Suppose, in 1066, Harald Hardrada of Norway had for whatever reason decided not to invade England that year. Harold Godwinsson, not worn out with defeating Harald, could have faced William with a fresh force and, perhaps, prevailed.
But . . . 1066 is supposed to be this all-important historical date . . . But would it really have made any difference to English or world history, if post-1066 England had been ruled by Anglo-Saxon kings instead of Anglo-Norman kings? How different were their cultures anyway, really?
Another question which can’t be answered, at all. The whole history of England, and to some degree the world, would be different.
In the short term it would be mean an England with a somewhat different culture, no massive French influence in England, and none of the semi-reforms he brought in. Also fewer cool castles, less oppression, and probably fewer wars with France later on.
I dunno, France cast a long cultural shadow on its neighbors. That’s like saying there’d be no massive English influence in Ireland – which there would be, in any timeline that includes England, even if Henry II and his successors decided to leave the island alone politically.
But it would make a clear difference – in medieval European politics, if not longer-term – if England were ruled by Saxon kings who did not, also, hold massive territories in France, and were not therefore always involving England in wars to build or defend their Continental empire.
You’d be substituting English entwinement with Scandinavian politics for English entwinement with French politics, I think. England still wouldn’t be an isolate.
A far more Scandinavian England? No Hundred Years War? Maybe far slower nation building for both England and France (one major advantage both countries had over their neighbours)?
Because it already was? You recall that just one generation before Hastings, the English kings (like Cnut) were also Kings of at least Denmark as well (sometimes Norway and bits of Sweden too). This level of connection continued into the House of Wessex - Harald Godwinson’s mum was a Swedish noble, Edward the Confessor’s wife Edith was half-Danish, etc. The Saxon nobility was deeply interrelated with the Scandinavian lines. Also some Polish.
Whatever other side affects it would have had, it would have meant he would still be known to history “William the Bastard”. Albeit only to historians of obscure Norman noblemen.
Maybe he wouldn’t have been so fat when he died that trying to close the sarcophagus lid popped him? (Admittedly, the warm weather had encouraged a certain expansion.)
The Norman Conquest brought England into the European mainstream. England had been seen as a place in the vicinity of Europe rather than a part of Europe, like Ireland or Scotland or Scandinavia or Russia. The Conquest created a connection between England and France and made England a part of European politics and culture.
Or Spanish, depending on which way the wind blew, if you catch my drift.
When McNeil wrote that, he was assuming that there would be no significant foreign influence/conquest, which is a pretty big assumption. Still, Dutch is the closest Germanic language to English, so without any foreign influence, it would probably be much more mutually intelligible with Dutch than it is today.
Well . . . If England had not, from 1066, been part of a larger France-based empire, would it have been stronger or weaker in defending itself from other invaders?
And, would Saxon kings of England take the trouble to conquer Wales and Scotland and Ireland? Was conquest part of their culture as it was of the Normans’?
I don’t see where the Anglo-Saxon English were any less warlike than the Normans and it has been argued ( in analyses of the contest at Hastings ) that they weren’t particularly inferior militarily, either. At least overall - obviously they were less cavalry-centric, but Hastings was a near thing and appears on balance to have been decided by factors other than superior Norman military prowess. As this poor horse can perhaps attest ( here you see a Saxon housecarl splitting the head of a Norman charger - I’ve always been impressed by that image ).
I have read that in the 18th Century, a kind of political myth emerged – I think Jefferson believed it – that there was this substantially democratic pre-Norman Anglo-Saxon society, with its hundreds and its Witenagemot, which the Normans suppressed with their Continental feudalism and royalism – so everybody who fought to expand the power of Parliament against the Crown (or, for the independence of the Colonies) was really fighting to “restore” the ancient Anglo-Saxon liberty.
Was there anything at all to that? Put another way, would the constitutional development of non-Norman England have been any more democratic, in any sense?
