454 – Odo’s Rebellion: Worst Easter Ever

Welcome to the British History Podcast.

My name is Jamie, and this is episode 454, Odo's Rebellion, Worst Easter ever.

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It was Easter of 1088.

Now this was typically a time when the most powerful figures of England would gather at court.

But this wasn't a typical year.

The English coastlines were being attacked by pirates.

Pirates who looked suspiciously Norman.

English cities were also experiencing sudden outbreaks of violence.

And there was a rumor spreading that this was all coordinated and that the man behind it all was Bishop Odo.

Truth be told, Bishop Odo and his companions were looking right now about as innocent as a fox in an empty chicken coop.

And so whether or not this particular rumor was true was a bit besides the point, because it felt true.

Consequently, I wouldn't be surprised if King Rufus was really looking forward to this Easter court, because it would be a good time for him to call his uncles to the carpet and make them answer for themselves.

But then,

Odo, Robert of Mortain, and the other highly sus aristocrats just didn't show up.

And while getting the right date for Easter is a little tricky, kind of like trying to schedule a doctor's appointment by using trigonometry, thankfully, there were plenty of churchmen on hand who were more than happy to pull out the slide rulers and get the job done for you.

And so everyone knew which Sunday was Easter Sunday.

Everyone, including Odo.

And they weren't missing court by accident.

Instead, while the king was feasting and praying and praying and just for good measure, praying a little bit more, the rebels made their move.

All of them, all at once.

Now this was a clever choice, because Easter was a well-known date.

And at the very least, organizing everything to launch on Easter ensured that they'd all be attacking together.

There's also the fact that almost everyone else would have been focused on properly celebrating the holy holiday.

So if you wanted to do a coordinated strike against a group that had their pants down, this was the time to do it.

Now, Bishop Odo had stationed himself at Rochester, which meant he was nice and close to lands that belonged to the king, and he was also close to lands that were governed by the king's advisor, Archbishop Landfrank.

So, early on Easter Sunday, Bishop Odo gathered his forces and he rode out into Kent, burning and pillaging the lands of Landfrank and King Rufus.

At the same time, two other rebel leaders, Bishop Geoffrey of Coutons and Earl Robert de Mowbray of Northumbria, sallied forth out of the castle in Bristol and began to pillage and burn the countryside, with the chronicle telling us that they laid waste to all the honor of Berkeley.

William de Eu, the Baron of Hastings, took his forces and plundered and burned Gloucester and also whatever was left of the royal ville of Berkeley.

In Norwich, Roger Bigot seized the castle and from that stronghold began to viciously plunder the local countryside.

And up north, according to the chronicle, Bishop William of Durham followed suit and quote, did all the harm he could over all by the north, end quote, while Hugh de Grantsmanu, the sheriff of Leicestershire and the governor of Hampshire, delivered the same evil to the Midlands.

And back down south, one of the major architects of this rebellion, the powerful Earl of Shrewsbury, Roger de Montgomery, was stationed at his castle of Arendelle.

And from there, he could dominate Chichester and was even in striking distance of Portsmouth.

Basically, Robert of Montgomery's position could provide Duke Robert with a whole variety of harbors to land his invasion fleet at.

He just needed to press the advantage.

But instead, while everyone else was riding out, Roger, um, well, he was still in his castle.

Hmm.

But whatever.

While Montgomery was sitting behind his walls, his vassals and allies were plenty busy.

John of Worcester tells us that over in Herefordshire in Shropshire, quote, Bernard de Neuf Marchais, Roger de Lacey, who had lately wrested Hereford from the king, and Ralph de Mortimer, accomplices in the conspiracy, with the vassals of Roger, Earl of Shrewsbury, end quote, gathered a massive army.

And Orderic adds that even Bernard's father-in-law, Osborne, son of Richard Scroop, had joined the campaign.

But here's where it gets really interesting.

This army consisted not just of Normans, but also of the local English, and even the Welsh.

And this bit of information is confirmed in multiple sources.

