Some historians have labelled it a ‘genocide’, whereas other have suggested that what King William I did in the north of England, in the winter of 1069/70, was not out of character with the standards of the time. But, whilst we should always try to avoid projecting our 21st-century values back into the past, there is no doubt in my mind that the Harrying of the North should rank amongst the most brutal and horrific acts ever to be perpetrated on the people of England.

Background

Even though Duke William scored a resounding victory at Hastings, that alone did not give him the country. A good number of the Saxon military strength had been lost (including Harold and his two brothers, Gyrth and Leofwine), but there remained sufficient numbers to raise a new army, based around the fyrds belonging to Earls Eadwine and Morcar of Mercia and Northumbria, respectively.

That hope soon faded, however, when the brother earls took their troops north, leaving Edgar Aetheling (the last surviving scion of the royal House of Wessex) in London with little or no support. Even though the boy (he was aged somewhere around 14) had been acclaimed king by the Witan (and was therefore, officially, the last Anglo-Saxon King of England), he had no choice but to submit to William (at Berkhamsted) in December 1066.

In an ominous foretaste of what was to come, one of the factors leading to Edgar’s decision may well have been the path of destruction that William was blazing as he journeyed first to Wallingford (where he crossed the Thames) and thence back towards London. Sparing his people any further loss of life or property may well have been uppermost in his mind.

But even William’s coronation on Christmas Day, 1066 did not put an end to his problems. In many ways, they were only just beginning. Over the next three years, the new king was to face rebellion after rebellion from one end of the country to another, requiring a significant investment of time, effort and money at a time when he was also having to deal with problems back in Normandy, knights who needed to be paid, and a whole host of other issues.

One of the regions that had seen the most unrest was the north of England. A long way distant from the ruling elite of Wessex, Northumbria had long enjoyed a considerable degree of autonomy from the holder of the English crown. It is one of the themes I draw out in my Rebellion Trilogy from the beginning. That is: the extent to which the people north of the Humber (and especially north of the Tyne) would have worried or cared about who had just been crowned in London. They paid their dues to their local lord; what did it matter whom he then swore fealty to as long as their lives could continue unimpeded?

When all this began to change under King William – he was determined to bring the whole of England under his control – the people of the north were never going to roll over. Their way of life was worth fighting for.

However, in 1069 – after the third uprising in as many years – William finally lost patience and made the fateful decision to take things to a whole new level. Unable to bring the rebels to a pitched battle, William knew he needed a change of tactics; one that would fatally undermine the ability of the region to ever rise up again.

What was the Harrying of the North?

Firstly, as William travelled north to York, the land on either side of his route was ravaged. His soldiers destroyed crops and settlements as they passed, forcing actual or would-be rebels into hiding amongst the hills and forests of the region.

Then, having spent a, no doubt, enjoyable Christmas in York, King William doubled down with the start of the new year. Dividing his army into smaller units, William sent them out into the countryside with orders to burn, pillage and terrify from the Humber to the Tees.

Not only were villages razed to the ground and their inhabitants massacred, but the soldiers also destroyed granaries, farming equipment and livestock; a calculated act which meant that anyone who did survive the slaughter would face a winter of starvation and, likely, death.

It is often fruitless to talk of numbers in cases like these – the atrocity itself is the most shocking thing – but anywhere between 100-150,000 people are likely to have died during this ‘campaign’. How many of those died by the sword versus subsequent hunger or sickness is impossible to say.

Perception

Modern historians have, quite rightly, condemned William for this act; it was heinous even by 11th-century standards… certainly on such a grand scale. The fact that (near) contemporary chroniclers (even those of Norman descent) were also appalled by it, helps us understand that the Harrying was considered a barbaric act that stood out in what was a world often filled with barbarians.

The King stopped at nothing to hunt his enemies. He cut down many people and destroyed homes and land. Nowhere else had he shown such cruelty. This made a real change. To his shame, William made no effort to control his fury, punishing the innocent with the guilty. He ordered that crops and herds, tools and food be burned to ashes. More than 100,000 people perished of starvation. I have often praised William in this book, but I can say nothing good about this brutal slaughter. God will punish him.
– Orderic Vitalis

[King William] assembled an army, and hastened into Northumbria, giving way to his resentment; and spent the whole winter in laying waste the country, slaughtering the inhabitants, and inflicting every sort of evil, without cessation.
– Florence of Worcester

… so great a famine prevailed that men, compelled by hunger, devoured human flesh, that of horses, dogs, and cats, and whatever custom abhors; others sold themselves to perpetual slavery, so that they might in any way preserve their wretched existence.
– Symeon of Durham

Aftermath

You only have to look at the Domesday Book to see the lasting effects of the Harrying. Compiled almost 20 years later, large areas of Yorkshire are recorded as being ‘waste’ (wasteas est or hoc est vast).

All in all, roughly two-thirds of the region had been affected, resulting in a massive loss in value of the lands in terms of tax revenue – to say nothing of the reported loss of 80,000 oxen and 150,000 people (purportedly representing three quarters of the area’s population).

Not only Yorkshire was impacted. It is also noted that Cheshire and other counties on the Welsh border were also subjected to this brutality (albeit to a lesser degree). My own home town of Congleton (recorded as Cogeltone in the Book) was listed as waste in 1086.

From the Norman perspective, if the objective was to stop further rebellions in the north (and Mercia), then the strategy was a success. It also enabled the wholesale replacement of English land owners with Normans as a further means to complete the subjugation of the region.

Whether it was genocide though, or a valid response to insurrection, then I feel sure that Duke William – were he brought before the medieval equivalent of The Hague war crimes court – would cite the 4th-century Roman writer, Vegetius: “The main and principal point in war is to secure plenty of provisions and to destroy the enemy by famine.”

Paul Bernardi is the author of The Reckoning, the last volume in the Rebellion Trilogy, published in February 2026 by Sharpe Books.

You can read more from Paul in an interview here!