William Of Positiers Analysis

Agreement in the divine punishment of the English notwithstanding, there are many inconsistencies that exist between Norman and English accounts, specifically pertaining to the nature of conquest and the treatment of the English in the years following 1066. Notably, William of Poitiers’ history tells that after William I’s assent to the throne, there was no resistance to his authority anywhere in England, and that the English “received by his liberal gift more than they had ever received from their fathers or their former lords.” Likewise, he adds that “to no Frenchman was anything given unjustly taken from an Englishman.” This description of conquest significantly contradicts the English view of events later given after an initial period

Within the same section that castigates William and his men for their villainy, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle also concedes, “the good security he made in this country is not to be forgotten.” Therefore, while English historians were undoubtedly shaken by the swift and violent nature of the Norman Conquest, (with some atrocities being too hard for authors to even recall within their writings), these authors also apparently saw merit enough in certain aspects of William I’s reign to write them down with positive

Far from presenting a clearer picture of the Conquest and its aftereffects, it can be argued that Anglo-Norman historians only complicated understandings of events by adding another layer of perspective to consider when searching for some kind of ‘objective truth’ on the matter. For example, Orderic Vitalis often contradicts both English and Norman sources within his Historia Ecclesiastica. Whereas the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells that king William I had all the monasteries in England plundered and “the money which rich Englishmen had deposited there taken away and paid into his treasury,” Orderic describes a much different kingly behavior. Highlighting the piety of William I, Orderic notes that whenever a bishop or abbot had died, William “sent competent officials to the bereaved house and had all the church property inventories to prevent its dilapidation by sacrilegious keepers.” These two interpretations blatantly contradict one another, which makes it difficult to determine which source has more merit in the truth. If Orderic’s account of William inventorying monasteries with benevolent intent is legitimate, it seems unlikely that the monks writing the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle would have made up reports of the plundering of monasteries purely out of ‘national hatred,’ as William of Malmesbury had put it. Therefore, while later Anglo-Norman historians had the