So now this was well beyond a battle for power among the elite Norman invaders.

The English were now siding with Duke Robert's play for the throne.

And even worse for King Rufus, the rebels were even gaining help from neighboring kingdoms.

And the assembled army, this combined force of Normans, English, and Welshmen, marched straight upon Worcester.

And Bishop Wolstan of Worcester saw the approaching army, and he panicked.

John of Worcester has the kindest take upon what happens next, describing the bishop as, quote, a man of deep piety and dovelike simplicity, end quote.

But others were using words like agitated, distressed, and experiencing great tribulations.

The point is, whatever nerve the bishop had, he clearly lost it, and he locked himself inside the castle.

And this was actually a problem for the rebels, because according to both the Chronicle and Simeon of Durham, this rebel army wanted that castle.

So the army tried to entice Bishop Wolfstan to leave it.

And they did it by looting the bishop's minster, and also the city of Worcester.

And when that didn't do the trick, they just started setting everything on fire.

The story of this day, as sketched out in the chronicle, sounds terrifying.

These attacks appear to be widespread, striking at royal territories all over the kingdom, with the chronicle saying, quote, as soon as Easter came, then went they forth and harrowed and burned and wasted the king's farms and they despoiled the lands of all the men that that were in the king's service.

End quote.

And at the same time, across the channel, Duke Robert had assembled an army and was loading it onto his fleet, which, likely, had quite a few of those English ships that were seized by Robert's pirate mercenaries.

And he ordered this army to cross the channel.

Now, this force was commanded by Count Eustace of Boulogne and Roger de Montgomery's eldest son, Robert of Boulem, though Roger de Montgomery's other kids were also joining them.

We see Hugh de Montgomery, Roger de Poitou, and possibly Arnulf de Montgomery, or maybe it was Roger of Poitou instead, or maybe both.

Our ship records are kind of spotty.

But the point is that Roger's kids and Eustace were on the way, and with them were a bunch of knights from Normandy and Flanders.

though not as many as would be needed to overthrow the King of England.

This was just an advance force.

The main ducal force would follow later.

You know, once the duke actually managed to form a ducal force.

But I'm sure that'll take no time at all.

Meanwhile, in London, things were a bit hectic.

Messengers would have been pouring in from all corners of the kingdom.

each one with a new report of a new attack, another insurrection, and even a foreign invasion.

The kingdom was unraveling before their eyes.

And it wouldn't have been much past the third or fourth of these messengers when all of the suspicions would have been confirmed.

Rufus's uncles, along with their bastard vassals, and apparently even the friggin' Welsh, were trying to kill him and install short pants on the throne.

This was bad.

Really bad.

And honestly, the only good news they had at this point was that King Malcolm III of Scotland hadn't invaded, which honestly is a pretty low bar when you think about it.

But here's the thing.

Before being a king, Rufus was a knight, a good one.

He actually lived for this kind of thing.

This was a guy who was so comfortable with conflict, a guy who actually craved conflict so much that he spent his youth picking fights with his own trainers.

He was so bold, he pissed on his brother's head, head, the presumed heir and his own future king, just because he felt like his brother was getting a bit too big for his britches.

It's hard to overstate how much Rufus liked conflict.

So he wasn't locked in London surrounded by Robert's men.

Robert's men were locked in England with him.

So Rufus summoned his council and called his forces and prepared a counter-strike.

And he didn't waste any time, but at the same time, they kind of were caught flat-footed here, and so the wait for the mustering must have been agonizing, especially considering that Robert's men weren't letting their foot off the gas.

Back in Kent, Bishop Odo and his men were still moving fast, burning and looting anything under the command of Rufus or Lanfrank.

And their pillaging was so thorough that they were forced to regularly ride back to Rochester to deposit their stolen loot, before riding back out to do it all over again.

And that was the case elsewhere as well.

Baron William de O and his men were still laying a similar sort of waste to Gloucester and Berkeley.

And Roger of Bagot was still laying waste to the Norwich countryside.

