The Heimskringla Saga

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reading linkEngland became a prize for the taking when Edward the Confessor died on 5th January 1066 England.  The man on the scene, Harold Godwinson lost no time staking his claim but his brother Tostig, furious not to be reinstated to the Earldom of Northumbria attempted to take the throne for himself.  First he crossed the channel with a fleet of sixty  ships from Flanders.  He initiated his attempted invasion by attacking Harold’s lands on the south coast.

Harold proved equal to the occasion when Tostig finally fled he had only twelve vessels remaining.  Harold 1: Tostig 0.

Tostig fled via Scotland to Denmark and then on to Norway where he and King Harold Hardrada – the Hard Rider- prepared another invasion.  In September 1066, when the wind stood against William of Normandy’s invasion fleet, a Scandinavian armada  of some three hundred and thirty ships sailed first for Scotland and then down the east coast towards the Humber Estuary pausing only to do nasty things to Scarborough.

On the 20th September 1066 having sailed up the Humber  and making anchor at Riccall, Hardrada advanced on York.

The Earls of Northumbria and Mercia (Morcar and Edwin) met the Scandinavians in battle just outside York.  The Battle of Fulford Bridge saw an English defeat.  The earls were lucky to escape with their lives.  The best primary account of the battle can be found in the Heimskringla Saga.

It also offers the best account of the Battle of Stamford Bridge which is sometimes described as Harold’s Saga.  Harold hearing of the invasion made a forced march north and caught Hardrada and his brother by surprise and proceeded to beat them – having first of all overcome a beserker who occupied the bridge at Stamford Bridge until one of Harold’s men crept under the bridge and speared him from below (nasty but typical of sagas). Harold 2: Tostig 0.

Having said all that the words of the saga weren’t committed to paper – or parchment- until 1225 by Snori Sturlson, a story teller and historian in the the Scandinavian skaldic tradition, who wrote a chronicle of the Kings of Norway.  As A L Binns  comments:

The earliest survIving Norse account of the events of 1066 is
probably the brief passage from Grkneyinga saga. The four long
Old Norse accounts of Stemford Bridge here compared for the first
time in English are by no means independent either of each other,
or of English sources. So one should not think of a single account
(usually Heimskringla, of which many translations already exist) as
‘the saga account’; and one should not regard them as contemporary
sources, but rather the work of historians who had very definite
views on the characters and motives ofthe participants and selected
their material in order to express them.

Binns, A.L. (1966). East Yorkshire in the Sagas. Hull: East Yorkshire Local History Society p.5

The full text including the sagas can be accessed by clicking on the image at the start of this post.  I’ll be using this image in future to sign post links to a range of texts – and indeed any other images of folks reading that I come across.

 

Rebellion in the North

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Clifford's TowerWilliam faced a rebellion each year for the first five years after his conquest of England in 1066.  The problem for the Saxons was that their uprisings from the West Country to Northumbria via Herefordshire were localised.  There was no one central figure to unify and organise resistance.

Earls Morcar of Northumbria and Edwin of Mercia were powerful and politically dangerous men.  In part their failure to march south to support King Harold in 1066 had led to his defeat. They’d submitted to William along with Edgar the Atheling in late 1066 at Berkhamstead but they swiftly became dissatisfied with their new lord and rebelled against him in 1068.  It couldn’t have come as much of a surprise to William given that he’d taken them with him to Normandy in 1067 amongst the hostages he demanded. Perhaps it was his suspicions about the northern earls that led to him not promoting a marriage between Edwin and one of his daughters and perhaps (that’s many perhaps’s) it was for this reason that Edwin and Morcar decided to revolt, although it could have been William’s new taxes that did the trick.

In any event, William marched north via Warwick and Nottingham.  Resistance crumbled and the two earls submitted again. There is no evidence that the two men took part in any further uprising in the north.  Edwin managed to get himself killed by his own men in 1071 when he left William’s court once more and headed off towards Scotland.  Morcar took part in the uprising in Ely and ended his days a prisoner of the Normans.

The inhabitants of York seeing which way the wind was blowing in 1068 sent hostages and the keys to the city before William could arrive to express his irritation.  William  did what he always did when he wanted to stamp his authority on an area.  He built a motte and bailey castle in York and left a garrison of five hundred men to guard it.

