Books / Character Development / Fergus Findlay: Drover / Uncategorized

Oor Wullie or French William at Hastings

The Portuguese went round the Cape of Good Hope in search of the spice trade. Columbus sailed west to develop trade with Japan. Cabot went back to Nova Scotia because he thought there was gold there. Why did William the Conqueror invade Britain? Because he wanted a piece of the action in the North Sea. The North Sea was at that time the busiest trading area in the world; iron ore, timber, amber, furs from Scandinavia; tin, lead, copper, wool, from Britain. All France provided was wine.
BY ignoring Cnut’s empire historians miss the influence it had on the Norman invasion. There are tales of how Harold went to France to pay homage to William and tales of how Edward the Confessor naming William as his successor but none of it explains why William wanted to leave sunny France for a wet and windy Britain. If all he wanted was land, surely he’d have gone south or south east to the Riviera. How many Frenchmen retire to Cleethorpes?
Anyway, there were several claimants to the throne, was it ever different until Victoria. There was Edgar, the Atheling, with the most obvious claim, there was Harald, who had outlawed his brother. That brother and Edgar, who was Malcolm of Scotland’s brother-in-law, joined up in Scotland, they could hardly go to France, could they? These two got together, convinced Malcolm to charge down into England while Harald was under threat from William. They tried their luck at Stamford Bridge. As usually happens at Stamford Bridge, the Scots lost, but then Harald had to rush down to Hastings.
I always thought that was pretty much it but it turns out that William turned on the Scots and Malcolm submitted to him at Abernethy. I went to school in Scotland but nobody thought to tell me William the Conqueror was at Abernethy. It was of course the capital of the land of the Painted People, the Picts. The local church was founded by an Irishwoman, St Brigit of Kildare – not one of the raiding Scotti from Ulster.
So what are the people of Abernethy? Viking, Norman, Irish, Scots, or Picts? Maybe just British.