Lesson video

Hi guys, it's Mr. Charles here again and today we're looking at our final lesson of the inquiry question, how did a Norman become King of England? So today, it's all leading to this, we're looking at the battles of 1066.

What I need you to do is make sure you've got a pen and paper, make sure you're free of all distractions.

Hopefully you're in a quiet place.

If you make sure everything is set, so you're ready to concentrate on the lesson, that'd be great.

So pause the video now if you're not quite set and then play it when you are ready.

Now, you're all set.

Let's kick off the lesson.

So what I want you to do is I want you to look at these two images but particularly the one on the left.

So what I want you to think about is who is in this picture on the left, and also what is the picture above commemorating, what is it remembering? You can pause the video if you want.

I'm going to pause just for a couple of seconds, just so you can think about those questions.

Hey, so what you're probably thinking is that the picture on the left is perhaps William coming off a boat after he sailed from Normandy to England.

And what your property thinking about that picture of there, that Memorial almost, you're probably thinking that that is maybe a battle that happened between Harold and William.

But I'm sorry to say that if you thought that, that's not correct.

There's something that actually happened before William arrived in England.

And it's something we haven't really discussed yet but it was nevertheless a particularly important thing.

And it did have an effect on the battle between William and Harold later on.

So in actual fact, this picture on the left is of Harold Hardrada.

Now Harold Hardrada was a Viking and he came from Scandinavia where he was King.

And what he wanted was the English throne.

He like William was unhappy that Harold Godwinson had become King after Edward the Confessor had died.

And so here he is on the left, coming off his boat, and ready then to do battle with his Viking troops against Harold Godwinson.

That picture above on the right hand side, that is actually commemorating the Battle of Stamford Bridge.

And that was a battle between Harald Hardrada and between Harold Godwinson.

And actually this happened in the North of England.

The picture on the left is also from a 13th century illustrated book on Edward the Confessor and it's a really useful source for historians and also has some great artwork like the one you can see here.

So even though Edward the Confessor had died before this point, it still showed some of the events of 1066 in it.

So who was this Harold Hardrada? I mentioned already that he was a Viking King and his claim to the throne of England was from a King called King Cnut who had ruled England between 1016 and 1035.

So he'd ruled in the 11th century already.

And he was a Scandinavian King.

So that's where the link is and why Harald Hardrada thought that he should have the throne of England.

And he was accompanied by someone called Tostig.

Now, Tostig was actually the brother of Harold Godwinson, the English King, and it's really interesting that Tostig decided that he was going to join up with Harold Hardrada rather than stay on the side of his own brother.

And Tostig was particularly angry with Harold Godwinson because he would been removed as Earl of North Umbria, that area in the North of England.

He'd been removed from that position by his brother.

So Tostig was very angry, decided, I'm going to join up with Harald Hardrada and try and take the throne for him instead.

So there's a bit of a family feud happening here at the same time.

So the battle that was fought and in that picture previously that we just saw on the last slide, the battle that was fought, was called the Battle of Stamford Bridge.

Now it was fought on the 25th of September, 1066.

Now Harold Godwinson you have to remember had been waiting in the South of England and had been waiting for William's troops to arrive.

Now, if you remember the last lesson, William couldn't cross the channel, he couldn't cross across the seas because the wind direction did not favour him.

So he was waiting.

All of a sudden, Harold gets the call that actually there's an army from the Viking forces in the North, and he needs to take his army up there.

So that's what Harold Godwinson did, he moved his army from the South where he was waiting for William up to the North because Harald Hardrada and Tostig had landed.

So Harold marched up to York to fight and there were around 300 to 400 Viking ships which had arrived.

And the area we're talking about is near York.

Now the fight was particularly bloody.

It's not known exactly what happened in some of the action.

There have been rumours about a solitary Viking on a bridge that eventually was killed by Harold's troops.

There had been also talk that the Vikings had not put their armour on and they were actually surprised by Harold's troops coming to attack.

But the clear, clear result of the Battle of Stamford Bridge was that actually Harold Godwinson won.

The English forces had won and the Viking ships of which there were 300 or 400, only 24 returned back to Scandinavia.

So that's a pretty resounding victory for Harold Godwinson.

Although of course he lost some of his men fighting as well.

It should also be remembered that Tostig and Harald Hardrada both died in this battle.

So Harold Godwinson lived and his English forces won.

Harald Hardrada and Tostig died.