And Bishop William of Durham was still rampaging in the north.

And Hugh de Grantsmanil was still ravaging the Midlands.

And I assume Roger of Mortain, the king's other uncle, was launching strikes from his stronghold at Pevensey.

And down in Arendelle, there was Roger de Montgomery, who was, um,

well,

he was still in his castle.

It's starting to get weird.

And while our records aren't great, so we're missing parts of what the rebels were up to, it looks like Roger de Montgomery was hanging back, and he was still hanging back even after his kids arrived.

And John of Worcester tells us that he was doing this because he was waiting for Duke Robert of Normandy and his full ducal army to land before he was going to make a move.

But whatever, there were still plenty of other rebels in the field, and the warlike Bishop Geoffrey of Coutons and Earl Robert of de Mowbray of Northumbria were out there advancing at a terrifying pace.

You see, the Bristol countryside wasn't their actual target.

That was just opportunistic raiding.

What they really wanted was the king's city of Bath.

And by about this point, they they had reached the city and had overwhelmed whatever defenses they had and were proceeding to pillage and burn Bath.

When that was done, they headed on towards Wiltshire, again burning, looting, and killing as they went.

And John of Worcester makes it very clear that this wasn't simple plunder.

Bishop Geoffrey and Earl Robert de Mowbray were deliberately slaughtering the people of the region, all the way down down to the peasants.

And eventually, they reached Ilchester.

And the ease of their campaign and the apparent lack of opposition as they murdered unarmed farmers had them on a bit of a high.

They were winning.

They were actually winning really easily.

So the bishop and the earl decided, you know what?

Let's take a pause and grab another castle.

And so they launched a siege.

Because why not?

They were rolling these folks up, and the the so-called king in London was nowhere to be seen, so might as well take this castle.

But speaking of that king, Rufus was preparing his response.

And um,

well, I suspect he realized that he was in a bit of trouble here.

I mean, he had knights and Norman soldiers, sure, but so did his uncles.

And they had a lot of them, actually.

That's not great.

So Rufus was meeting with his advisors, and they struggled to find a plan.

And eventually, it dawned on them that while these traitorous barons and other assorted Norman lords had made significant gains, there was a weakness in their insurrection.

This was primarily a Norman affair.

I mean, sure, there was that army at Worcester, which could tout itself as being fairly multicultural, but in general, these aristocrats who had come over the channel from Normandy were working with their fellow Normans, almost exclusively.

And so finally, almost certainly at Archbishop Lanfrank's suggestion, Rufus seized upon the opportunity and he, quote, summoned a great council of the Archbishop with his suffragens and the earls and the native English, end quote.

And once assembled, the king addressed them and laid out all the violence and disorder that was being caused by Bishop Odo and his co-conspirators.

And he told them how this was going to continue until the rebellion was put down, likely pointing out that there were castles and cities under siege as we speak.

And he told them that he wanted to march against them personally, but he couldn't do it alone.

He needed an army, a massive army that would overwhelm the insurrection.

He needed the Norman aristocrats, the Norman settlers, but he also needed the English.

He especially needed the English.

The trouble, though, was that Rufus had come into the throne claiming that he would be a continuation of his father's rule.

I mean, this was a guy who didn't even change his name on the coins.

He was still ruling as King William, just as his father did.

And William was the same bastard who had kind of brought all of this calamity to England in the first place.

So when you got that much baggage, how do you get the English to side with you anyway?

Well, again, probably following Landfrank's advice, Rufus did something pretty clever.

He acknowledged that his father's reign had kind of sucked for the English.

Their laws had been disrespected and cast aside.

A whole bunch of Norman laws had been brought across the channel and implemented, and their gap in the knowledge of how the law worked had been used to exploit them.

They'd also been taxed unjustly into horrendous levels.

They had their forests seized and their hunting rights stolen from them.

It really had been awful.

William had been awful.

But don't you worry because King Rufus is here to make it all right.

If you fight for me today, I will be such a good king.

