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William of Warenne was the younger son of an 11th-century Norman warlord. His birthday was not recorded, which was to be expected for a younger son who had no foreseeable place in the family succession. To make a name for himself in Norman society, he became a fierce warrior under William, the Duke of Normandy, best known to history as William the Conqueror.
The Normans descended from Viking raiders who had settled on the coast of France and gained legitimacy from the king of France in the 10th century. They intermarried with local Franks, converted from paganism to Christianity, and abandoned their Scandinavian language for French. However, like their Viking forefathers, war was the defining enterprise of their society.
When William of Warenne was still young, he was given joint command of a Norman army. He was one of the commanders who helped the Conqueror assert his power over Normandy. The Conqueror was the illegitimate son of the unmarried Duke Robert I of Normandy. He ascended to the dukedom while still a child, and anarchy ensnared the duchy as rival factions tried to control him and take power for themselves. William of Warenne, likely a cousin of the Conqueror, won a place of confidence in his inner circle as they fought to quell any threat to the Conqueror’s power. The Conqueror gave William of Warenne a swathe of land in Normandy and two important castles, Mortemar and Bellencombre, after important victories over the French. So began William of Warenne’s holdings; over decades of war-making, they would grow to royal proportions and assure his place among the richest men in history.
In 1066, Edward the Confessor of England died without a clear heir. England was poised to descend into a war of succession. The only person with a legitimate blood claim to the throne was a half-Hungarian teenager with no powerful friends to fight for him. The Conqueror declared that Edward had promised him the throne while he was in exile in Normandy — a vanishingly thin claim in a period where blood determined legitimacy. Meanwhile, Harold Godwinson, Edward’s brother-in-law and a member of the most powerful family in England, claimed Edward had promised him the throne and proceeded with his coronation.
William the Conqueror’s only path to the throne was through warfare. He insisted that God would back him in battle. He called together a council of the leading Norman nobles and clergy, including William of Warenne, to discuss an invasion of England. They may have had Viking forefathers, but they had long ago given up their boats, and the English Channel was a meaningful obstacle. They would have to wage war on unknown terrain against the Godwinsons’ substantial armies to fight for the Conqueror’s claim. The Conqueror’s confidence in providence was infectious. For men like William of Warenne, the possibility of acquiring England’s abundant wealth was surely an added reason to support the invasion.
The Normans bought and built ships, preparing to transport their army and horses across the channel. In an unforeseen twist, they did not even know what army they would face when they arrived: King Harold of Norway claimed the English throne for himself and had arrived in England to fight King Harold Godwinson for the throne. When the Normans set sail, they did not know that Harold Godwinson had prevailed. The Norman and Anglo-Saxon armies clashed in the Battle of Hastings on October 14, 1066, in what proved to be the most dramatic turning point in English history. William of Warenne was one of only a handful of Norman military leaders known to be at the battle. The Anglo-Saxon army fought on foot and claimed a favorable position on a hill. The Normans fought on horseback. They battled the whole day, proving they were evenly matched. Then King Harold died, perhaps from an arrow through the eye as is illustrated in the Bayeux Tapestry. The Conqueror had won. He awarded his closest allies handsomely, giving William of Warenne land in 13 counties — including much of present-day Wolterton Park.
William of Warenne was one of the Norman warlords tasked with subduing the rebellions that plagued the first years of the Conqueror’s reign in England as Anglo-Saxons resisted the imposition of a foreign elite. He remained an important commander for the next 20 years. When the Conqueror returned to Normandy, William of Warenne was one of the men he trusted to govern England in his absence. William of Warenne and his men defeated rebels, mutilated prisoners, and destroyed the pastures and animals of whole districts. Tens of thousands died. The Normans wiped out the Anglo-Saxon elite as they were stripped of their titles and dispossessed after each rebellion. For William of Warenne, the subduing of the Anglo-Saxons became the object of a personal vendetta after an English freedom fighter murdered his brother-in-law.
The new Norman ruling class introduced radical cultural change. In just 50 years, they rebuilt virtually every monastery and important church in the Romanesque style. They built hundreds of castles, a novel form of construction in England. They spoke French, entrenching their distance from the Anglo-Saxon masses. They also introduced chivalry to England, and its codes changed how England conducted war. They saw their Celtic neighbors as barbarians — a view that infected how the English saw their Scottish, Welsh, and Irish neighbors for centuries.
In 1086, the Conqueror ordered a mass survey of land in England to legitimize the Norman takeover. The manuscript, called the Domesday Book, detailed land ownership across the kingdom and showed the extent of Norman power. The transformation of England after the Battle of Hastings was felt even in rural agricultural communities like Wolterton where William of Warenne owned much of the land. In Norfolk especially, Warenne pressed the limits of his claims, seizing land from free landholders and bullying his way into more property when he could. Because of this, the Domesday Book records many land disputes and counterclaims involving his estates. Some of the changes under the Normans were indisputably positive. For example, the Normans abolished chattel slavery, which had ensnared the bottom 10-20% of English society. For most people, however, life was harder after the Norman invasion. Landlords like William of Warenne demanded more from their tenants, at once driving up the value of their land and the misery of the people. Even among Norman magnates, William of Warenne was especially adept at maximizing the value of his land even amid war.
William of Warenne died a controversial man. In some regards, he had conformed to the conventional expectations of piety. The Conqueror had sent for papal representatives to impose penances on him and his army after the Battle of Hastings. William of Warenne and his wife also embarked on a pilgrimage to Rome, although they never got further than the Cluny Abbey in France. They built England’s first Cluniac priory at Lewes. However, the Anglo-Saxons did not forget the terror and dispossession he unleashed on them. In Norfolk, he had taken land from Ely Abbey, where a cathedral still stands 75 miles from Wolterton Park. After he died fighting for the Conqueror’s son, his second wife went to the abbey and asked them to accept 100 shillings to atone for his sins. They refused, instead holding onto the hope that demons would seize his soul after he died.
Sources:
The Domesday Book, opendomesday.org, by Anna Powell-Smith
The Norman Conquest by Marc Morris (2013)
“Companions of the Conqueror” by D. C. Douglas (1943)
“Warenne, William de, first earl of Surrey” by C. P. Lewis, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
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