The north did not remain at peace for long.  In January 1069 William’s man Robert de Commines  was burned to death in the Bishop of Durham’s house by an angry mob who had already slaughtered his men according to the Orderic Vitalis.  The people of York were not slow in getting in on the act.   The garrison withstood the attack. The Victoria County History for York records,  “Edgar and his supporters began an attack on the castle, whence the sheriff William Malet reported to the king that in default of assistance he would be driven to surrender.”

If one castle is good then two must be better!  William had a second castle built (Bailes Hill) which he gave into the care of William Fitz Osbern (the Earl of Hereford) before heading back south to Winchester.

There was a brief third uprising that was swiftly suppressed by Fitz Osbern.

At this point you’d think that the citizens of York would have had enough but in August 1069 King Sweyn of Denmark,  who had formed an alliance with Earl Waltheof of Northumbria, anchored his  fleet of 240 vessels on the Humber. This was a much more sustained and serious attack upon William’s rule.

The Normans facing the combined forces of the Danes and the northerners took refuge in their two new castles.  They attempted to clear a field around the castles by burning the nearby houses.  It has to be said that it doesn’t seem wildly clever to believe that in a city of wood and straw that fire can be controlled.  It certainly wasn’t in this case.  Even the Minster found itself being scorched.  According to Florence of Worcester the town was still burning two days after the initial conflagration.

 

But then again the Normans knew that they were fighting for their lives.  One of the castles sheltered the sheriff’s wife and children.  The slaughter was terrible.  Waltheof  was remembered by later generations in song for slaying Normans one after another with his battle-axe. William of Malmesbury’s account is according to the Cambridge History of English Literature taken from a ‘ballad’ or rather from a professionally worked song written by a Scandinavian scald or storyteller. William’s nice new castles were both destroyed.

Quite what the alliance of Danes and Saxons expected William to do next is unclear.  The Danes took themselves back to their boats with their booty and then set about a spot of ‘viking’ – William found one party of them plundering Lindsey but sent them scuttling back across the Humber.

What followed next wasn’t particularly pleasant if the chroniclers are to be believed and although William kept Christmas on 1069 in York there was little cause for celebration amongst the locals.  However, the North had been put in its place.

Not that their problems were over, far from it.  Malcolm Canmore, King of Scotland, took the opportunity to do a spot of his own harrying in the summer of 1070 and would return several times more before his death at the Battle of Alnwick.

For a chronology, which remains ongoing – I add dates as I come across them- double click on the picture.

 

 

St Margaret of Scotland

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margaretMargaret, the sister of Edgar the Atheling, was the child of Edward the Exile  and Agatha, a German princess.  She was born in Hungary in 1046.  When Edward the Confessor took the throne he invited the last of the Royal House of Wessex to return from their exile.  Edward, Agatha and their children – Edgar, Margaret and Christina cam back to England but Edward died in suspicious circumstances shortly after their arrival.

Edgar submitted to William the Conqueror but became involved in a rebellion in 1068.  His family fled England.  They initially, possibly, intended to return to Hungary but bad weather drove their vessel to Scotland where Margaret married the King, Malcolm Canmore at Dunfermline Abbey in 1069.  Incidentally Canmore translates according to Alison Weir as ‘big head.’

The widowed king who was aged about forty loved his young Saxon bride and trusted her advice.  Queen Margaret became known not only for her piety but also for her learning. Malcolm could not read but such was his love for his wife that he would send her books to be ornamented with covers of gold.  She wielded so much power that she changed the way that the Scottish court behaved and dressed.  She bought the sophisticated continental behaviour of her childhood to Canmore’s court which included closer links with the Roman Catholic church.  During this time Mass was said in Latin in Scotland rather than Gaelic.  She was also the patron of Benedictine monks who arrived on Scottish shores for the first time.  Malcolm allow this wife to support the church and to guide the policies as to its practice.  She supported monks, hermits and spent much of her time and money providing charity to the poor and to orphaned children.

Inevitably relations with William of England were difficult.  Malcolm took advantage of the difficulties that William faced in his early years to extend the border of Scotland south so that it included most of Cumberland.  Malcolm was killed at the Battle of Alnwick along with Margaret’s eldest son Edward in 1093.  She died three days after receiving the news of her bereavement in Edinburgh Castle which was being besieged by Malcolm’s brother Donald Bane on 16th November. Margaret’s remaining sons escaped from the castle in a thick mist along with the body of their mother which they carried to Dunfermline Abbey where it was buried as she had wished.  It was she who’d commissioned the ferry that crossed the Firth of Forth taking pilgrims to the abbey.

