Norman Yoke

The 'Norman Yoke' is a political term disguised as a historical term, which emerged in English Nationalist discourse in the mid-17th century. Ironically the first text, The Mirror of Justices, in which the term was used, was written in French in the late thirteenth century. An English translation was published in 1646 during the English Revolution.

The 'Norman Yoke' was a shorthand phrase useful for attributing the oppressive aspects of feudalism in England to the impositions of William I of England, his retainers and their descendants. It had enough of truth in it to be useful, but its presence in an argument that purports to be historical is a red flag to a cautious reader.

Frequently, critics of the Norman Yoke model would claim Alfred the Great or Edward the Confessor as models of justice. In this context, Magna Carta is seen as an attempt to restore pre-conquest English rights, even if only for the gentry. When Sir Edward Coke reorganised the English legal system, he was keen to claim that the grounds of English common law were beyond the memory or register of any beginning and pre-existed the Norman conquest. He did not use the phrase 'Norman Yoke' however.

The idea of the 'Norman Yoke' characterized the nobility and gentry of England as the descendants of foreign usurpers who had destroyed a Saxon golden age. Such a reading was an extremely powerful myth for the poor and excluded classes of England. Whereas Coke, John Pym, Lucy Hutchinson and Sir Henry Vane saw Magna Carta rights as being primarily those of the propertied classes, during the prolonged 17th century constitutional crisis in England and Scotland, the arguments were also taken up in a more radical fashion by the likes of Francis Trigge, John Hare, John Lilburne, John Warr and Gerrard Winstanley of the radical Diggers even calling for an end to primogeniture and the cultivation of the soil in common."Seeing the common people of England by joynt consent of person and purse have caste out Charles our Norman oppressour, wee have by this victory recovered ourselves from under his Norman yoake".wrote Winstanley on behalf of the Diggers, in December 1649. In The True Levellers Standard Advanced Winstanley begins

'O what mighty Delusion, do you, who are the powers of England live in! That while you pretend to throw down that Norman yoke, and Babylonish power, and have promised to make the groaning people of England a Free People; yet you still lift up that Norman yoke, and slavish Tyranny, and holds the People as much in bondage, as the Bastard Conquerour himself, and his Councel of War.'

There was a revival of interest in the eighteenth century. The argument was revived in such texts as the Historical essay on the English Constitution (1771) and John Cartwright's Take Your Choice (1777) and featured in the debate between Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke. It was also championed by Thomas Jefferson

By the nineteenth century the 'Norman Yoke' lost whatever historical significance in may have had and was no longer a 'red flag' in political debate. But it still carried its pop history usefulness, as in Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe where a 'Saxon proverb' is put in the mouth of Wamba (Ch. xxvii):

'Norman saw on English oak.

On English neck a Norman yoke;

Norman spoon to English dish,

And England ruled as Normans wish;

Blithe world in England never will be more,

Till England's rid of all the four.' (Chapter XXVII)

Michael Wood touched upon the 'Norman Yoke' concept in the context of highly mythologized so-called 'comic-book history' for the BBC History series 'In Search of England'.

• BBC Hisory 'Norman Yoke'website.

Reference

Christopher Hill, Puritanism and Revolution, 1958.