So therefore the Viking threat was ended.

Harold then had to concentrate again on William.

So here is a timeline of 1066 so far.

On the 5th of January, 1066 we know Edward the Confessor died and he left a succession crisis.

Who would succeeded him as King 'cause remember he didn't have any children.

After that 6th of January, 1066, the next day, Harold Godwinson became King of England.

He claimed that Edward had promised him the throne on his death bed and also the witan, this group of powerful Anglo-Saxon nobles, and church people, they appointed Harold as King.

Then there's a bit of a gap but all through this time, William of Normandy, as soon as he learns of Edward's death, he is building a force.

So he's having to chop down trees to make into boats 'cause he has to assemble this fleet of ships from scratch.

And he's also calling in favours from allies.

So maybe other French people might be able to help.

And remember he's prepping his Norman soldiers, getting them ready.

So in August 1066, he is ready to sail but he can't sail across the sea because the wind is in the wrong direction.

So this delays him and this means that Harald Hardrada is the first person with his army to face Harold Godwinson.

So on the 25th of September 1066, Harald Hardrada they have the Battle of Stamford Bridge and Harald Hardrada is defeated by Harold Godwinson.

The Battle of Stanford Bridge was on the 25th of September 1066 and three days later, William lands in the South of England.

And you can only imagine maybe the news that Harold gets or his face when he gets this news, that actually he's just fought a hard battle against the Vikings and now right at the other end of the country, he has to go and fight another one.

So very unfortunate timing for Harold.

Now he chose to go as quick as he could to face William down in the South of England.

And some historians really questioned whether this was a good idea or not.

It should be said that when William arrived in the South of England, he didn't just stay there and have a nice beach party in the South, on the coast.

Instead he was raiding nearby villages and towns and he was terrorising the local population.

He was almost inciting or trying to get, I should say Harold to come and face him quickly.

And also he had built a castle nearby to house some of his Norman army.

This was a wooden castle and it was constructed quickly.

So William's in the South coast and we have Harold still in the North but Harold decides to go down as quickly as possible to face William.

So what he does, he marches down with some of his army.

He does leave some of his army that fought in the Battle of Stamford Bridge up in the North but he goes down and he collects extra troops in London.

And within a couple of weeks, he's back down in the South of England and he's about to face William.

It should also be remembered that if he was marching in some sources potentially say, or some people speculate that maybe he took a ship as well to get down quicker.

But if he was marching, then that was 20 plus miles a day of hard marching to get back down South.

That's a really tough ask for an army which has just fought a big battle.

So what he does, he gathers reinforcements in London and then he goes down and Harold and William meet in the South about 10 miles outside of Hastings.

The battle itself happened on the 14th of October at 1066.

So a bit over two weeks after Harold had fought Harald Hardrada in the Battle of Stamford Bridge.

The battle is known as the Battle of Hastings because it was near to Hastings.

And we have on the Norman side, the Normans brought over 696 ships just below 700 ships, a huge amount and they had around 7,000 troops, possibly Harold had around 8,000, maybe a few more than William but they were fairly evenly matched.

It should also be remembered that the Normans had cavalry.

So soldiers on horseback and they also had arches with a bow and arrow.

So that's in comparison to the English who didn't have those types of troops.

If you look at the diagram, we can see that the English are the red line that curves around in a kind of a U shape.

And we can see that the Normans are the blue lines and they were divided into three separate formations.

The English had chosen a position on top of a steep hill and therefore it made it harder for the Norman cavalry to charge up that hill because they would lose their speed.

So the English had chosen a really good position and they made sure that they weren't outflanked that the Normans couldn't go round them.

The English tactic as well was to have a shield wall.

And this was a defensive formation where troops would be packed in really, really tightly to each other.

So there'd be no gaps in this shield wall.

They have their shields out and therefore when the Normans come and try to attack them, there were no gaps for them to exploit, to try and get through.

And so the formation of the English is very, very strong.

It is said that some shield walls, that if someone died, they were packed so tightly together that the dead body would stay upright.

The battle raised on for hours and indeed it took all day.

But for much of the battle, the Normans were struggling to break down the English shield wall.

However, the Normans had a tactic and it exploited the English armies' ill discipline and poor organisation.

Remember that Harold Godwinson had left much of the army that had fought with him in the Battle of Stamford Bridge.

He'd left them in the North and he'd picked up new troops.

Some of which maybe had never been in a battle before in the South and around London.

