Resistance and Revolt, 1067-1071
Conquest Was Not Settled in 1066
William sailed back to Normandy in March 1067 with English hostages and treasure, leaving his half-brother Odo of Bayeux and William FitzOsbern as regents. Within months, large parts of the country were in revolt. Between 1067 and 1071 William fought four major risings — in Kent, Exeter, the North, and the Fens — and in 1075 a fifth, the Earls’ Revolt. Each one nearly unmade the conquest. The misconception that Anglo-Saxon resistance was uncoordinated and doomed underestimates how close William came to defeat in 1069.
Kent and Eustace of Boulogne, 1067
The first revolt came on the very coast where William had landed. Eustace of Boulogne, a former ally now alienated by Odo’s rule in Kent, attempted a surprise attack on Dover Castle in autumn 1067. Local English thegns supported him, hoping a successful raid would chase the Normans out. The attack failed: the small Norman garrison held the castle on its high cliff, and Eustace withdrew. The episode showed two things — that the Normans’ new castles worked, and that resistance was already pulling in foreign allies as well as English rebels.
Exeter, 1068
In early 1068 Exeter, the largest town in the south-west, refused to pay an increased tribute and to admit a Norman garrison. The town was defended by Roman walls and the surviving Godwin family, including Harold’s mother Gytha. William marched in person with an army that included an English contingent — the first time the new king had used native English troops. The siege lasted 18 days. When Exeter surrendered, William showed measured terms: the city walls were left intact, no general massacre, but a new motte-and-bailey castle — Rougemont — was raised inside the walls to dominate the town. Gytha fled abroad.
Between 1067 and 1071 William faced four major revolts: Kent (Eustace of Boulogne, 1067), Exeter (the south-west, 1068), the North (Edwin and Morcar, then a Danish-backed rising in 1069), and Ely (Hereward and the Fens, 1070–71). Each was met with a new castle or worse.
Edwin, Morcar and the First Northern Revolt, 1068
Later in 1068 the northern earls Edwin of Mercia and Morcar of Northumbria revolted. They had submitted at Berkhamsted in 1066 and kept their earldoms, but they had been sidelined: Norman lords were taking land in their territories, and Edwin’s expected marriage to William’s daughter had not happened. They were joined by Edgar Atheling, who had fled north. William marched up the Roman road, building castles at Warwick, Nottingham, York and Lincoln as he went. The mere appearance of the army was enough; Edwin and Morcar submitted again, Edgar fled to Scotland, and the revolt collapsed without a battle. The lesson William took was that the North needed permanent garrisons.
The Second Northern Revolt and the Danish Fleet, 1069
The most dangerous moment of William’s reign came in 1069. In January, Robert de Comines, the new Norman earl of Northumbria, was killed in Durham along with around 700 of his men. In September a Danish fleet of around 240 ships, sent by Sweyn II of Denmark under the command of his sons and supporting the English claim of Edgar Atheling, sailed up the Humber. They were joined by the northern earls and by Anglo-Saxon nobles from Yorkshire and beyond. The combined force stormed York in late September; the Norman garrison was wiped out and the city’s castles destroyed. For a few weeks in autumn 1069, with revolts also flaring in Devon, Cornwall and the Welsh Marches, William’s rule was genuinely on the line.
The 1069 northern revolt combined a foreign invasion fleet, the legitimate Anglo-Saxon claimant Edgar Atheling, and the regional nobility of the North all at once. The Anglo-Norman chronicler Orderic Vitalis, writing about fifty years later, says William swore in his anger that he would not lay down his arms until the rebels were destroyed. He bought off the Danish fleet with a payment to leave, then turned on the rebels. The decision to crush the North in winter 1069–70 — the Harrying — came directly out of how dangerous this revolt had been.
Hereward and the Isle of Ely, 1070–71
The last major revolt of the conquest period was based in the marshes of the Fens. Hereward, a Lincolnshire thegn whose lands had been confiscated, used the Isle of Ely — a chunk of dry ground surrounded by miles of marsh — as a base for raids. He was joined by another Danish fleet briefly in 1070, by Earl Morcar (now in revolt for the second time), and by other dispossessed thegns. William attacked the Isle in 1071 by building causeways across the marshes; one collapsed under the weight of his army, drowning many men. Eventually the rebels were betrayed by the monks of Ely, who feared further reprisals. Morcar was captured and imprisoned for life. Hereward escaped into legend, his story exaggerated by later medieval ballads.
Castles as the Answer to Revolt
Each revolt left a trail of castles in its wake. After Exeter came Rougemont; after the 1068 northern revolt came castles at Warwick, Nottingham, York and Lincoln; after 1069 came rebuilt double castles at York and stronger garrisons across the North. By 1100, around 500 castles had been built across England — an extraordinary density compared to Anglo-Saxon defences. The pattern is clear: William responded to revolt with permanent military infrastructure designed to make a repeat impossible. Castles were a direct strategic response to resistance, not a generic feature of Norman culture.
The early conciliation policy of 1066–67 collapsed under the strain of repeated revolt. After 1068 William increasingly removed English nobles, replaced them with Normans, and centralised land in the hands of a few tenants-in-chief such as Robert of Mortain, William FitzOsbern and Odo of Bayeux. Castle-building, harsher punishments and the dispossession of Anglo-Saxon thegns went together; revolt was the trigger.
The 1069 northern revolt combined a Danish invasion fleet of about 240 ships with the Anglo-Saxon claim of Edgar Atheling and risings across Devon, Cornwall and the Welsh Marches. William bought off the Danes, then turned to the harrying campaign — an answer extreme enough to ensure no comparable revolt happened again under William I.