destruction was so complete that That seventeen years later, when William finally got around to surveying his kingdom, huge parts of Yorkshire were still recorded in his book as Wasta, which was Latin for waste. Empty, depopulated, not yet recovered. Some areas wouldn't return to their preconquest population for generations. There's a real argument that the harrying of the north is the single worst atrocity ever committed on English soil. Even Orderic Vitalis, William's defender, wrote Nowhere else had William shown so much cruelty. Shamefully he succumbed to his vice, for he made no effort to restrain his fury and punish the innocent with the guilty. And that's his fan writing that. That's the man who liked him. huh. I'm your big fan. And the harrying worked. The North never rose against William again. Not in his lifetime. Not under his sons either. Another rebellion I want to talk about is one led by Harroward the Wake. I love this dude. Harroward was an Anglo-Saxon noble from Lincolnshire. He had been a wild teenager. Sources say that he was so rowdy that his father got Eddie the Confessor to declare him an outlaw when he was only fourteen. Imagine being so much trouble that your dad gets you legally exiled at the age of fourteen. Anyway, he came home around 1070 and discovered that the Normans had seized his family's land, killed his brother. And this is the part that is just gnarly. They had put his brother's severed head on a spike above the front door of his family home. Herroward, who's now in his thirties, does what any reasonable man would do. He gathers some friends, he goes to where the Normans are, and he kills all fourteen of them. Obviously. And the next day, 14 Norman heads on spikes above his family's front door. Where his brother's head used to be. He becomes a guerrilla leader. He retreats to the Isle of Ely, which back in 1070 was a literal island, surrounded by miles of impassable swamp You wouldn't march an army across this terrain. The water is too deep for horses, the mud would swallow a man in armor, and the reeds were ten feet high. Herward sets up a fortified camp on the island, and he is unreachable. For two years, Harrowward runs an Anglo-Saxon resistance movement out of this swamp. He attracts other rebels, they raid Norman positions, they sack Peterborough Abbey when a Norman abbot is installed there. They're basically a real-life Anglo-Saxon Robin Hood operation, and William cannot get to them. So William, who's now extremely annoyed, tries to build a causeway. A literal wooden bridge a mile long across the swamp, just so he can march his armored knights to Harrowward's hideout. He tries this three separate times. First time, they build the causeway. It's huge. They march out onto it, and under the weight of the armor and horses, the entire causeway sinks into the swamp. The Normans who were standing on it drown. According to some sources, you could still find Norman skeletons in chainmail. being pulled out of the mud a hundred years later. Wow. Wowie zowie. Try two. They build a second causeway. The same thing happens. Guys, learn from our mistakes. Apparently they didn't learn anything the first time. You've watched two bridges sink. You're in charge of the next attempt. What's the first thing that you'd change? Make it be able to withstand more weight. Yeah. I think maybe they had reach their capacity with the technology they had. Okay. Or just bring less things. Exactly right. Why bring your horses? Yeah, don't bring your chors Just march. Don't bring your chainmail. Just like calm down. Like smell that deep. Well it is Time three. They build a third causeway. this is the part that is why I love Harrowward the Wake. While William's sitting in his camp planning the attack, Harroward And I'm not making this up, disguises himself as a potter, like a guy who sells pots. He puts on potter's clothes, takes a bunch of pots, and just walks into William's camp to sell pottery. The Norman guards have no idea who he is. He hangs around all day, listens to the soldiers talking, he figures out exactly when and how William plans to attack. Then he just walks back out, returns to Ely and prepares. When the Normans march out onto the third causeway, it doesn't sink this time, by the way. Herroward's men who are hidden in the tall reeds on both sides of the causeway set the reeds on fire. A wall of flame. The Normans on the causeway are trapped. It's like I feel like knowing that time period and how religious everyone was, like, I feel like they like summon the devil to fight against him. No, some try to run forwards, some try to run backwards, but many of them are burned alive. It's a catastrophe. So How do you think William actually finally wins? Does he do the same thing that Harrow were did and then like disguises himself? No. You'd know who he was. Yeah. I I that was kind of a shot in the dark there. I kind of knew it like that. Maybe kinda like similar to what he did in the Battle of Hastings. He like did the thing where he shot the arrows in the sky. Well no, they probably didn't have a shield