Harrying of the North
14
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6
EPISODES
5
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Search complete. 14 mentions across 6 episodes found for "Harrying of the North".
Oct 14, 2026
Marc MorrisGUEST
Thank you for having me back.
William DalrympleHOST
Well, last time we had such fun and got so chatty about, um, the Harrying of the North and Doomsday Book that we barely had mention of the really important, uh, events which take place towards the end of William the Conqueror's reign and his successor's reign, uh, when the Norman influence or arms spill over into the Celtic fringe, beyond the Harrying of the North, beyond Cumbria, uh, the whole business of the Normans in Scotland, um, which is a peaceful infiltration rather than a conquest, but which is incredibly important for Scotland's history.
William DalrympleHOST
The slightly different story of the Normans in Wales, and anyone that's wandered around the Welsh border country will know there's magnificent Norman castles with their keeps, uh, and their deep ditches, which still, uh, act as, uh, as a kind of boundary in the landscape between the two countries.
William DalrympleHOST
Uh, we're gonna be talking about all that.
speaker_0HOST
The most consequential of his responses came in 1069 and 1070. following a serious uprising in the north of England, combined with a Danish invasion that briefly gave the rebels enough military weight to recapture York.
speaker_0HOST
William's answer to this was the harrying of the north, a systematic campaign of destruction across Yorkshire and the surrounding region that went well beyond the military requirements of defeating an army.
speaker_0HOST
His forces burned villages and farmsteads, slaughtered livestock, destroyed stored grain and agricultural equipment, and salted the land so that nothing useful could grow.
speaker_0HOST
The intention was not merely to end the rebellion, but to prevent the region from being able to support another one.
48 MINS LATER
speaker_0HOST
They had all been purchased at costs that the people who paid them rarely chose willingly.
speaker_0HOST
The serfs who worked the Norman manors had not chosen the feudal system.
speaker_0HOST
The people who died in the harrying of the North had not chosen William's interpretation of rebellion.
speaker_0HOST
The millions who died in the Black Death had not chosen the plague.
Scott WebberHOST
No, especially the North, the North of England.
Scott WebberHOST
We have what's called the Harrying of the North, and that was local lords, earls came together to fight William, the new King of England, to take back the Anglo-Saxon crown.
Scott WebberHOST
Um, and that lasted until 1071 when finally the earls and the lords of Anglo-Saxon England all submitted to William.
Scott WebberHOST
So it wasn't plain sailing.
Uncle IanHOST
William still had a lot of work to do in the north, and he was actually quite brutal in ensuring that his control over all of England was secure.
Uncle IanHOST
In 1070, we have what's called the Harrying of the North.
Uncle IanHOST
There was famine, looting, burning, slaughtering, all to try and root out all opposition to the Norman regime.
Uncle IanHOST
A contemporary quote by Orderic Vitalis tells us that he ordered that crops and herds, tools and food be burned to ashes.
Uncle IanHOST
Again, separate rule.
Uncle IanHOST
He, he didn't make any effort to combine them into a one cross-channel kingdom.
Uncle IanHOST
However, the Norman influence in England continued to grow under William's sponsorship as more and more Normans came across the channel and set up land holdings, and a large part of the Harrying of the North was to make space for them.
Uncle IanHOST
William is well known for commissioning a landholding register.
Marc MorrisGUEST
This is where we, we absolutely reverse this." And this is the part, point where William decides, "If I can't hold Yorkshire, if I can't hold the North in conventional ways with castles and garrisons, then no one's gonna be able to hold it.
Marc MorrisGUEST
I will reduce it to a desert." And that's the infamous Harrying of the North.
William DalrympleHOST
And just to give the scale, there are, there are tens of thousands slaughtered, we believe.
Marc MorrisGUEST
Well into six figures, we think.
Anita AnandHOST
Wow.
William DalrympleHOST
Six figures, even at that time?
Marc MorrisGUEST
The thing about the Harrying of the North is medieval chroniclers, when they say 100,000 people fought at Hastings, you just say, "Well, that's just, he just means a large number.
Marc MorrisGUEST
There's no way the armies were that big." In the case of the Harrying of the North, Orderic Vitalis is writing in the 1120s, very well-informed, but, you know, not great with numbers.
Matt LewisGUEST
Yeah.
Matt LewisGUEST
I mean, so, you know, he, this is after the Harrying of the North, which is a, a few years into his reign.
Matt LewisGUEST
Uh, his answer to rebellion in the north, which we'd seen him do before, is to be utterly, utterly ruthless to an absolute extreme.
Matt LewisGUEST
Uh, he destroys villages, slaughters people, uh, burns the city of York to the ground, has this coronation in the ashes, and then sets about rebuilding York afterwards as well.
11 MINS LATER
Rebecca LarsonHOST
[laughs]
Matt LewisGUEST
No, I, that, that's part of the benefit of this story, I think.
Matt LewisGUEST
That, that you look at what, the ruthless things that he definitely does, the Harrying of the North and all of that kind of thing.
Rebecca LarsonHOST
Mm.