You won't believe how good I'm going to king you.

You know those forests?

You can have them back.

Those hunting rights?

All yours.

How about those unjust taxes?

F ⁇ them, strike them from the books.

And as for laws, oh my God, you're not gonna believe the kind of laws you're gonna get with me.

You're gonna have only the best laws and you can pick them.

Yeah, that's right.

You get to select your own laws.

How great is that?

Look, guys, I am gonna be so good at kinging.

The best days are yet to come and everything you lost is gonna be restored.

I just need your help defeating my asshole uncles first.

So what do you say?

And, well, it worked.

Orderick reports that 30,000 English soldiers mustered for Rufus' army.

While John of Worcester tells us that King Rufus mustered soldiers, quote, both horse and foot, to form an army which, though small, contained as many Normans as he could present muster, but consisted chiefly of English, end quote.

So maybe it was small or maybe it was huge, but the records agree that the bulk of Rufus' army to keep him on the throne were Englishmen, since, apparently, not a lot of the local Normans were mustering on behalf of Rufus.

And the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle takes this split and runs with it.

The scribes cast this situation as the English standing with their English king against the invading Norman menace.

And they go so far as to claim that the rebels were entirely French, which is a framing that would have appealed to later chroniclers like Orderic, Florence of Worcester, and Malmesbury.

But we also know that that's not true, and that some of the rebel armies definitely included Englishmen.

Also, King Rufus was definitely a Norman who had been in country for less than a year at this point.

So the idea that the English were motivated by ethnic and nationalistic animosity seems unlikely.

But that doesn't slow down the patriotism coming out of the chronicle.

And that zeal was thoroughly burnished by Orderic.

I mean, get a load of how Orderic imagines how the English spoke to Rufus.

Quote,

See you not our numbers who have already flocked to your standard, and give you willing obedience.

Send your orders throughout all England and crush the rebels with the weight of your lawful power.

We will fight for you to death, and never shall another prince usurp your place in our affections.

It would be indeed folly and a crime to prefer a foreign enemy to a well-known king.

king.

The nation which breaks its allegiance to its prince must be held accursed.

Death to the band which exults in the ruin of its lord.

Search well the histories of the English and you will find them to have always been faithful to their kings.

Hell yeah.

Slap that speech into the mouth of Bill Pullman and you got yourself a 90s popcorn flick.

But ordering's stirring reenactment aside, I suspect that the turnout of the English for Rufus had much more to do with the promises Rufus had just made to them than it did with a sense of patriotism.

And actually, you should keep in mind those promises that he made.

Because while our scribes report that Rufus never fulfilled them, they really were things that the English wanted.

And they're going to become sticking points that will last for the rest of his rule and the rule of those who come after him.

But right now, the English didn't know that Rufus was lying.

And so the army of, as many of 30,000 Englishmen, were assembling to fight and die in pursuit of this promised medieval utopia.

And meanwhile, back at court, Rufus and his surrogates were striking deals with the sheriffs, the Norman aristocrats, and the ecclesiastical figures who were still willing to talk.

You see, the English weren't the only ones who were getting promises.

And honestly, as far as promises go, the English were getting the short end of the stick, because Rufus was promising the new aristocracy of England that if they sided with him against Odo, they could essentially pick their price.

Now, as we discussed already, the sheriffs held a lot of power, but they didn't hold it hereditarily.

However, this crisis presented a very interesting opportunity.

It also presented a very interesting opportunity for the precariously positioned ecclesiastical figures, because essentially the king was saying that if they backed him and if he won, they'd be able to keep their positions and they might even be able to pass them down to their heirs.

And this must have been quite the carrot, because it appears that almost all of the sheriffs and the vast majority of the ecclesiastical figures sided with the king.

As far as we can tell, the only sheriffs that sided with the rebellion were Roger Bigot in East Anglia, Hugh de Grantsmanil in Leicester, and maybe Geoffrey de Mandville in London.

Maybe.

So these promises that King Rufus was making were working.