And these new troops, maybe weren't quite as experienced in battle.

And maybe didn't quite listen to commanders quite as well.

And the Normans used a tactic called the fake retreat.

They pretended to run backwards.

They pretended to flee and what the English did, they started to chase them.

And if the English started to chase them, that meant they left their defensive shield wall, leaving gaps in it.

And this is a problem just like in a brick wall if you start to take some of the bricks out, that means that it's probably not quite as strong the wall as what it was before.

And that's the same with what happened with the English shield wall because soldiers started to see the Normans flee and they started to chase them and they started to think, all right, we're going to win this battle.

They're running away from us.

Let's go after them and just kill the last ones.

But in actual fact, the Normans reorganised and they came back against the English and now there were gaps in the shield wall.

And now there were lots of soldiers running around the battlefield that meant that the cavalry and the soldiers of the Norman army could really take down the English.

And this is really the turning point of the battle and where the battle was won.

In the next part, you're going to be doing some reading and you'll be looking at the death of Harold Godwinson along with some of the stuff we've just learned about the Battle of Hastings.

So go on to that slide in a second.

So what I want you to do now is read through the text and answer five questions.

So what you'll need to do, you'll need to go onto the website and go onto the next part of the website for this lesson.

And you'll have a few slides of texts and you need to read through them.

There are five questions to answer which are on and about the text.

There's also a challenge question which was, was William's victory in the Battle of Hastings because of William's good leadership or Harold Godwinson's mistakes? So what you need to do now is pause the video, read through the reading and answer the questions.

Press play again once you've done that.

Well done guys, great work, fantastic.

Well done for doing those questions and reading through that text.

So we're going to go through the answers now.

We'll have an acceptable answer and a good answer.

And remember that the acceptable answer sometimes will have worst punctuation or maybe it'll leave certain details out or maybe it won't have capitalised some of the letters that should be capitalised.

And the good answer is going to include that good information, that extra information and also have good punctuation and spelling.

Remember your answers might not look exactly the same as mine.

It's absolutely fine to have something slightly different or maybe include different bits, everyone's different and that's fine.

So question one, why might Harold Godwinson and his army be tired before the Battle of Hastings? So the acceptable answer would be that Harold's army might be tired because they had to march to the South quickly.

A good answer would include a little bit of extra information.

So Harold's army might be tired because they had to march to the South quickly and they had just fought a battle against Harald Hardrada.

Remember that battle, that was the Battle of Stamford Bridge up in the North of England.

Number two, what tactic did the English use in the battle? So the acceptable answer is they use the shield wall in battle because that's what they did.

And it worked for as long as it lasted.

Good answer is that the tactic, the English used in battle was a defensive shield wall to stop the Normans from getting through.

They also positioned themselves at the top of the hill so that it was harder for the Normans to attack them.

So that's given a bit of extra information.

Remember that it's much harder to fight uphill.

It's much harder, particularly if you're carrying a sword or something to be fighting uphill.

It's very difficult whereas it's much easier to say fight downhill because gravity is on your side.

Number three, what tactic did the Normans use in the battle? So the acceptable answer would be the Normans used a fake retreat but adding a bit of extra information in here, a good answer is this, the Normans used a fake retreat in the battle.

They did this so that the English would leave their shield wall, they could then attack the gaps left behind.

So in that answer, there's a bit of an explanation about what the fake retreat did and how it would help them win the battle.

Question four, how did Harold Godwinson die? And an acceptable answer would be arrow to the eye.

But preferably we want this to be a nice full sentence.

So it's clear if you didn't look at this for a few weeks and then suddenly you looked at it you'd know what you were talking about.

So good answer is it is not known exactly how Harold died and that's important because remember historians are undecided and perhaps we'll never know fully.

The Bayeux Tapestry shows that he died from an arrow to the eye, although other accounts say that Norman knights killed him.

And potentially it could have been a combination of both.

He may have had an arrow to the eye.

And then after that when he was wounded, he may have been killed by knights.

But again, it's very hard to tell and we'll never know.

Do you remember that the Bayeux Tapestry was written by Normans or made by the Normans I should say.

And do you remember that also Harold, he did definitely die in that battle.

So that is something we do know.

He did die in the Battle of Hastings.

Question five, when was William crowned King of England and where? So the acceptable answer is he was crowned King on 25th of December or Christmas day, you could put that.