wall, huh? They didn't have a shield wall and they were over a mile away. without the causeway. Well they had to invent long range weapon, obviously. Or he could cheat. Not by force. That's you. He bribes a monk. Apparently the monks at Ely Abbey who had been supporting Harroward were getting nervous about the Norman retribution. William offered them a deal. Show me a secret path through the swamp and your Abbey won't be touched. They sold out Harrowward. The Normans crossed the swamp in secret, attacked the camp at night, and Ely fell on October 27th, 1071. But Harrowward escapes. He just disappears. He goes into the marsh. Some sources say that he eventually made peace with William and lived out his life on his old lands. Some say he kept fighting as an outlaw and was eventually killed. Some say he was hunted down years later by Normans seeking revenge. Some others say that he fled to Scotland. Some say that he was never heard from again. The English peasants told stories about him for centuries. He's one of the earliest models for the Robin Hood legend that comes a couple of hundred years later. Anglo Saxon outlaw hiding in the wilderness, robbing Normans, refusing to die. The Anglo Saxon Chronicle calls him simply the brave outlaw. He is the only person in this entire six part series who, as far as we can tell, just walked away from the whole thing. Why do you think people would keep telling stories about hero word even after the rebellion was defeated? It almost seems like a beacon of hope for them. I like that. Yeah. It's just like a we can put up a fight. We aren't hopeless. Right. We're under the Norman yoke, but it's not impossible. Yeah. Yeah. It is definitely a beacon of hope. Yeah. Throughout history, that is what people really need is a beacon of hope. No matter how dire the situation, that little glimpse of hope can go a long way. Mm-hmm. It's like the the spark of rebellion is fueled by hope. Yeah. I'm just thinking of like the hunger games of like if they have hope, then there's rebellion. There you go. Like I think like that was as one of the paraphrased snow lines, but it is no coincidence that the Hunger Games use hope As huh. Absolutely not. I know it's su it's rooted in history. Yeah, I realized today that the Revolutionary War was pretty much just like a civil war. Right? Yeah. Like it Technically. Like technically a civil war. Like I realized that today. Rebellions are, yeah. Rebellions are what civil wars are called when the bad guys win. Wait, this is true. Civil wars is what happens when the good guys win. This is good, this is this is this is mind opening. mind opening, eye opening. Alright, Gavin, I asked Zoe this. Why do you think people would keep telling stories about Hero Word even after the rebellion was defeated? she said hope. Kinda like this is after the rebellion. After the rebellion's done, you know, they kept telling stories about Harroward for hundreds of years afterwards. Why do you think they keep telling these stories even after it was defeated? Just 'cause how epic he was and yeah, hope I agree. I I think that's the answer. I think that is the pretty much the only answer. Hope. It gives everybody hope. Hereward is the last serious resistance that William faces. By ten seventy two, England is sort of Norman. By ten eighty, William is firmly in control of England. He has crushed every rebellion. The English aristocracy is gone, dead, exiled, or holding small plots of land under Norman lords. The country is dotted with castles, the church is being reorganized under Norman bishops, the legal system is being rebuilt, and William, who is now in his early fifties and getting steadily heavier, decides he wants to do something nobody in medieval Europe has ever done. The Doomsday Book. He decides to count his entire kingdom. In 1086, William commissions what is, without exaggeration, the most ambitious bureaucratic project of the entire medieval period, if not all of history. Starting in the spring of 1086, he sends royal commissioners out to every village in England with detailed questionnaires. Had about 20 questions. How many people live here? How much land does each person have? How many oxen do you have? How many pigs? How many mills? What is each piece of property worth? Who owned it before ten sixty six? Who owns it now? How much is owed in taxes? Everything. About like I said, about twenty questions were asked of everybody. The commissioners write it all down in massive ledgers. By the time they're done, they have surveyed about 13,000 settlements and 30,000 manors. They know how many fish ponds are in England. They know how many beehives are in England. They know the exact value of every plot of land between the Channel and the Scottish border. The English peasants who watch these clipboard carrying commissioners go from village to village were horrified. The Anglo Saxon Chronicle, in one of the most quoted passages, says, So narrowly indeed did he have it investigated, that there was no single hide nor yard of land, nor indeed it is a shame to relate, but it seemed no shame