Margaret bore Malcolm Canmore  eight children including Edward.    Her daughter Edith married one of William the Conqueror’s sons (King Henry I) and took on the Norman name Matilda.  Her other daughter Mary married the Count of Boulogne and her daughter (Margaret’s granddaughter married King Stephen becoming yet another Queen Matilda.)  One son, Ethelred, became the Abbot of Dunkeld while four more sons became kings of Scotland in their turn – Edmund, Edgar, Alexander I  and  David I.

For further information including St Margaret’s Chapel in Edinburgh Castle the Freelance History Writer http://thefreelancehistorywriter.com  has a great entry about the life and times of a Saxon Princess who became a queen and a saint.

 

 

King Harold’s children

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womanfleeingHarold Godwinson became King of England on 6th January 1066.  He was married to Edith, the daughter of Earl Alfgar of Mercia.

Edith didn’t have much luck with husbands.  Her first one was a welsh king who died in 1063.  Three years later she married Harold in March 1066.  Nine months after that a bouncing baby boy was born in Chester – Harold of Chester.  Other sources say he was born early the following year.  In either event Edith and Harold sought shelter in Ireland before heading to Europe in the aftermath of the Battle of Hastings.  Nothing further is known of them although there is some suggestion that they may have been given sanctuary in Norway. It is also possible that Edith went to the nunnery at St Omer where his mother and one of his daughters fled after an abortive uprising against the Conqueror. History once again provides tantalising hints but not the full story.

Edith was possibly the mother of Ulf, another  of Harold’s sons – although it is equally likely that rather than twins Uf was the son of Harold’s lover Edith Swan-neck.  It has been suggested that the unknown woman on the Bayeux Tapestry fleeing with a child from a burning building could be Edith swan-neck and Ulf.  The pair could just as likely be representative of the innocent citizens of Hastings who found their buildings burning around their ears.  Somehow or other Ulf  found himself safely secured in Normandy.  History doesn’t say what happened to him although he was alive according to Weir (Britain’s Royal Families) in 1087.

Harold’s lover, Edith Swan-neck was the woman who searched the battle field for his body in the aftermath of Hastings. It was she who’d provided Harold with at least five children who were, in 1066, a threat to William’s quiet enjoyment of his new kingdom.

King Harold’s mother, Gytha held out against the Norman invaders in Exeter.  She chose 1067 when William returned to Normandy to make her presence felt.  Exeter fell after eighteen days but their determination gave Harold’s mother, his sister Gunnhild and his daughter Gytha time to escape to the Island of Flatholme in the Bristol Channel before following in the sails of other English refugees to the continent and the nunnery at St Omer which was in the domain of Count Baldwin VI of Flanders.  Harold’s mother and sister remained there for the rest of their lives.

Harold’s daughter Gytha on the other hand married, through Swedish diplomacy, the Russian Prince of Smolensk, Vladimir II.  He went on to become the Grand Prince of Kiev and she mothered somewhere in the region of eight sons and three daughters.  Her descendants became kings of other nations and one of her descendants was a Queen of England  – Edward III’s wife, Queen Philippa of Hainault- which means somewhat bizarrely that the blood of the last Anglo-Saxon King of England flowed in the veins of the Plantagenets and indeed of every monarch since: an unexpected twist to the tale that we don’t learn at school.

Harold’s sons Godwin, Edmund and Magnus went to Dublin after the Conquest.  They returned in 1068 with their swords in their hands and a force of Norse mercenaries from the Kingdom of Dublin. They weren’t warmly received in Bristol so made for Taunton – by sea- where they were seen off by a Saxon who’d submitted to William and who no doubt knew which side his bread was buttered.  The unfortunate Saxon,Eadnoth, died during the ensuing battle but so possibly did Harold’s son Magnus.

Then again may be Magnus didn’t die.  There is a curved inscription in the church of St John in Lewis, Sussex that details the presence of a Prince Magnus of Danish royal stock who became an anchorite there.  Could the Danish reference be a red herring to hide Magnus?

