



The history books refer to William the Conqueror as jovial and generous, among other surprising qualities recorded in an 11th-century Latin text written after the king’s funeral.

In fact, historians have got him wrong. A new translation of the rambling chronicle reveals that such praiseworthy adjectives were directed at someone else completely – a recently deceased abbot rather than the late king.

The discovery was made by a British historian, Marc Morris, while researching his forthcoming book on William of Normandy, whose conquest of England in 1066 altered the course of the nation’s history.

He told the Observer: “It’s very difficult assessing people’s personalities at a distance of a millennium, but academics for the past 50 or 60 years have written that … he was quite jovial, cheerful, eloquent, good-natured – not the brute you might suppose.”

Morris decided to go back to the original text, which was written by a Burgundian monk called Hugh of Flavigny after William’s burial in St Stephen’s Church at Caen in Normandy. “Every biography of William on my shelf mentions Hugh’s description of William the Conqueror in the context of the king’s funeral in 1087.”

The chronicle has been in print since the 19th century, in a multi-volume collection titled the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, but only in the original Latin – “flowery Latin at that, not the normal administrative Latin that most medieval historians – like me – can cope with,” Morris said. “I looked at this passage and thought it doesn’t look right to me.”

He asked a Latin expert, Professor David D’Avray of University College London, to translate it. The new version revealed that the adjectives do indeed appear in the text, but in relation to a little-known abbot. The praise was not about William but “this admirable man”, Abbot Richard of Verdun.

Morris said: “So this house of cards came crashing down. There’s no good evidence for a genial, jolly, jovial William the Conqueror. It’s clear from looking at academic biographies written in the past 50 years that it has always been mistranslated.”

Noting that previous biographies refer to William’s “generosity” and “cheerfulness”, among other adjectives, he added: “The surprising thing to me was how little all these biographers made of this material. It’s very hard to find good, trustworthy characterisations of people from 950 years ago, even if they are kings, so a genuine encomium of praise that mentioned all these qualities should be gold-dust. What made me particularly suspicious was that none of these historians provided a direct quote from Hugh of Flavigny, only a paraphrase of what he wrote. This made me want to read his words for myself.

“Without this passage, the evidence of a cheerful and affable conqueror collapses.”

Morris is the author of acclaimed books that include King John: Treachery, Tyranny and the Road to Magna Carta and The Norman Conquest. His new book, titled William I: England’s Conqueror, will be published in the Penguin Monarchs series on 25 August before the 950th anniversary of 1066.

At the battle of Hastings, William’s Norman army defeated King Harold’s English army. The battle was one of the bloodiest, even by medieval standards, and arguably the most important in English history.

Harold was killed, the English fled and William assumed the throne, transforming the country’s political, social and geographical landscape. He founded Battle Abbey on the battlefield site, as penance for the blood shed that day.

More than 100,000 people died as a result of the Norman Conquest. The size of the armies on either side at Hastings is unknown but neither is likely to have exceeded 10,000 men, Morris said: “Many were killed during the battle but thousands more would die in the years that followed, as English resistance led to Norman repression.”

English Heritage is marking the anniversary with various events. More than 1,066 Norman and Saxon soldiers will gather for a replay of the battle and a group of re-enactors – “Warriors of 1066” – will pay tribute to the soldiers by retracing King Harold’s march from York to Battle after the battle of Stamford Bridge. English Heritage notes that they could not follow Harold’s exact route as “logistics and A roads prevent this”.