Revolt of the counts

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The revolt of the counts (Engl. Revolt of the Earls ) of 1075 was a revolt of three Earls against the English king William the Conqueror . It was the last serious resistance to William in connection with the Norman conquest of England .

procedure

The revolt was sparked in 1075 by the refusal of the king (he had been in Normandy since 1073 ) to consent to the marriage between Emma, ​​daughter of William FitzOsbern, 1st Earl of Hereford , and Raoul I de Gaël (Ralph de Guader). In the absence of the king, Raoul and his new brother-in-law Roger de Breteuil, 2nd Earl of Hereford and Waltheof II, Earl of Northumbria , began the uprising that quickly turned into a disaster.

Waltheof soon lost heart and confessed the conspiracy against Lanfrank von Bec , the Archbishop of Canterbury , who then urged Roger to return to his duties of loyalty, and finally excommunicated him and his followers . Finally Waltheof repeated his confession to Wilhelm, who was still in Normandy.

Roger, who was to bring his troops in from the west of England to unite them with those of Raoul, was held in check on the Severn by soldiers from Worcestershire under the command of Wulfstan , the Bishop of Worcester . Raoul, meanwhile, met a vastly superior force of Bishops Odo de Bayeux and Geoffroy de Montbray (who ordered that captured rebels should have the right foot chopped off) at Cambridge and hurriedly retreated to Norwich with the royal troops at his heels . He left his wife in Norwich with the task of defending Norwich Castle , sailed to Denmark for help and returned to England with a fleet of 200 ships, but without being able to use them effectively here.

The Countess defended Norwich until she and her (now dispossessed) followers were given safe conduct if they left the country within 40 days. She withdrew to Brittany , where her husband also took refuge.

Results

  • Raoul was deposed and expropriated (under Norman law).
  • Roger was brought before the Great Council, also deposed and dispossessed, and sentenced (under Norman law) to life imprisonment. However, after Wilhelm's death in 1087, he was released along with other political prisoners.
  • Waltheof, who returned to England with Wilhelm, was arrested and sentenced to death (under Anglo-Saxon law) after having been tried twice before the royal court. On May 31, 1076, he was beheaded on St. Giles's Hill near Winchester .

literature

  • Daniel Crook: Central England and the Revolt of the Earls, January 1400. In: Historical Research 64, 1991, ISSN  0950-3471 , pp. 403-410.

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