The 1066 Norman Bruisers: How European Thugs Became English Gentry

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"...a great book, as it gives a different look at a well written about period of English history." – Medieval Sword School The 1066 Norman Bruisers conjures up the vanished world of England in the late Middle Ages and casts light on one of the strangest quirks in the nation’s history: how a bunch of European thugs became the quintessentially English gentry. In 1066 go-getting young immigrant Osbern Fitz Tezzo crossed the Channel in William the Conqueror’s army. Little did he know that it would take five years to vanquish the English, years in which the Normans suffered almost as much as the people they had set out to subdue. For the English, the Norman Conquest was an unmitigated disaster, killing thousands by the sword or starvation. But for Osbern and his compatriots, it brought territory and treasure – and a generational evolution they could never have imagined. Osbern’s descendants settled in Cheshire, which played a pivotal role in medieval England as the launch pad for Edward I’s Welsh wars, the chief recruiting ground for royal armies and Richard II’s regional powerhouse. Successive members of the Boydell family fought for monarchs and magnates, oversaw royal garrisons, traveled abroad as agents of the crown and helped to administer the laws of the land. When they weren’t strutting across the stage of northwestern England, mingling with great men and participating in great events, they engaged in feuds, embarked on illicit love affairs and exerted their influence in the small corner of the country they had made their own. By 1378, when William Boydell died from wounds sustained in combat, the nation he defended was England and the enemy he opposed dwelled just forty miles from the place where Osbern had probably grown up. Cover Book Title Copyright Table of Contents Acknowledgements A Note on Money, Land and Names List of Maps and Family Trees Introduction 1 Winner Takes All 2 The Wages of War 3 An Undone Land 4 What’s in a Name? 5 Family versus Flock 6 The Path of Chivalry 7 One Welshman’s Head 8 Blade and Trade 9 On the King’s Business 10 Floating in Blood 11 Illicit Amour 12 Cornered and Constrained 13 Black Smoke 14 An Unequal Contest 15 Venom in the Veins 16 The Double Legacy 17 Fortune’s False Wheel 18 Ashes and Dust Abbreviations Notes Select Bibliography Index Back Cover