Marc Morris > Quotes

“Exeter was a walled city and on his arrival William found the rebels manning the whole circuit of its ramparts. In a final attempt to induce a surrender he ordered one of the hostages to be blinded in view of the walls, but, says Orderic, this merely strengthened the determination of the defenders. Indeed, according to William of Malmesbury, one of them staged something of a counter-demonstration by dropping his trousers and farting loudly in the king’s general direction.”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest

“The English remained paralysed by their own rivalries until the following April, at which point Æthelred made an invaluable contribution to the war effort by dropping dead, clearing the way for Edmund to succeed him.”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

“But they also awarded a quite respectable 55th place to Enoch Powell, thereby demonstrating that, for certain sections of the population, being an unpleasant racist constitutes no bar to greatness.”
― Marc Morris, Kings and Castles

“By 1086 the English were entirely gone from the top of society, supplanted by thousands of foreign newcomers. This transformation had almost certainly not been William’s original intention. His initial hope appears to have been to rule a mixed Anglo-Norman kingdom, much as his predecessor and fellow conqueror, King Cnut, had ruled an Anglo-Danish one. But Cnut had begun his reign by executing those Englishmen whose loyalty he suspected and promoting trustworthy natives in their place. William, by contrast, had exercised clemency after his coronation and consequently found himself facing wave after wave of rebellion. The English knew they were conquered in 1016, but in 1066 they had refused to believe it. As a result they met death and dispossession by stages and degrees, until, eventually and ironically, the Norman Conquest became far more revolutionary than its Danish predecessor.”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

“The muster roll for the 1300 campaign noted that Hugh fitz Heyr, a Shropshire landowner of little consequence, was obliged by the terms of his tenure to serve in the king’s war ‘with bow and arrow’. It also noted that ‘as soon as he saw the enemy he shot his arrow, then went home’.”
― Marc Morris, A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain

“it is a mark of the kingdom’s political maturity that in times of crisis its leading men would generally come together to debate their differences rather than immediately reaching for their swords.”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

“Edward had lived ‘a celibate life’; indeed, ‘he preserved with holy chastity the dignity of his consecration, and lived his whole life dedicated in true innocence’.”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

“Indeed, the point of the famous story about the king and the waves, as originally told, was not to illustrate his stupidity, but rather to prove what a good Christian he had been. ‘Let all the world know’, says a damp Cnut, having conspicuously failed to stop the tide from rising, ‘that the power of kings is empty and worthless, and there is no king worthy of the name save Him by whose will heaven, earth and sea obey eternal laws.’2”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

“Bede, who would doubtless have furnished us with a detailed explanation of such a massive engineering project,”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“According to another contemporary author, writing in the 970s, the king ordered that thieves and robbers were to be punished by having their eyes put out, their ears ripped off, their nostrils carved open and their hands and feet removed, before being scalped and left in the open fields at night to be eaten by wild beasts and birds.”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“This was most obviously true in the contrast between thatched wooden churches and soaring stone basilicas,”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“Lastly, the story that the Tapestry tells is inevitably selective and in places demonstrably inaccurate; some events are left out and others are deliberately distorted. No other source, for example, suggests that Harold swore his famous oath to William at Bayeux, or that it was Odo who heroically turned the tide for the Normans during the Battle of Hastings. The Tapestry, it bears repeating, is really an embroidery.”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

“Some people were evidently scandalized at the accession of a child who had not been conceived within the bounds of holy matrimony. In another part of France, the Burgundian chronicler Ralph Glaber wrote that Robert’s lack of a legitimate son had been a cause of great distress to his people, and suggested that some thought it abominable that the duke had been succeeded by a bastard. In the same breath, however, Glaber conceded that the dukes of Normandy had always been happy to honour the offspring of their concubines and accept them as their heirs. ‘This had been the custom of this people’, the chronicler admitted, ‘ever since they first appeared in Gaul.”
― Marc Morris, William I: England's Conqueror

“For the time being, however, two additional bishops was as far as the pope’s ambitious scheme was able to progress, and his command that London be the seat of the archbishop was never fulfilled. Canterbury, Æthelberht’s own capital, retained that distinction, with Augustine serving as its first incumbent.”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“If we had to sum this new society up in a single word, we might describe it as feudal— but only if we were prepared for an outbreak of fainting fits among medieval historians.”
― Marc Morris, The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

“We do not have to indulge in too much psychological guesswork to see where Edward’s true affections lay. As a child he had seen his father and elder brothers die fighting against a Danish invader. His mother had abandoned him in order to marry that invader and become Cnut’s queen. His father-in-law had collaborated with Cnut to become the Danish king’s right-hand man, and had murdered Edward’s only remaining brother. It should hardly surprise us that, when he thought about the succession, the childless king should want to thwart his Anglo-Danish in-laws and advance the fortunes of the family that had sheltered and raised him.6”
― Marc Morris, William I: England's Conqueror

“The Normans had first arrived in Gaul (the former Roman province roughly equivalent to modern France) in the ninth century as Viking raiders – their name, given to them by their enemies, signified ‘men of the North’. Around the start of the tenth century some of them started to settle in the area around Rouen and colonized the ancient Roman region of Neustria, so that over time it came to be known by the new name of ‘Normandy’. In the century that followed they ditched most of their Viking ways and adopted the manners and customs of their new neighbours, learning to speak French, giving their children French names, embracing Christianity, and refounding some of the churches and monasteries that their not-too-distant ancestors had looted and destroyed. And yet, as Ralph Glaber’s comment shows, people who lived in other parts of France still felt that the Normans had some distance to travel before they could be regarded as fully civilized.”
― Marc Morris, William I: England's Conqueror

“the extreme wealth of the elite depended on the aggressive exploitation of the majority of the population, who are for the most part absent from the archaeological and written records.”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“In the final analysis, therefore, the tomb of Edward I may stand, like the unfinished castle at Caernarfon, not only as a monument to the past, but also as a warning to the future: a final reminder of the power of myth to shape men’s minds and motives, and thus to alter the fate of nations.”
― Marc Morris, A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain

“Having begun their protest by demanding that the realm should be governed only by ‘native-born men’, the opposition now insisted on nothing less than the total expulsion of all foreigners, ‘never to return’.”
― Marc Morris, A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain

“But by the time of Edward’s succession in 899, Ecgwynn had either died or been discarded,”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“everybody living in the empire was considered a Roman citizen,”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“few may have served out of obligation, for land they had already been given,”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“What they sought in the first instance was moveable wealth – gold, silver and slaves.”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“This was arguably the most disgraceful episode in the bishop’s chequered career,”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“Ecclesiastical History of the English People,”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“So vast, indeed, that it eventually proved impossible to administer from a single centre,”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“was massive – something like 50,000 men, over ten per cent of the entire imperial army.”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“Cluny was created with the intention that it should be free from lay control, and was answerable only to the pope.”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066

“Æthelwulf set off in the direction of home. As on his outward journey,”
― Marc Morris, The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066