Harrying of the North The Harrying ( or Harrowing ) of the North was a series of campaigns waged by William the Conqueror in the winter of 1069 – 1070 to subjugate northern England , and is part of the Norman conquest of England . It effectively ended the quasi - independence of the region through large - scale destruction that resulted in the relative " pacification " of the local population and the replacement of local Anglo - Danish lords with Normans . A contemporary Anglo - Norman chronicler wrote that the death toll , due to the Harrowing , was over 100 , 000 . Because of the scorched earth policy , much of the land was laid waste and depopulated , a fact to which the Domesday Book , written almost two decades later , readily attests . Background information . At the time of the Norman Conquest " the North " consisted of what became Yorkshire , Durham , and Northumberland on the east and Lancashire with the southern parts of Cumberland and Westmorland on the west . The population of the north pre - conquest can be described as “ Anglo - Scandinavian ” carrying a cultural continuity from a mixing of Viking and Anglo - Saxon traditions . The dialect of English spoken in Yorkshire was likely unintelligible to people from the south of England , and the aristocracy was primarily Danish in origin . Further , communications between the north and south were difficult , partly due to the terrain but also because of the bad state of the roads . The more popular route between York and the south was by ship . In 962 Edgar the Peaceful had granted legal autonomy to the northern earls of the Danelaw in return for their loyalty ; this had limited the powers of the Anglo - Saxon kings north of the Humber who succeeded him . The earldom of Northumbria stretched from the Tees to the Tweed . After the defeat of the English army and death of Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings , English resistance to the conquest was centred on Edgar Ætheling , grandson of Edmund and half - brother of Edward the Confessor . It is said that the English conceded defeat , not at Hastings , but at Berkhamsted two months later when Edgar and his supporters submitted to William in December 1066 . However , of all the men who submitted to William at Berkhamsted it was only Ealdred , Bishop of York , who would remain loyal to the Norman king . William faced a series of rebellions and border skirmishes in Dover , Exeter , Hereford , Nottingham , Durham , York and Peterborough . Copsi , a supporter of Tostig ( a previous Anglo - Saxon earl of Northumbria who had been banished by Edward the Confessor ) , was a native of Northumbria and his family had a history of being rulers of Bernicia , and at times Northumbria . Copsi had fought in Harald Hardrada ' s army with Tostig , against Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066 . He had managed to escape after Harald ' s defeat . When Copsi offered homage to William at Barking in 1067 , William rewarded him by making him earl of Northumbria . After just five weeks as earl , Copsi was murdered by Osulf , son of Earl Eadulf III of Bernicia . When , in turn , the usurping Osulf was also killed , his cousin , Cospatrick , bought the earldom from William . He was not long in power before he joined Edgar Ætheling in rebellion against William in 1068 . With two earls murdered and one changing sides , William decided to intervene personally in Northumbria . He marched north and arrived in York during the summer of 1068 . The opposition melted away , with some of them – including Edgar – taking refuge at the court of the Scottish king Malcolm III . Back in Northumbria , William changed tack and appointed a Norman , Robert de Comines , as earl , rather than an Anglo - Saxon . Despite warnings from the bishop , Ethelwin , that a rebel army was mobilised against him , Robert rode into Durham with a party of men on 28 January 1069 , where he and his men were surrounded and slaughtered . The rebels then turned their attention to York where they killed the guardian of the castle there plus a large number of his men . William ' s response was swift and brutal : he returned to York , where he fell on the besiegers , killing or putting them to flight . Possibly emboldened by the fighting in the north , rebellions broke out in other parts of the country . William sent earls to deal with problems in Dorset , Shrewsbury and Devon while he dealt with rebels in the Midlands and Stafford . Edgar Ætheling had sought assistance from the king of Denmark , Sweyn II , a nephew of King Canute . Sweyn assembled a fleet of ships under the command of his sons . The fleet sailed up the east coast of England raiding as they went . The Danes plus their English allies retook the city of York . Then , in the winter of 1069 , William marched his army from Nottingham to York with the intention of engaging the rebel army . However , by the time William ' s army had reached York , the rebel army had fled , with Edgar returning to Scotland . As they had nowhere suitable on land to stay for the winter , the Danes decided to go back to their ships in the Humber estuary . After negotiation with William , it was agreed that , if he made payment to them , then they would go home to Denmark without a fight . With the Danes having returned home , William ' s patience with the rebels seems to have run out . As they were not prepared to meet his army in pitched battle , he employed a strategy that would attack the rebel army ' s sources of support and their food supply . The Harrying . William ' s strategy , implemented during the winter of 1069 - 1070 ( he spent Christmas 1069 in York ) , was an act of genocide that became known as the Harrying of the North . From the Humber to the Tees , William ' s men burnt whole villages and slaughtered the inhabitants . Food stores and livestock were destroyed so that anyone surviving the initial massacre would succumb to starvation over the winter . The land was salted to destroy its productivity for decades to come . The survivors were reduced to cannibalism . Contemporary biographers of William considered it to be his cruelest act and a stain upon his soul , but the deed was not mainstream knowledge before Whig history . The Harrying of the North is regarded as the worst act of genocide in the history of Britain . In his " Ecclesiastical History " , the Anglo - Norman chronicler Orderic Vitalis said : Other 12th century chronicles by William of Malmesbury , Symeon of Durham and Florence of Worcester report the Harrying with an obvious feeling that it was not an acceptable act . 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 . Oderic Vitalis was born in 1075 and would have been writing his " Ecclesiastical History " some 55 years after the event . It is possible that the figure of 100 , 000 was used in a rhetorical sense , as the estimated population for the whole of England , based on the 1086 Domesday returns was about 2 . 25 million ; thus , a figure of 100 , 000 represented a large proportion of the entire population of the country at that time ( ~ 4 . 5 % ) . Legacy . In 1071 William appointed another Earl of Northumbria , this time it was William Walcher , a Lotharingian , who was the first non - English bishop of Durham . Having effectively subdued the population , William carried out a wholesale 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 whole area was Ainderby Steeple on its eastern edge , while Robert of Mortain held one village on its southern fringe ; the other Norman lords were completely 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 also 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 an obvious 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 Malcolm became William ' s vassal ; amongst 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 : 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 - on Trent before the Harrying . 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 . 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 of the Harrying was to prevent further revolts in Mercia and Northumbria ; however , it did not prevent rebellions elsewhere .