to him to do it, was there an ox, cow, or pig left out that was not set down in his writ. The English nicknamed the book the Doomsday Book, because it felt like the last judgment. Like Not even God knows you this well, but William does. How long do you think it took to survey all thirteen thousand settlements and thirty thousand manors? How many how many people were working like on this? Like how many people did William have out doing all this like basically census work? I was gonna say that in the answer, but I'll give it to you now. About thirty commissioners. Only thirty for the whole of England? Okay, that puts it into perspective. They were put into circuits and like A a group of a group of two or three would go around a a circuit and there was like six circuits throughout the entire England and it it was a whole it was a whole thing, but about thirty of them. Thirteen thousand settlements, thirty thousand manors. I don't think it can be that long. Okay. Like considering how William's getting old, at least for this at least for this time. Like he's probably gonna die soon. You're game in the game here. I think he's about sixty right? Uh-huh. So I think around like five to seven years. Okay. I'm gonna say ten. Years? Ten years. Okay. No, ten days. Here's the wild part. It was finished in the summer of 1086. That's it. It only took about six months. What? A total of 30 commissioners were able to complete the survey in six months. It was probably the last time in all of history that government was efficient. The second crazy thing is that it still exists. We have it. It's sitting in the National Archives just outside London. You can go and look at it today. It's the oldest surviving public record in England. It's almost a thousand years old. Historians and genealogists still use it. If your family came from medieval England, there's a real chance that your village is in it with the 11th century name and exact number of pigs. That's so cool that you could track your family lineage. Ugh. Me and Mom watch a show called The Gentleman and and he's he's a Duke in England and he says something at one point that he can trace his lineage back to the Doomsday book. I was I was so happy when I heard that. That's goldy brain. Just like my god, that's so like The Doomsday Book is in some ways the real triumph of the Norman Conquest. It's the moment when England became a country that's known, counted, mapped, made legible to its rulers. No medieval king before William had ever attempted anything close to this. Excuse me. It changed how government would work in Europe for centuries. When it's finished, William's about 58 years old. He is, by all accounts, enormous at this point. Years of conquest banquets and sedentary middle age have caught up with him. The French king at the time, Philip I, makes a joke about him in 1087 that everybody finds hilarious. Philip says The King of England is lying in at Rouen like a pregnant woman after her delivery. He's calling William fat in public to the entire French court. Based on everything you know about William, how do you think he's gonna handle being made publicly fun of? Not very off with his head. Well, William here's the joke. And William, who's been the most feared man in Northwest Europe for twenty years, who's crushed armies and exterminated rebellions, decides that the proper response to a fat joke is to invade France. Obviously. Like what what else would you do? Like The man is fifty eight years old with a known weight problem and he decides the move is to mount a horse and burn down the French king's lands. Late July 1087, William rides into the French town of Mance with his army. They burn the town to the ground, set fire to the churches, pillage everything. William, who's one, Rides through the burning city on his horse, admiring the work that he has just done. And this part's the karma part of William's life. His horse steps on a piece of burning timber. The horse rears up. William, who's huge and not exactly a young man anymore, is thrown forward in the saddle. His enormous abdomen slams into the metal pommel, the front horn of the saddle, and it ruptures his intestines. my god, did he die? He's carried off the field, alive, but mortally wounded. He's taken to Roua, his capital, and for six weeks he lies in agony. The medical care of 1087 has no way to fix a ruptured intestine. He suffers terrible infection. He's in constant pain and has a lot of time to think during this period. He spends those six weeks doing what dying medieval kings do. He confesses his sins. He gives away enormous amounts of gold to churches. He says, Let what I amassed through evil deeds be assigned to the holy uses of good men. He divides his realms. Normandy goes to his oldest son, Robert. England goes to his second son, William Rufus. His third son, Henry, gets a chest of silver and no land. Which plot twist is gonna bite everyone later because Henry eventually takes the throne anyway, but That's a completely different story. And on september ninth, ten eighty seven, William the Conqueror dies in