God's Fiefdom

WHALIAM

 

There is a YouTube Video online

Of an exploding Sperm Whale

On a beach in the Faroe Islands.

A man slashes it with a mincing knife

And once the diaphragm is pierced

All the guts sort of woosh out!

Strips and strings burst in a spray

That stings the whaler with filth.

 

I showed my young son Theo

And he told Hayden his teacher

And all the class watched it -

Over again – and laughed.

 

It put me in mind of William of Normandy

Who died alone in agony when

No one would trust him enough to help.

He had devastated and enslaved the North.

One in four died from his ruthlessness.

Deaths in battle were the best.

Tens of thousands died as crops went unplanted

Stock died, harvests burned and castles rose.

 

When he had finally expired

The monks in Caen dallied

For far too long and had to force

The corpse into the kist.

 

 

 

 

DEATHBED CONFESSION

 

“I fell on the English of the northern shires like a ravening lion. I commanded their houses and corn, with all their implements and chattels, to be burnt without distinction, and great herds of cattle and beasts of burden to be butchered whenever they are found. In this way I took revenge on multitudes of both sexes by subjecting them to the calamity of a cruel famine, and so became a barbarous murderer of many thousands, both young and old, of that fine race of people. Having gained the throne of that kingdom by so many crimes I dare not leave it to anyone but God…..

 

[Ordericus Vitalis c AD 1130]   
 

 

SOME NOTES

According to record, Orderic Vitalis ‘Angligena’ [i.e. English bred] was born in 1075 in Shropshire at the little village of Atcham on the River Severn. Atcham is about 5 miles south east of Shrewsbury on the A5 [Watling Street] and close to Wroxeter / Uriconium. Although the setting was rural, the village was on the primary route linking north-western and southern England.

It is recorded that although Orderic’s father was a French priest from Orléans his mother was English. And it seems that from the age of five, he boarded at the Abbey School at the Monastery of St Peter and St Paul in Shrewsbury run by an English monk named Siward.

When he joined the Abbey of Saint-Evroul in the Duchy of Normandy, at the age of eleven, purportedly he couldn’t speak a word of French, having spoken English and written in Latin. Given his provenance and upbringing, I am sure that we can rely on Orderic's observations and objectivity on the matter of the Harrying of the North – but not perhaps on his attribution of a heart-felt confession to ‘The Tanner'.


The Harrying of the North ended in 1069 with the fall of Chester [6 years before Orderic was born]. As part of the Uprising, the men of Shrewsbury had joined a raid on the town by Eadric the Wild to attack the new castle built there by Roger de Montgomery. Shrewsbury was burnt during the conflict.

Orderic’s birth in 1075 coincides with the Revolt of the Earls by Waltheof, Earl of Northumbria in connivance with Roger de Breteuil, 2nd Earl of Hereford. Waltheof was the last of the old English nobility to survive the Conquest, being the second son of Siward, the Anglo-Saxon Earl of Northumbria.
 

Ten years later in 1085, Orderic’s English patron Siward the Abbot of St Peter’s and St Paul’s in Shrewsbury was likely deeply involved in trying to retain some influence on events by the English clergy. As such, he was probably assiduous in helping compile the Doomsday Book which effectively legitimised the transfer of lands to the invaders. This and the forced swearing of minor nobles of direct allegiance to the Crown, under the Salisbury Oath in 1085, effectively marked the successful consolidation of the Norman Conquest.

Clearly, Orderic’s eleven year childhood in England [1075-1086] traversed a dangerous time.

So I start to have some doubts that Orderic was in fact the son of a French priest or clerk settled at Atcham. Conveniently this father is supposed to have originated in Orléans, far from Normandy and closed to cross-checking by acquaintances. And I also find it hard to accept that, if his father spoke French, Orderic knew nothing of the language.

The Doomsday Book puts the population of Atcham at a tiny 5 households. The land was owned in the name of the Canons of St Alkmund, Shrewsbury in 1066 and by Godebold the Priest in 1086. The nearby manor of Cressage had been owned by Eadric the Wild but had been transferred to Ranulf Peverel by 1086.

Was Orderic in reality the son of one of the old Anglo-Saxon nobles? Possibly he was a relative of Eadric the Wild or someone even more illustrious, who was rescued by friendly relatives among the clergy and given a new identity – and then packed off to Normandy where he would be least likely to be suspected, especially on him becoming a French-speaking priest.