Of Godwin and Edmund more is known.  Although defeated in 1068 they were back the following year with sixty ships.  They attempted to take Exeter but were seen off by the Norman  garrison in their shiny new motte and bailey castle so they settled on causing trouble in the South West but were seen off once more.  They are last heard of in the court of King Swein of Denmark.

Another of King Harold’s daughter, Gunnhild, was a nun at Wilton or at least a woman seeking shelter from the Normans in the nunnery where she’d received her education.  Alan the Red, Earl of Richmond, made off with Gunnhild in August 1093 and that is the subject of a previous blog as well as a topic of Norman Scandal since she refused point blank to take herself back to Wilton when the Archbishop of Canterbury suggested that she should do so.

 

Carved bench ends – a tale of elephants, men and a fox

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DSCF0446Dating from the same period as misericords, bench ends in churches across the country are often intriguing insights into the medieval world.  The fox is in Burlingham Church in Norfolk and, yes, he is in pursuit of geese.

In Greystoke, Cumbria there are paired lions  with their tongues sticking out and their bottoms sticking up as though they’re sliding down the bench into an undignified slump.  There are also these barefoot, bearded men wearing something that looks remarkably like  kilts.

Further south in Ripon Cathedral one bench end sports a startling elephant with a castle on its back.

In Devon its even possible to find bench ends carved their full length to include the carvers initials.

I wonder what modern carvers would create if there was a sudden trend for bench ends – safety-pinned goths, a besuited woman in high heels clutching a mobile phone and perhaps a bateria or virus magnified to grotesque proportions.

Kendal – Jacobites, an angel and a missing purse

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bpc

On the 25 July 1745 Prince Charles Edward Stuart, a.k.a. Bonnie Prince Charlie, the grandson of James II and Mary of Modena arrived in Scotland.  By September Edinburgh was his and by November he’d arrived in Carlisle.  On the 22nd he set off South stopping at Kendal on the 23rd before marching via Lancaster and Preston to Derby.  The country was in turmoil but the Jacobites hadn’t received the support they’d expected so on the 5th of December they turned north once more leaving the House of Hanover to unpack their crown jewels and heave a huge sigh of relief.

The Jacobites arrived back in Kendal.  Bonnie Prince Charlie settled down for the night in a house belonging to a local JP on Strickland Gate little knowing that the following night the Duke of Cumberland would rest his weary head in exactly the same bed (lets hope there was a change of bed-linen!).

Prince Charlie may have been exhausted from his journey, including an assignation attempt at Preston, but his slumbers will hardly have been restful since the folk of Kendal didn’t give him a warm welcome.  The local militia greeted his arrival with a volley of shots and in the ensuring skirmish it is said that a Jacobite and a local farmer were shot. At least that’s what the Kendal Civic Society plaque proclaims.

Enter an angel…there used to be an inn in Kendal called The Angel.  Apparently the inhabitants of the inn didn’t much like the sound of the approaching Jacobite army so hid themselves out of sight – such was their hurry that they neglected to hide their child – Findler’s Legends of Lakeland makes no reference to the age or gender of the aforementioned child- it simply states that the child was left playing in the parlour while the rest of the family skiddaldled.  Apparently the Scots arrived and were about to grab hold of the child when an angel turned up, did what angels do in those circumstances, and drove the startled rabble from the house.  Okay, so its not history but I do like the way legends evolve from events.

Perhaps it was one of the highlanders who’d had a nasty shock to his sensibilities who lost his purse as he fled Kendal the following morning.  It can now be seen in Kendal’s Museum as can assorted coinage left lying around by Romans, Vikings, Tudors and Eighteenth Century types hoping to hide their savings from the soldiery – of either army.

Misericords

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DSC_0046Misericords from the Latin word meaning pity are also known as ‘mercy seats’.  These are the ledges or rests in choir stalls so that clergy singing the divine offices could rest their weary legs.   The clerical perches were often hinged so the misericord carving could only be seen when the perch was raised. Many oak choir stalls with their misericords were placed in churches during the medieval period; their carvers are largely anonymous and the meaning behind the carvings sometimes lost but they remain a fascinating glimpse of the past.

Hemingborough in Yorkshire has some of the earliest examples of misericords in this country and Exeter Cathedral has a complete set dating from the Thirteenth Century.