Rouen at fifty nine years old. And then the most embarrassing thing happens, and he isn't even alive to see it. boy. This is what makes the ebbs of history the ebbs of history. The moment William's confirmed dead, the nobles in the room flee. Like the second he stops breathing, they all jump and run out of the building. Because they need to get back to their estates immediately to defend him, since they all know the kingdom is about to plunge into chaos. The royal servants stay long enough to strip his body. Taking his fine clothes, his jewelry, his rings, and anything valuable. And then they leave too. Within hours of his death, William the Conqueror, the most powerful man in Northwest Europe, is lying half naked and abandoned on the floor of his own bedroom. Eventually, one knight, with apparently the only sense of honor in the entire court, comes back to arrange for William's body to be transported to Caen in Normandy for burial. William had founded an abbey there called Saint Etienne, specifically as a future burial place for himself. So that's where he's headed. The body is sailed from Rouen to Caen. By the time it arrives, several days have passed. It's hot, it's September. The body has not been embalmed properly. no. It's starting to bloat. It's like bodying. The funeral's held in the abbey. Does it stink? Hold that thought. boy. Bishops and abbots are there, a choir is singing. And just as the priests are about to lower William's body into the stone sarcophagus that was supposed to be his final resting place, they discover that the sarcophagus is too small. Ooh. They had measured wrong or William had gotten too fat. Probably both. You guys know what sarcophaguses are, right? Mm hmm. You you saw them at all the cathedrals that we went to in England. I see them every day in art history. There's a lot of them. There you go. Okay. Now, in a normal funeral, you'd stop, reconsider, get a bigger coffin. This isn't a normal funeral. The mourners, already in a hurry to get this over with, decide to force the body in. They push, they shove, they mash it down, they use their hands, they try to fold him. And William's bloated, decomposing body under the pressure, bursts. His bowels rupture. The smell that fills the abbey is according to the chronicler Orderic Vitalis, who was twelve years old at the time and may have actually been there, was unbearable. Decomposing flesh and entrails splatter the bishops in their fine robes. The choir stops singing, people are gagging. The priests rush to finish the ceremony as fast as they can while everyone runs for the exits. The most powerful man in Europe is buried in a cracked, leaking sarcophagus in less than two minutes, while a horrible stench fills his own beloved abbey. That's how William the Conqueror was buried. Ew. Now, his tomb was destroyed by French Protestants during the religious wars of the fifteen hundreds. His bones were thrown around. One thy bone was eventually recovered and reburied at the abbey. Now that bone got dug up again during the French Revolution, by the time it was reburied for the third time in nineteen eighty seven, By which point William's remains consisted of a single femur. DNA analysis was performed on it, and we aren't even totally sure that that one femur is even his. A man who conquered three kingdoms, who built a country, who created the most detailed government records in medieval Europe, whose great great great great grandsons would rule England for another four hundred years. And what's left of him is a single diebone in a church in Normandy that might not be his. But here's the thing. William didn't need a body to be remembered. The country he left behind was so transformed that a thousand years later, we still speak it. Because here's what nobody planned but everybody got. When a few thousand Norman knights moved to England and became the new ruling class and started running the courts, the government and the church, the schools. All in French. The English language didn't die. English peasants kept speaking their language. The Norman lords kept speaking theirs. And for about 300 years, England was a country with two languages operating in parallel. And slowly those two languages started to merge. This is why English is so weird. We have two words for almost everything. Well that's just the spelling of the same word. It's like beef is This is different. Cow is Anglo Saxon. What the peasant called the animal, and beef is the Norman French, what the Lord ate at the table. Pig and pork, sheep and mutton, chicken and poultry, deer and venison. The peasants raised them, the Normans ate them, both words survived. About half the words in modern English are descended from Anglo Saxon. About 30% are descended from Norman French. I'm gonna repeat that for you too. About half the words in modern English are descended from Anglo-Saxon. About 30% are descended from Norman French. The other 20% came from Latin and Greek and everywhere else. Every time you speak English. You're speaking the patched together hybrid language that came out of ten sixty six