Geneall net william the conqueror biography

William I (the Conqueror)
Biography

WILLIAM I. (1027 or 1028-1087), king of England, surnamed the Conqueror, was born in 1027 or 1028. He was the bastard son of Robert the Devil, duke of Normandy, by Arietta, the daughter of a tanner at Falaise. In 1034. Robert resolved on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Having no legitimate son he induced the Norman barons to acknowledge William as his successor. They kept their engagement when Robert died on his journey (1035). though the young duke-elect was a mere boy. But the next twelve years was a period of the wildest anarchy. Three of William's guardians were murdered; and for some time he was kept in strict concealment by his relatives, who feared that he might experience the same fate. Trained in a hard school, he showed a precocious aptitude for war and government. He was but twenty years old when he stamped out, with the help of his overlord, Henry I. of France, a serious rising in the districts of the Bessin and Cotentin, the object of