The carvers used their imaginations when they created each misericord.  Some scenes come from the Bible; others like the foliate green men sporting leaves from their mouths come from an earlier folklore; some images such as elephants come from medieval bestiaries.  Hyenas were popular because not only were they an exotic species but they had legendary status as well according to Richard Hyman in that they were supposed to disinter and eat corpses…lovely.  In addition they represented “vice feeding on corruption.” (Hyman: 21)  Other inspirations came from everyday life; from animals realistic and fanciful and from mythical creatures such as mermaids.  A carver in Fairford captured a woman raising a ladle to hit her unfortunate spouse  .  In Ludlow a man warms himself in front of his fire and in Manchester a game of backgammon can be spotted.  Less amusingly in Lincoln a knight tumbles from his hours mortally injured.

Sometimes it is possible to spot a carver who has travelled around a locality.  Greystoke Parish Church has some delightful misericords that are matched by similar examples in Dacre and also in Cartmel.  Carlisle Cathedral has some impressive examples as does Hexham Abbey.  Perhaps the man who carved them travelled from one church to the next in search of work.

DSCN1236

Further south Ripon, Richmond and Chester have some intriguing misericords as does Wakefield, Halifax, Gloucester Cathedral, Worcester, Southwell Minster and Ludlow.  In fact these lovely little works of art not only give an insight to medieval craftsmanship and mindset but they can also be alarmingly addictive…you’ve been warned and I’ve not even started on bench ends, corbels, capitals, grotesques and gargoyles.

DSC_0036This misericord from Cartmel depicts a rather alarming two-tailed mermaid with her mirror and comb.  In medieval times a mermaid symbolised lust and temptation.  I’m not sure that the Cartmel mermaid would tempt anyone with that ribcage!

Edric the Wild

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wildedricWild Edric is a fabulous rose that scents the June air with its profusion of  vivid pink roses at the end of very thorny stems.  I always wondered who Wild Edric was and what made him ‘wild.’

Eadric or Edric the Wild was a local landowner along the Welsh Marches. He may have been the nephew of Eadric Streona a.k.a. the Grasper who in 1016 switched sides from Cnut to Edmund Ironside then promptly left the battle field half way through it. Edmund unsurprisingly lost the Battle of Ashingdon. He probably also had something to do with the St Brice’s Day Massacre of the Danes. The Grasper didn’t prosper because his Christmas gift from the new King Canute (who had undoubtedly benefited from the battlefield exit) was to have Eadric executed and thrown into a ditch. More positively, Edric the Wild was probably also related to the Princes of Gwynedd and Powys.

In the aftermath of Hastings, William the Conqueror confiscated all the land of any man who’d taken part in the battle against him. Edric hadn’t been there. It may have been that he was on one of Harold’s ships, he is recorded as being the Bishop of Worcester’s ‘shipman’ attempting to blockade the South Coast. Seeing which way the wind was blowing Edric made his submission and kept his lands.

And that might have been that were it not for the delightfully named Richard Fitz Scrob who had arrived in England before the conquest.   Now that the Normans had the upper hand Fitz Scrob couldn’t resist trying to help himself to Edric’s land. By 1067 Edric had enough. He joined with Bleddyn and Rhiwallon ap Cynfyn and set about showing the Normans a thing or two. Herefordshire went up in flames before Edric and his allies retreated.

In 1069 as the North rose in rebellion so to did Edric and the Welsh Marches from Herefordshire to Chester. He and his allies attacked Shrewsbury Castle. The town burned but the garrison stood until it could be relieved by Roger of Montgomery.

William finally confronted Edric at the Battle of Stafford in 1069. Edric and the Welsh left the men of Cheshire and Staffordshire to tackles the Conqueror who was probably in a foul temper having spent most of the year subduing rebellions, harrying the North and then having to cross the Pennines in bad weather.

It comes as a bit of a surprise then that by1072 Edric was part of the army heading north to Scotland to attack King Malcolm I. Perhaps he wanted no further part in the misery that most of the native population were experiencing by then. In 1075 he seems to have been invited to take part in the Earl’s Rebellion but there is no further mention of him. He seems to have disappeared by 1086 as he is not mentioned in the Domesday Book as a landowner. One suggestions offered in the fifteenth century was that he continued to fight against the changes imposed by the Normans, eventually being captured by Ralph Mortimer and ending his days in a dank dungeon somewhere.