every single time. How amusing. The next time someone is being polite and formal, They're probably reaching for the Norman French half of the language. The next time someone's being blunt and direct, they're probably reaching for the Anglo-Saxon half. Pardon me is Norman. Sorry is Anglo-Saxon. Commence is Norman. Begin is Anglo-Saxon. We've been doing this for thousands of years and we don't even notice we're doing it. The Norman Conquest reshaped England's language, its laws, its architecture, its government, its aristocracy. its religion, and its connection to the rest of Europe. Before ten sixty six, England was a Norse country oriented towards Scandinavia and Denmark. After ten sixty six, it was tied to Normandy and France for the next four hundred years. Through the wars of King John, through the Hundred Years War, through the War of the Roses, all the way up to the loss of Calais in fifteen fifty eight. Half of medieval English history happens because of the Norman conquest. Historiography The sources for William's reign are extensive, but heavily Norman biased. The most useful sources of the aftermath of the conquest, including the rebellions and the harrying of the North, is Ortoric Vitalis, an Anglo Norman monk born in England to an English mother and a Norman father, writing in the early 1100s. Orderic generally admired William personally, but was willing to record his cruelties also. Which makes him unusually reliable. The Anglo Saxon Chronicle, of course, written by English monks continued to be updated throughout William's reign and gives us the English perspective. It's generally measured but pointed in its criticism. On the Bayou Tapestry, almost everything about it is inference. Nobody signed it, nobody dated it, no document from the eleventh century mentions it at all. Its first appearance in the written record is a fourteen seventy six inventory of Bayou Cathedral, four hundred years after it was made. The English manufacturer argument rests on the Latin spelling, the dianalysis, and the reputation of English embroidery in this period. It's a strong consensus position, but not a proven fact, Do you understand now why I don't see it as a primary resource? Yeah, I do, I understand now. The Harrowward legend mostly comes from two books, both written about a century after the events, and they all have the hallmarks of medieval folk legend. The disguise stories, the impossible escapes, the Robin Hood style cunning. So historians treat them with caution. That said, Harrowward definitely existed, and the rebellion at Ely actually happened. The details of the potter's disguise and the burning reeds may or may not be true, but the bones of the story are definitely real. The Doomsday Book itself is its own source and survives intact in the National Archives today. So Where are the National Archives? Just west of London. Next time we go, we'll go. The exploding funeral story is Orderic Vitalis, who was a child at the time and may have actually been present at the funeral, making this one of the rare medieval grotesqueries that has an eyewitness backing. And the looting of William's body by his attendants is corroborated in multiple sources. Lessons we've learned today. Today's lessons learned section is a long one because I kinda want to wrap it all up. It's also about why I enjoy studying William the Conqueror and the Norman Conquest. The big lesson of this episode and the entire series is that conquerors leave behind things they didn't plan. William wanted to be a king, and he got that. He wanted to crush English resistance. He got that. But the things William actually is remembered for, the things that truly mattered in the long run, are the things he didn't necessarily intend. The doomsday book, which he commissioned for tax reasons, accidentally became the foundation of modern government bureaucracy and the most important historical document in medieval England. The Norman Conquest, which he undertook to put a crown on his head, accidentally fused two languages into the strange hybrid that we're speaking right now. The castles he built to oppress the English became the romantic ruins that millions of tourists visit every year, including us. The Anglo Norman aristocracy he installed, eventually intermarried with the English to produce, over centuries, just English people. And most modern English citizens probably have ancestors on both sides of the conquest. What William meant to do and what William actually did are two completely different lists. And the second list is much more interesting. This is, I think, true of almost every powerful person in history. They focus on the immediate goals, they reach those goals or they don't, but the real legacy is in the side effects, the unintended consequences, the things that survive after the fighting stops. The other lesson is about endings. The Norman Conquest is one of those moments in history that everybody thinks of as a line, a before and an after. like turning a page in a book. But that isn't how it actually worked. The conquest took years. It wasn't over after