Now, oddly, Historian Frank Barlow, when discussing this effort by the Norman sheriffs to develop hereditary claims, tells us us that in doing so, quote, they began to create true English dynasties, end quote.

Wow.

I think Penda, Athelred, and a few other English figures like Alfred the Great might like to have a word with Frank on that one.

But the strange Norman bias in how historians discuss this period aside, King Rufus's forces really were swelling at this point.

And then came the coup de grace.

Remember Roger de Montgomery, that powerful Earl of Shrewsbury who had been hanging at his castle in Arundel this whole time, allegedly to keep the port open for the arrival of Duke Robert?

Well,

he must have liked what he was hearing from Rufus as well, because he switched sides.

And in an instant, all the land that had been controlled from Arundel, and more importantly, the ports and the ships that were within those ports, flipped to Rufus.

Now, Montgomery, like the English, really should have considered who it was that was making these promises and how likely it was that he'd deliver on them.

But you know how it is, there's one born every minute.

And Rufus couldn't be happier for that fact.

Things were finally starting to turn in his favor, but he wasn't out of the woods yet.

There were still multiple rebel armies in the field, and the attacks were spreading out all across the kingdom.

There was also the very real problem of Robert, who had already sent some reinforcements to the rebels of Normandy and was certainly preparing to send even more, perhaps a full ducal army.

The king needed to move fast.

And so he launched a defensive fleet, likely using the sink ports and whatever ships he could conscript or woo into his service.

And he set them guarding the coast to prevent Normandy from providing the rebels with any further troops.

Then he gathered his army and marched on the enemy.

And

there were a lot of enemies out there, including multiple sieges that could certainly benefit from a relieving force.

But Rufus decided to turn the full force of his might against his biggest enemy, the leader of this whole sordid affair, Bishop Odo.

Now Bishop Odo's stronghold in Rochester was well positioned, being located at the point where Watling Street crosses the Medway.

This placed it on a route leading directly from Dover to Canterbury to London.

It was also a city that was able to be reinforced by sea via both the Medway and the Thames if necessary.

And on top of that, Rochester didn't stand alone.

About 20 miles to the south was Tombridge Castle, which was held by Gilbert FitzRichard and his brother Roger, who were actually the sons of King William's childhood friend, Richard Fitzgilbert, because Normans and their names are a complete mess.

But anyway, Gil and Roger and their castle were siding with Duke Robert rather than Rufus in this family squabble.

A further 30 miles to the south, you find Pevensey Castle on the Sussex coast, and that was held by William's half-brother and King Rufus' uncle, Count Robert of Mortain.

So what we're talking about here is a 50-mile line of fortified positions, and everything but Tonbridge could receive continental reinforcements by sea.

But at the same time, 50 miles is quite the distance.

And without local support, it wouldn't be a defensive line at all.

It would just be isolated spots of resistance.

And while the Baron of Hastings, William de O,

had sided with the rebellion, and Hastings was only a handful of miles behind Pevensey, the fact was that recruitment hadn't gone as well as they had hoped, and Duke Robert hadn't sent as many soldiers as they needed.

At least not yet.

And that left them vulnerable.

The trouble, though, was that while Odo was the head of the snake, and Rufus would very much like to cut that head off, going directly to Rochester, even with such a large army, would be suicide.

Rochester was a walled city, hence the Chester part of its name, which means fortress.

Even worse, just outside the city's south gate, probably on Bowley Hill, stood a Mottenbailey castle protecting both the city and also the bridge.

And as we know by now, those Motton Bailey castles were incredibly difficult to take down.

So if Rufus advanced on Rochester from London, his forces would have to cross the Medway while coming under attack by Odo's forces on the walls and defenses of Rochester, probably by bunching up on the bridge, which is always a bad plan.

And then, if they managed to survive the advance and get to the other side, they'd be likely forced into a situation where they'd have to fight the walls of the Bailey, then fight their way through the encampment, then climb the mot and attack the walls at the top of the mott, and then fight all the guys inside the mott.

