William, Duke of Normandy, defeated the Anglo-Saxon king Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings and was crowned King of England on Christmas Day of the same year. What year?
Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066; coronation at Westminster Abbey on 25 December 1066. William followed up with twenty years of substantial conquest consolidation — by the time of the Domesday Book (1086) approximately 95% of English landholders had been replaced by Normans and other continental followers of William. Edward the Confessor (reigned 1042–1066) had been the immediately-preceding Anglo-Saxon king whose disputed succession produced the 1066 crisis.
Read the full facts →The Norman Conquest was the 11th-century invasion and political takeover of Anglo-Saxon England by William, Duke of Normandy, culminating in his decisive victory at the Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066 and his coronation as King William I on Christmas Day 1066. It produced the most thorough replacement of a ruling class in medieval European history and reshaped English language, law, and political institutions for the next nine centuries.
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