1016

990s

968-1016

991

1016

1018

1035-1036

1036

Viking raids resume

Rule of Aethelred the Unready (Aethelrad, lit. ‘good counsel’; Unraed, lit., ‘bad counsel’)

Battle of Maldon (Essex)

Death of Aethelred; son and heir Edmund Ironside badly defeated by the Danes at Ashingdon in October 1016

November, Edmund Ironside unexpectedly dies; Danish leader and prince of Denmark, Cnut, assumes rule of Danelaw and Wessex

Promotion of Earl Godwin

Death of Cnut

Cnut’s two sons (Harthacnut and Harold Harefoot) war over succession

Alfred and Edward (later the Confessor), Emma’s sons, return to England from Normandy

Alfred betrayed by Earl Godwin and murdered by Harold Harefoot; Edward returns to Normandy

1040

1041

1042

1043

1045

1051

1052

1050-60s

1064

Harold Harefoot dies; Harthacnut assumes throne, has his brother’s body exhumed and thrown in the river Thames

Harthacnut seeks reconciliation with Edward to gain allies against rival Vikings; Edward returns to England again

Harthacnut dies unexpectedly at a wedding feast, ‘falling to the ground with terrible convulsions’; Earl Godwin maneuvers Edward to the throne

Easter – Edward crowned at Winchester

Edward pressured into marrying Earl Godwin’s daughter (Edith)

Edward exiles Godwins, sends Edith to a nunnery; [promises inheritance to William the Bastard?]

Earl Godwin returns, resumes position of power but dies the following year (1053)

Godwinson brothers (Sweyn, Harold, Tostig, Leofwine, Gyrd) more or less run England

Harold Godwinson travels to Normandy (purpose unknown)

1066

‘The Normans were – and still are – proudly apparelled and delicate about their food, though not excessively. They are a race inured to war and scarcely know how to live without it…

They live in huge houses with moderation. They envy their equals and wish to excel their superiors. They plunder their subjects, though they defend them to others. They are faithful to their lords, though a slight offense makes them perfidious. They measure treachery by its chance of success.’

-William of Malmesbury, c. 1125

‘At the level of literate and aristocratic society, no country in Europe, between the rise of the barbarian kingdoms and the twentieth century, has undergone so radical a change as England experienced after 1066.’

- Sir Richard Southern, address to the Royal Historical Society

‘If the Conqueror’s will had prevailed and the dukedom of Normandy had gone to his eldest son (Robert) and his line and the kingdom of England to his second son (William Rufus) and his line, the Norman Conquest would have been a transitory episode and the foreign element it introduced would, we make bold to say, have been absorbed into English society almost without a trace.’

- H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, The Governance of Medieval England

1086

‘After this, the king had much thought and very deep discussion with his council about this country – how it was occupied or with what sort of people. Then he sent his men over all England into every shire and had them find out how many hundred hides there were in the shire, or what land and cattle the king himself had in the country, or what dues he ought to have in twelve months from the shire. Also he had a record made of how much land his archbishops had, and his bishops and abbots and his earls – and though I relate it at too great length – what or how much everybody had who was occupying land in England, in land or cattle, and how much money it was worth.

So very narrowly did he have it investigated, that there was no single hide nor virgate of land, nor indeed (it is a shame to relate but it seemed no shame to him to do) one ox nor one cow nor one pig which was there left out, and not put down in his record; and all these records were brought to him afterwards.’

- The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, for the year 1085

Domesday Book

Brixworth Church (7th c. Anglo-Saxon), Northamptonshire (East Midlands)

Battle Abbey, Hastings (begun under William the Conqueror, 1070; completed during the reign of his son William Rufus, 1094)

Ely Cathedral (East Anglia)

Begun 1083