And if they were successful, that wouldn't even get them into the city.

They'd still have to fight their way past Rochester's big-ass stone walls that had been standing since the days of Rome.

Oh, and those walls in the city weren't just manned by the forces of Rochester and whatever rebels Odo had managed to muster.

They were now joined by Duke Robert's cross-channel reinforcements.

And all in all, we're told that Odo had a garrison of 500 knights, and I'm not sure how many average fighters and conscripts on top of that.

But the point is, there were a lot of them in there, and they were dug in.

So, like I said, suicide.

But at the same time, this was King Rufus.

He was a knight's knight and you know, that can mean many things, but in this instance, it means that he was well versed in warfare and tactics.

And so while his uncle was inviting him to commit suicide on the Medway, Rufus chose to knock on the back door.

He completely avoided that meat grinder by taking his forces south and fording the crossings at Cuxton and Aylesford.

And when Odo heard of this, he was actually out there pillaging and looting, as he had been doing since this campaign had begun.

And according to Orderic, while Odo's wealth and military power in Kent was vast, he didn't pretend that his forces could defeat King Rufus in the field.

So he galloped back to Rochester and locked himself inside, along of course, with his 500 men-at-arms and who knows how many peasant conscripts.

And he did this because while Odo didn't think he could beat Rufus in the field, the fact was he didn't need to.

He just needed to hold out long enough for Duke Robert's reinforcements to arrive.

So he settled in for a siege.

But Odo might have jumped the gun a little bit because actually, the king wasn't going to Rochester.

At least not directly.

You see, this line of castles was a problem, and Rufus had no desire to launch a siege only to get attacked on his flank.

So the king and his army marched directly upon the center of that line, the castle at Tunbridge.

And once there, he besieged it.

Now, after only two days of this, everyone was starting to get a bit antsy.

As we've talked about many times, sieges take forever.

And the problem here was that every moment that passed was another moment that Normandy might send reinforcements across the channel.

And while a direct assault was dangerous and likely to lead to a lot of casualties, the fact was Rufus had all of these Englishmen in his army.

So, you know, why not put them to use?

So the king ordered the assault.

And according to both the Chronicle and Simeon of Durham, it was the English who had to storm the castle.

We're not told how many losses were taken.

There was probably a lot.

But our sources are just concerned about the nobility.

So they tell us that in the fighting, Gilbert Fitzrichard had been wounded.

And apparently he decided that, you know, that was as much blood as he was willing to spill for Robert's ambitions.

And he immediately surrendered himself and the castle.

Simeon actually goes one step further and claims that the castle is actually brought down and that it was the garrison who surrendered.

Either way though, the defensive line was cut in half.

And news travels fast because John of Worcester tells us that back in Rochester, Bishop Odo called a meeting with his closest companions to work out a plan for what to do next, now that Tunbridge had fallen.

Meanwhile, back at Tunbridge, King Rufus was feeling pretty good.

His flank was secure now, and he was 20 miles from his bastard uncle.

And once he got his hands on him,

well, he could get back to dying some Easter eggs.

20 miles, and it would be done.

And honestly, if they pushed a little, they could probably be there in a couple days, maybe even a single day if they really hauled ass.

So let's get it done.

And after a long march, the sweaty, tired, and recently battered army of King Rufus arrived outside the city walls of Rochester.

The king was digging in.

He didn't care how long it took and how many people inside the city died.

He wasn't leaving without dealing with Odo.

And he made sure that everyone in Rochester knew it.

And in return, the people of Rochester let him know that Odo wasn't there.

He left a few days ago with a handful of friends, and they were headed for Robert of Mortain's castle at Pevensey, 50 miles in the other direction.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, you can reach me at the British History Podcast at gmail.com.

And if you'd like to sign up for membership, you can do so at thebritish historypodcast.com.

Thanks for listening.

Probably gonna start up a fight.

I know this can't be right.

Hey, baby, come on.

I live for you and me.

And now I really come to see that life would be much better

once you're gone.