page_title: Harrying of the North
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Harrying of the North / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: The Abbey Church, Fountains Abbey. Today, the ruins at Fountains include some of the most significant Cistercian remains in Europe, notably, the twelfth-century western range and the oldest surviving Cistercian water-mill. Excavations at Fountains have uncovered the remains of the first timber buildings, which were begun in 1134.
context_page_description: The Harrying of the North was a number of campaigns waged by William the Conqueror in the winter of 1069–70 to subjugate northern England, where the presence of the last Wessex claimant, Edgar Atheling, had encouraged Anglo-Danish rebellions. William paid the Danes to go home, but the remaining rebels refused to meet him in battle, and he decided to starve them out by laying waste to the northern shires using scorched earth tactics, especially in the city of York, before relieving the English aristocracy of their positions, and installing Norman aristocrats throughout the region.
  Contemporary chronicles vividly record the savagery of the campaign, the huge scale of the destruction and the widespread famine caused by looting, burning and slaughtering. Some present-day scholars have labelled the campaigns a genocide, although others doubt whether William could have assembled enough troops to inflict so much damage and have suggested that the records may have been exaggerated or misinterpreted. Records from the Domesday Book show that 75% of the population died or never returned.
context_section_description: In 1076 William appointed another Earl of Northumbria. This time it was William Walcher, a Lotharingian, who had been appointed the first non-English Bishop of Durham in 1071.
  Having effectively subdued the population, William carried out a complete replacement of Anglo-Saxon leaders with Norman ones in the North. The new aristocracy in England was predominately of Norman extraction; however, one exception was that of Alan Rufus, a trusted Breton lord, who obtained in 1069–1071 a substantial fiefdom in North Yorkshire, which the Domesday Book calls "the Hundred of the Land of Count Alan", later known as Richmondshire. Here Alan governed, as it were, his own principality: the only location held by the King in this area was Ainderby Steeple on its eastern edge, while Robert of Mortain
  held one village on its southern fringe; the other Norman lords were excluded, whereas Alan retained the surviving Anglo-Danish lords or their heirs. Alan also exercised patronage in York, where he founded St Mary's Abbey in 1088. By 1086 Alan was one of the richest and most powerful men in England.
  In Scotland, Malcolm married the Ætheling's sister, Margaret, in 1071. Edgar sought Malcolm's assistance in his struggle against William. The marriage of Malcolm to Edgar's sister profoundly affected the history of both England and Scotland. The influence of Margaret and her sons brought about the Anglicisation of the Lowlands and provided the Scottish king with an excuse for forays into England, which he could claim were to redress the wrongs against his brother-in-law.
  The formal link between the royal house of Scotland and Wessex was a threat to William, who marched up to Scotland in 1072 to confront the Scottish king. The two kings negotiated the Treaty of Abernethy (1072), through which, according to the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, Malcolm became William's vassal; among the other provisions was the expulsion of Edgar Ætheling from the Scottish court. Edgar finally submitted to William in 1074. William's hold on the crown was then theoretically uncontested.
  In 1080 Walcher, the Bishop of Durham, was murdered by the local Northumbrians. In response, William sent his half-brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux north with an army to harry the Northumbrian countryside. Odo destroyed much land north of the Tees, from York to Durham, and stole valuable items from Durham monastery. Many of the Northumbrian nobility were driven into exile.
  
  As a result of the depopulation, Norman landowners sought settlers to work in the fields. Evidence suggests that such barons were willing to rent lands to any men not obviously disloyal. Unlike the Vikings in the centuries before, Normans did not settle wholesale in the shire, but only occupied the upper ranks of society. This allowed an Anglo-Scandinavian culture to survive beneath Norman rule. Evidence for continuity can be seen in the retention of many cultural traits:
  Many personal names of a pre-conquest character appear in charters that date from the 11th to the 13th century. The vigorous northern literary tradition in the Middle English period and its distinctive dialect also suggest the survival of an Anglo-Scandinavian population. The relative scarcity of Norman place-names implies that the new settlers came in only at the top rank. Domesday Book shows that at this level, however, Norman takeover in Yorkshire was virtually complete.
  Of the monasteries built, Fountains Abbey became one of the largest and richest. Along with the foundation of the northern monasteries, the Normans increased the number of motte-and-bailey castles they built there.
  The Normans used the church as an agent of colonisation and, post-1070, founded several monasteries in the north. There had been no monasteries north of Burton upon Trent before the harrying. 
  From the Norman point of view, the Harrying of the North was a successful strategy, as large areas, including Cheshire, Shropshire, Derbyshire and Staffordshire were devastated, and the Domesday Book confirms this, although in those counties it was not as complete as in Yorkshire. The object
caption: Fountains Abbey, Yorkshire. A ruined Cistercian monastery, founded in the 12th century.[52]
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