the Battle of Hastings. It wasn't over after Christmas Day on 1066. It wasn't over after the harrying of the North. There were generations of English families who lived through what we now call the conquest without ever knowing whether it was finished. they never got to put down the book and say, well, that historical event is over. They just lived their lives in a country that was slowly, painfully, and sometimes brutally becoming something else. Big historical changes don't usually happen on single dates. They happen over decades. I know ten sixty-six is the big thing here. You know, that happened all in nine months. But how far back did we go? We went so quick. Seventy years. We went back seventy years. Yeah. So it doesn't happen in just one on one date, you know, October 14th, 1066. It doesn't happen like that. We went to ten thirteen. That's how far down. And now it is ten eighty ten eighty seven. Ten eighty seven. So what happens over decades? They happen to people, real people with grievances and real hopes, who mostly just want to grow their crops and raise their kids and watch their grandchildren grow up. The people in this series, Emma, Edward, Earl Godwin, Harold, Tostig, Harroward, William, all of We're real human beings who live through what we now turn into a clean six episode story. Their experience was anything but clean. Remember that the next time you read a history book that makes it sound like everything happened in a tidy sequence with clear winners and losers. Because it never does. The real story is always messier, slower, sadder, weirder, and more human than the version that gets told later. And that's exactly why we read history. Not because it gives us neat answers, but because it reminds us every time. what it actually means to be a person trying to live through a story that's bigger than you are. Powerful stuff. Time for the Fun Fact Challenge! right. I'm so scared. Before Gavin gets in and tells us the scores of our final fun fact challenge. We had two gifts given to the podcast from two separate people completely unaware of each other. They were both the same gift. We got buzzers. So, right now we're using the first one because I haven't received the the other one yet because it's still at grandma's house because grandpa bought it for us. but the one I'm using today is hooked up and it's gonna show us exactly who we're wrong in first, so I don't even have to think about it anymore. What if we glitch it out and like because we won't. I tried glitching it out when I was testing it, and it gave me an answer every single time. Interesting, interesting. Okay. Before we start, I want to thank Mosiv for this gift that we're using today. And now Gavin, please tell us the scores before we go into our final round. Alrighty. So last game, it was zero to two. There was no one got the third answer, but Zoe won that last one. Overall per game, it's three to two, me. And overall score, it's seven to seven. This this tidy up nicely. This is coming down to the wire. This is so scary. my gosh. Let's get into it. These buzzers are like. Alright, you guys got your buzzers? Yeah. I've got my little thing here to tell me who buzzes in first. And Gavin, remember, you have to have the answer before you buzz in. That's right. You can't go. What is it? What is it? Question one. By the time the doomsday book was compiled, roughly what percentage of English landowners were English born? Zoe. Ten percent. Okay. That is not correct. I know. But if Gavin can give me a closer answer, he'll take the point. Otherwise, Zoe gets the point. I'm gonna go eleven percent. Zoe gets the point. Five percent. I was debating between ten and five. no. I I think that's an astonishing number. Yeah. We he replaced ninety-five percent of English nobility with his friends. Crazy. And that's why he had such a hodgepodge army too, when you think about it, because they were second sons who had no land themselves because they were the second sons. And so he promised them land when the French won. Yeah. And they got that land if they lived. Yeah. All right. Question two. How many weeks did William lie dying after his horse Zoe? Six months. Gavin, do you have another answer? Because that is incorrect. If I'm closer I get it. Yeah. Wait, so can you repeat the question? How many weeks did William lie dying after his horse threw him against the saddle pommel? my god, three weeks. You're both wrong, but Gavin is definitely closer. Closer because it was six weeks. I heard that wrong. You said six months. my gosh, I heard that wrong. It was in the question, Zoe. How many weeks? so I thought it was a trick question. All right. Because I wrote. my gosh. We are tied up. It comes down. To the final question. my god. This is terrifying. Roughly, what percentage of modern English vocabulary is descended from N Gavin? 50%. No, no, no, 30. Hey! You said 50. No. That is incorrect. 30%. 