A good answer would be William was crowned King of England on 25th of December, 1066 at Westminster Abbey in London.

And there we've got a little bit of extra information.

Remember the Battle of Hastings was the 14th of October.

So it did take him another couple of months to be crowned King and this is because English nobles did not want him to become King.

They didn't want someone who was from France, who was from Normandy being in charge of them because they knew everything would change.

And so that's why it took them a while to accept that he would eventually become King.

And William went round crushing some small rebellions in the South of England at this time to make the English nobles know that yes, I am the King now.

Lastly, we just have our challenge question and this is often where you can maybe put your own ideas forward and where there may be a longer answer.

So the challenge question was, was William's victory in the Battle of Hastings because of William's good leadership or Harold Godwinson's mistakes? Now you could choose one or the other and that'd be absolutely fine.

If you think yes, definitely down to William's good leadership and you could give some evidence for that then that's absolutely fine because as historian it's all about how you justify things.

And on the other hand, if you thought it was just down to Harold Godwinson's mistakes, then that would be fine as well.

But a really, really, really good answer could be arguing both sides or examining both sides.

So I'll read it out.

It could be argued that it was a combination of both William's good leadership and Harold's mistakes.

On the one hand, William showed that he was a great military leader because he was well prepared for battle.

And he used the clever tactic of the fake retreat.

On the other hand, Harold made a couple of mistakes.

One of these was rushing to fight William when his army wasn't ready.

The second of these was allowing his men to leave the shield wall to chase William's men.

So there we have a nice balanced answer.

And one that really shows maturity I think because it examines both sides which is important as historians to do sometimes.

Okay, so now we know that William has become King of England on 25th of December 1066.

And we know that Harald Hardrada and we know that Harold Godwinson are dead.

We need to examine really the inquiry question which we've been thinking about in the background for the last four lessons.

The inquiry question was how did a Norman become King of England? And there are multiple reasons why a Norman, William became King of England.

It's important just to look back at some of the lessons we've done.

So in the first lesson we looked at Normandy, we looked at the fighting spirit of the Normans and their background.

We looked at Matilda and we're introduced to William as well.

In the second lesson, we looked at England, the place where William had his eye on and we looked at Edward the Confessor and the succession crisis.

We looked to who Harold Godwinson was and his claim to the throne.

Then in the third lesson, we looked at William's claim.

Was his claim to the throne strong? Why did he want to be King of England? And also we looked to his preparations to invade.

And then in this lesson, what we've looked at are the Battles of 1066.

So right towards the end in the winter of 1066.

So we looked at Stamford Bridge and Harold Hardrada and how Harold Godwinson won that battle.

And then how Howard Godwinson lost the Battle of Hastings afterwards against William.

So this is our last activity before the exit quiz.

And we're really thinking about this main question and it links, it's very similar to the inquiry question.

How did William become King of England? So in that table, right in the middle of the slide, we've got lots of different reasons why William became King of England.

And there are also some you might think of yourself.

Maybe the oaths and the fact that Harold Godwinson was an oath-breaker played a big part in William becoming King because it meant that William could gather more support from people because they saw Harold as this bad person.

So there are certainly other reasons that you could include.

These aren't the be all and end all of all the reasons you can include and if you want to include your own, that's absolutely fine.

But as I say in this table, we have six reasons why William became King of England.

What I want you to do is choose your top three reasons for why William became King of England and say why you think this.

So you've got to look at all those different reasons.

What do you think are your top three? And you've got to say for each of them, why you chose that as one of the main reasons why he became King.

So you can use a sentence starter to do on your piece of paper or wherever you're writing.

And you could say, I believe and then say one of the reasons is an important reason for why William became King because.

And you need to give a good reason, a good piece of evidence for why you think that that's an important reason.

Why do you think that's more important than the other reasons perhaps.

As a challenge, what you can do is you can also think about what reasons in this list are short term reasons.

So ones that are in 1066 and which of those are longterm reasons.

So those that were before 1066 for why William won.

So what would be a short term reason and what would be a longterm reason 'cause we know that it didn't just happen magically overnight why William became King.

Some of these things happened in 1066 and others of these things happened before 1066 which helped him or played a part in him becoming King.

So pause the video now and do this in your books or wherever you're writing.

And then after that, unpause it and we'll go through what you could potentially have put.

As mentioned before, you could have put in some of your own reasons.

So I mentioned one about the strength of the oath and how that could have played a part in William becoming King.

