Welcome to the British History Podcast. My name is Jamie and this is episode 381. We

can't do Williams. This show is ad-free due to member support and as a way of thanking

members for keeping the show independent, I offer members only content including extra

episodes and rough transcripts and right now members are listening to episode 5 on

our series on William of Normandy and it's huge. Over an hour crammed with details from

the life of this future conqueror when he was just a teenage Duke. Now you may have heard

of William but you probably haven't heard of the non-stop rebellions, betrayals and

bad decisions that made this man who he was when he reached English shores. It's all

the melodrama of high school but with swords and cavalry and if that sounds like your

idea of a good time you can get the entire series on William as well as over a hundred

other members episodes by signing up for membership at the British History Podcast dot

com for about the price of a croissant per month and thank you very much to Molly, Andrew

and Steve for signing up already. After the traitorous murder of King Griffith,

Harold returned to England victorious and as for Wales, well, their King had been assassinated

and their lands were carved up between rival nobles who were subservient to England and

as for the Welsh themselves, well here's how John of Salisbury described the effects

of Harold Godwin since brutal campaign. Thereby the strength of the Britons was so

impaired by the Duke that almost the entire nation seemed to die out and their women

were married to Englishmen by the indulgence of the King.

Now John was writing about a hundred years after these events which tells us that this

campaign was still being discussed a century later and the effects of it were also likely

still being felt. Harold's devastation of Wales was so complete that the region never fully

...