30% on the dot. 50% from Anglo Saxon. And the remaining 20 from Latin, Greek, and other sources. Holy I I w I heard you say like that came down to the very last question. That was amazing. You both did so good. was that fun? It was like a fifty fifty. It kind of was really And I even made sure that I repeated that part because I know I was throwing a bunch of numbers at you at one time, so I wanted to repeat it. Yeah. So final score of this round is two to one for the game. Three to three for each game. But the tiebreaker comes down to nine to eight Zoe. Nine to eight Zoe. I cannot believe that. That was like a f I just need to wait like a couple more seconds. Yep. That was a comeback of the century. That was pretty good. This day in History! ⁓ All right, today is October 14th. That's right. We are dropping this episode one day early in commemoration of the Battle of Hastings. That's right. On this day in 1066, the Battle of Hastings occurred. King Harold II of England was defeated by William the Conqueror. Jesus Christ, guys. You should not Well, because yeah. William, Duke of Normandy at that time. That is true. Quite a bit of other things happened on this day too, like Dwight D. Eisenhower was born in eighteen ninety. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was published on this day in eighteen ninety two. Cuban missile Chris. That's right. The Cuban Missile Crisis, Soviet missiles photographed in Cuba in nineteen sixty two on this day, led to a thirteen day nuclear standoff. That's right. Very good. I have it pulled up right now, that's why I can just gave all these things right off the bat. the Cuban Missile Crisis begins on October 14th, 1962, bringing the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear conflict. Why is it the Cuban Missile Crisis? Because it was over Cuba. Because it was over Cuba. So there Russia was storing missiles, nuclear missiles in Cuba. Okay. And America had taken pictures, spy pictures, of them. And we came we came so close to the brink of nuclear war in these thirteen days. More close than we've ever been in our entire history. There were Russian ships that were coming into Cuba and of course America was on the other side. Other things happened before this too, but this all led up to these thirteen days where if anybody flinched, both countries would probably be gone. Mutually assured destruction. And this climate of the world would be so much different because of the nuclear radiation. Yes. Especially in North America. Like Canada and Mexico, at least like around the border. That that's crazy. So that's our story. Six episodes, seventy-one years, four kings, one Viking teenager who became a North Sea Emperor, one Queen of Normandy who was the connective tissue of everything. One blinding at Ely that started a 60 year grudge. One holy relic oath that turned into a holy war. One comet. One forced march, one battle on a bridge, one battle on a hill. One arrow in the eye that maybe wasn't really an arrow in the eye. One Christmas Day coronation in a burning church. One scorched earth campaign that killed a hundred thousand people, one incredible bureaucratic survey, one seventy meter comic strip made of wool, and one extremely embarrassing funeral. When people tell you history's boring, kids, you tell them about Heartha Canut dying, mid toast, and the lone Viking on Stamford Bridge, and Harroward the Wake disguising himself as a potter. And William's exploding corpse. History is never boring. It's just badly told sometimes. Last question for both of you. If you could ask one person from this entire series one question, who would you choose and what would you ask? It's a big deep breath. Yep. God. my gosh. either Eddie or Harold what they told to each other of who the vital heir is. Holy cannoli. Wait, you're so right. That's exactly what I have written. That's what I would have picked too. my gosh. No, exactly. Yep. That's so curious. He's the stem of all the historical questioning. That's completely right. One thing. If Harold Godwinson Hank got stuck, where was it? Normandy. If he hadn't gotten stuck in Normandy, then none of this would have happened. We would have known who the rightful heir This is Yep. This is true. This is true. This is you know, you're actually thinking of a different time than I'm thinking of, but the exact same thing. Mm-hmm. Mine was on Eddie the Confessor's deathbed. yeah. What did he say to Harold? Yeah. Yeah. You know, did he give him the kingdom? Or did he say protect the kingdom and go get William? We don't know. That's what I would ask. I would ask Eddie the Confessor what he told Harold Goblinson on his deathbed. That's awesome. Yeah. Hi five. All right. Thanks for taking this ride with us. We'll see you on the next episode when we will be back to our regularly scheduled weird and strange programming. Because that's it for this episode. Thanks for traveling through time with us. If you like today's story, share it with a friend, a teacher, or your family. Then come find us on Instagram at Ebbs of History with your show ideas, corrections, and questions. Signing off, this is your co-host, Gavin Zoe. And me. Jason. Until next time. Keep wondering, keep laughing, and keep learning through the ebbs of history.