Harrying of the North

One event, four angles

The same winter, looked at from four different standpoints. Each angle gives you a different kind of consequence to argue from.

AQA's Norman England depth study asks you to consider the period from economic, religious, political, social and cultural standpoints, so a consequence you can label is a consequence you can use in Paper 2 Section B.

The argument that has never gone away

Both sides use the same events and disagree about what those events add up to. Historians add a further question of their own: how much of the devastation the later records show was caused by this winter, and how much by the years that came after it.

The specification names 'arising contemporary and historical controversies' for this depth study, and this is the clearest one. A 16-mark 'How far do you agree?' answer needs both of these sides and an explicit judgement of your own.

What you need to know

• The Harrying of the North was William's answer to repeated risings in 1068 and 1069, not a battle that he fought and won.
• Over the winter of 1069-70 his forces destroyed crops, food stores, homes, livestock and farming equipment across Yorkshire and other northern areas.
• The purpose was control: a region that cannot feed or shelter an army cannot raise a rebellion or supply an invader.
• One winter produced economic, social, political and religious consequences, and a question can come at the event from any of them.
• Whether it was a necessary act of control or a cruelty beyond the norms of war is still disputed: later medieval chroniclers such as Orderic Vitalis condemned the devastation, and historians continue to debate its necessity, scale and effects.

The big picture

In the winter of 1069-70 William the Conqueror destroyed the food, homes and livestock of a region of his own kingdom. This lesson explains what pushed him to it, how wrecking the north was meant to secure it, what it cost from each angle, and why the argument about it has never been settled.

⚠ Watch out

Treating the Harrying as pointless cruelty and stopping there. 'The Normans were brutal' cannot explain why William wrecked land he had spent three years trying to tax, and it leaves you nothing to argue when a question asks whether the policy worked. The brutality is what has to be explained.

Memory hook

Three risings, one winter, and land still recorded as waste sixteen years on. William did not defeat the north - he removed its ability to rise.

Check yourself

Cover the page. Say, in order: what had been tried in the north, what made autumn 1069 dangerous, and how wrecking the land stopped the next rising. Miss the middle and you have a list.