Table Of ContentTHE 1066 NORMAN
BRUISERS
HOW EUROPEAN THUGS BECAME
ENGLISH GENTRY
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THE 1066 NORMAN
BRUISERS
HOW EUROPEAN THUGS BECAME
ENGLISH GENTRY
HELEN KAY
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First published in Great Britain in 2020 by
PEN AND SWORD HISTORY
An imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
Yorkshire – Philadelphia
Copyright © Helen Kay, 2020
ISBN 978 1 52675 938 2
The right of Helen Kay to be identified as Author of
this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
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Contents
Acknowledgements ....................................................................................vi
A Note on Money, Land and Names .........................................................vii
List of Maps and Family Trees ...................................................................ix
Introduction .................................................................................................1
1 Winner Takes All ..............................................................................5
2 The Wages of War ..........................................................................21
3 An Undone Land ............................................................................32
4 What’s in a Name? ..........................................................................45
5 Family versus Flock .......................................................................58
6 The Path of Chivalry ......................................................................71
7 One Welshman’s Head .....................................................................91
8 Blade and Trade ............................................................................105
9 On the King’s Business ................................................................117
10 Floating in Blood .........................................................................132
11 Illicit Amour .................................................................................143
12 Cornered and Constrained .............................................................154
13 Black Smoke ................................................................................164
14 An Unequal Contest ......................................................................172
15 Venom in the Veins ........................................................................190
16 The Double Legacy .......................................................................202
17 Fortune’s False Wheel ....................................................................217
18 Ashes and Dust ..............................................................................230
Abbreviations ..........................................................................................245
Notes .......................................................................................................247
Select Bibliography .................................................................................258
Index .......................................................................................................261
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Acknowledgements
As I write, Britain is renegotiating its relations with the European
Union, a process that implicitly entails rethinking what it means both to
be British and to belong to one of the United Kingdom’s four constituent
countries. National identities are a complex mix of history, culture,
language, politics and landscape, and the concept of Englishness has
evolved over time. But it has long struck me as ironic that the roots of
one enduring image of Englishness – the county squire with his rolling
acres – aren’t really English at all. By and large, the landed gentry came
from the Norman bruisers who crossed the Channel in 1066.
A number of people have helped me to flesh out the story of the ruffians
who feature here. I must first pay tribute to Gwen Ashbaugh, lifelong friend
and early beta-reader, who died before this book could be completed. Her
wisdom, humour, kindness and courage were a source of inspiration.
I am also deeply grateful to Linda Ban, Ann Kottner, Peter Spring and
Tess Tavormina, both for their incisive comments on various drafts and
for their unstinting moral support. Peter provided invaluable input on
military matters, while Tess shared her expertise on medieval medicine.
No author could ask for better companions on the long journey from
conception to final text. I am equally beholden to Kristina Bedford
for deciphering many a faded manuscript on my behalf, and to Katy
Parkinson for kindly taking me on a road trip around Cheshire. Katy, it
transpires, is a descendant of one of the characters in this book.
My sincere thanks go to Jon Wright and Laura Hirst, my commissioning
editor and production editor respectively, at Pen & Sword. I am also
indebted to Professor J.J.N. Palmer, George Slater and opendomesday.org
for providing the image from the Domesday Book that appears in the
background on the dust jacket under a Creative Commons By-SA licence.
Above all, I want to express my gratitude to my parents. I owe my
interest in history to my mother and this particular piece of history to my
father. Like my friend Katy, he can trace his lineage back to eleventh-
century invaders who were neither English nor landed nor gentle.
vi
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A Note on Money, Land and Names
Money
The standard unit of currency in medieval England was the pound (£).
A pound was worth 20 shillings (s) and a shilling was worth
12 pence (d). Thus, a pound equalled 240d. The silver coin was the
only coin in circulation until the thirteenth century, when the farthing
(¼d) and groat (4d) were introduced. The gold noble (6s 8d) was added
in 1344. Marks were also used for accounting purposes. One mark was
worth two-thirds of a pound (13s 4d).
Land
Land was measured in terms of the yield it produced, so the actual
area varied widely depending on the climate and quality of the soil.
A virgate was the area of land a pair of oxen could plough in a year,
while a bovate was the area one ox could plough in a year. Four bovates
made up a hide – the amount of land considered sufficient to support
a typical peasant family. This was nominally 120 acres. In 1305,
parliament passed a law specifying the size of an acre (4,840 square
yards), but many parts of England continued to use ‘customary acres’
until the early nineteenth century. The Cheshire acre was traditionally
10,240 square yards. Other measures included the selion (an open
strip of land) and the perch (a unit of length based on the pole used to
control a team of oxen).
Names
The languages of government were Latin and Norman French and the
spelling of English wasn’t standardised. Names therefore occur in many
vii
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THE 1066 NORMAN BRUISERS
different versions in written records. Some surnames were toponymic
and took the form ‘de X’, where X was a place. Hugh de Dutton was ‘of’
Dutton in Cheshire, for example. This clerical convention declined in the
late fourteenth century. I have anglicised and modernised the spelling
of all personal names and place names except those included in direct
quotes, where I have kept the original spelling. I have also retained the
preposition before toponymic surnames in the early part of the text.
viii
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List of Maps and Family Trees
The Boydells of Dodleston, Grappenhall and Handley .........................x
William the Conqueror’s claim to the English throne ............................7
Normandy in 1066 .................................................................................9
The route of Harold’s forced march .....................................................11
William’s campaign routes, 1067-1071 ................................................18
Osbern fitz Tezzo’s Domesday holdings ...............................................26
The Boydell estates in Cheshire ...........................................................60
North Wales in 1241 after Henry III’s annexation of
the Four Cantrefs .............................................................................76
The princes of Gwynedd .....................................................................83
The key castles in the northernmost part of Wales in 1282 .................97
Chester Castle with the new prison by the northern gate ...................111
William Boydell’s journey to Avignon in 1309 ..................................120
The parties to the dispute over Dunham Massey ...............................159
The port of St Malo in 1378 ...............................................................196
The descent of the Danyers family’s estates .......................................205
The connection between Sir William Mainwaring
and Robert Boydell .......................................................................219
The major administrative and lordship divisions of
north Wales, c. 1400 ......................................................................232
ix
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