People who disappear suddenly from history are prone to become the subject of story telling and Edric is no exception. In another version of the story Edric’s support of the Normans led to him being cursed and imprisoned with his wife Godda in the Stiperstones leadmines where he awaits an opportunity to save his country. He was seen in 1914 and 1939 taking part in the Wild Hunt. Oh yes – did I mention that Godda was a faerie?

 

 

 

Ann Cromwell and Dr Gibson

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gibson_smallBrowsing through an old book with yellowed  whispering pages, I came across this little link between Cumbria and Oliver Cromwell. It’s tenuous  but it appealed to me simply because so little seems to be known about either of the characters involved and because reading between the lines there is a tale of a family torn asunder as a result of the English Civil war and its aftermath and also of infant mortality.

Dr Thomas Gibson was born at Bampton, near Shap.  He graduated from the University of Leiden in 1675 became the Physician General of Cromwell’s Army and went on to write The Anatomy of Human Bodies which drew extensively on other sources but which remained in print for many editions.  Little is known about his early life or indeed the death of his first wife.

Ann was Dorothy and Richard Cromwell’s sixth daughter – Oliver’s grand-daughter.  She died in 1727, aged 69.  Only her eldest sister Elizabeth was as long-lived amongst the girls in the family.  The other lasses died in infancy.  Ann, then, was born in 1659 while her father was  Lord Protector- it was a short-lived venture for him and led to his exile on the restoration of the Stuart monarchy.  His wife and family remained at home.  Richard’s letters to his daughter are written under cover of an alternative name always RC or CR and speak at his grief of not being with his family.

She was widowed early, and throughout the rest of her life she lived with her sister Elizabeth in respectable Presbyterian seclusion under the watchful eye of her husband’s nephew who became the Bishop of London.  The Bishop bequeathed £200 to Bampton Church.

 

 

 

 

Odo, Bishop of Bayeux and Earl of Kent

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B_T_, 55, Bishop Odo in battle_jpgOdo may have been made a bishop at the age of twenty but it have very little to do with a spiritual vocation.  Not only did William the Conqueror’s half-brother play an active military role but he was also notorious for his womanising and greed.

William, Odo and Robert of Motain shared a mother – Herleva, the tanner’s daughter.  William’s father, Duke Robert of Normandy, married Herleva off to Herluin de Conteville. The Bayeux Tapestry depicts Odo as playing a leading role in the planning and execution of the invasion of England in 1066.  Of course, given that he probably commissioned the embroidery it would relay that particular message.  He certainly supplied one hundred ships for the expedition and is depicted virtually sharing a seat with William at the feast before the battle.  He is shown on numerous occasions with his club or mace in hand during the battle.  As a cleric he was not supposed to spill blood – so bashing in his enemies skulls was an effective alternative.

In the aftermath of the battle Odo was given control of Dover where he managed to make himself unpopular by using the guildhall as his own place of residence and allowing a mill to be built at the mouth of the harbour.

In the spring of 1067 Odo took on the role of William’s deputy in England when William returned to Normandy.  So he played an active role crushing English revolts in East Anglia and in the north of the country.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that he became, according to the Domesday Book, one of the wealthiest landholders in the country.  He held; 184 lordships, manors in twelve other counties besides Kent and had an income somewhere in the region of £3,000 a year.  In fact, the Domesday Book shows him to be the richest tenant-in-chief in the kingdom by far.

The Anglo Saxon Chronicle and the Orderic Vitalis make clear that his spiritual capital was rather less significant describing the bishop as ‘destitute of virtue,’  ‘a ravening wolf,’  ‘ambitious,’ ‘rapacious,’ ‘greedy,’ ‘ruthless,’ ‘arrogant’ and ‘tyrannical’ – in short a real charmer.

 

Unfortunately for Odo, his ambition matched that of his half brother and it was discovered that the Bishop of Bayeux was plotting to become pope.  William locked his brother up and he was only released upon William’s death.  By way of gratitude Odo led a rebellion in 1088 against William Rufus in favour of Robert Curthose, William’s elder brother who was Duke of Normandy at that time.

Odo never returned to Britain, something for which the people of Kent were probably deeply grateful.  He died and was buried in Palermo, Sicily on his way to the First Crusade.

To find out more about the chronology of the period click on the picture to open the page relating to the eleventh century in my ‘timeline of history’ or use the tabs at the top of the blog.