Other ones you could have potentially put, maybe the Pope's support played a big role in William becoming King.

Other ones such as maybe Harold's mistakes in maybe rushing to go and confront William in the South or maybe where he allowed his soldiers to run after the fake retreat that the Normans used in the Battle of Hastings.

Those are also good reasons for why William became King other than on our table.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go through the answers to this.

Now realistically, there aren't really answers.

It's all about what you think.

So there's no right or wrong.

It's more about how you argue your point.

So how strong your argument is to why you think one is more important than another.

So what we've got on here, I've colour coded it.

So blue are short term reasons.

Remember this was the challenge.

If you got onto that and the pinky colour, maybe purple you could say are longterm reasons.

So let's start in the top left.

So William use good tactics in the Battle of Hastings.

Now this is a short term reason because the Battle of Hastings was in 1066.

And you could definitely say that William had some great tactics.

The fake retreat was really the turning point of the battle.

So if you put that, I think that's a very valid reason for why William became King.

Remember we were doing our top three, so you could have put them in any order.

If we go down, then Harold's army was tired after facing Harold Hardrada in the Battle Stamford Bridge.

This certainly could have played a big role in William's victory and in William becoming King of England.

Because maybe if Harold's army wasn't tired, if they had never faced Harald Hardrada, then they might've been fresher.

They might've been more ready to fight William of Normandy.

In this case obviously they weren't.

Okay, if we go into the top middle, there's a purple box there or a pink box, longterm reasons.

So this one says William's personality was determined, ambitious and sometimes ruthless.

So maybe William's character was that of a strong leader of someone who inspired people to fight for them.

Someone who never gave up and was prepared to do anything to become King of England, even if it meant hurting innocent people.

So this could definitely be a reason why William became King of England.

Remember, there's no right and wrong.

It's all about what you put so all of these are equally right.

So the bottom one in the middle, this is a blue reason, which means it's short term.

So you could argue that luck played a part in William's victory.

And this is something that is outside of anyone's control.

So for example, if the wind was different, if it was blowing in the right direction, he might've ended up facing Harold Godwinson first.

And remember Harold was waiting for him on that South coast.

He was ready to fight with him before he ended up being told that Harald Hardrada had landed in the North and he had to go up to the North to fight him.

So that could have changed things.

So the fact is that luck was maybe on William's side and this could have really helped him become King of England.

Over there, we've got longterm reasons.

Over there, that's absolutely wrong.

In the top right, sorry of our table.

We've got another longterm reason which is that Matilda supported William allowing him to go to England while she ruled Normandy.

And you could say that this was an important reason for why William became King because without this backing of Matilda, then William might not have been able to leave Normandy because he'd had been worried that someone might try and take his territory from him.

So Matilda gave him that reassurance because she was a very capable person who was able to lead Normandy whilst he could go abroad.

Matilda also supplied troops from Flanders to William which again, helped him win the Battle of Hastings.

So you could say Matilda was particularly important toward William becoming King.

And lastly, in the bottom right.

We have William was well prepared and had a strong army who were experienced fighters.

We know about the Viking blood coursing through the Norman veins and we know that they were kind of born to fight.

It was in their character but also the fact that William was well-prepared.

He was used to having a strong army around him.

He was used to having experienced fighters, certainly fighters who were maybe more experienced in war than Harold Godwinson's at the Battle of Hastings.

So that again could have been the difference in helping William become King of England.

So I'll reiterate one more time.

There was no right answer there.

It's all about how you argue your point.

And it's all about saying what you think is your top reason maybe for William becoming King or what you think your top three reasons are for him becoming King.

And I can't tell you any differently.

You've researched this topic now over four lessons.

So you are in a great position to be able to justify and argue your own point and what you think.

And that's the end of the lesson.

Over the past four lessons, we've looked at how a Norman became King of England.

And now by the end of 1066, we have a Norman as King of England.

But William still had a lot to do to try to control the country.

Remember a lot of England did not want him as King.

It's been an absolute pleasure teaching you.

I've really, really enjoyed it.

Remember to complete the end of lesson quiz right there.

And if you would like, then you can share your work with Oak and you need to ask your parent or carer to do that.

So do not do it yourself.

You need to ask, that would be great.

On any of those social media platforms. Of course, I'd love to see your work as I'm sure it's fantastic.

I've been Mr. Charles, you've been the best.

Thank you very much, bye bye.