Bonus podcast: Norman Numbers

0:00Hello, it's me, Tim Harford. You might not have expected to see me pop up on your Morales feed today, honestly, neither did I. But here we all are. Together. How nice. There is actually a reason for this impromptu hang. Over the summer the team were tasked with writing six forty-five secondish gobbets on numbers to do with the Norman invasion of England. And this was to celebrate the return of the Bayer tapestry to our fair shores for the first time in nearly a thousand years. Now these gobbets were read out on the radio. Some of you may have heard of a radio, it's a bit like a smart speaker, except it only plays what it wants to play. But we thought why not also impart our newfound Norman Wisdom onto our podcast feed too. So sit back, relax and enjoy our little statistical snacklets.

1:02Gobbit the First. How many soldiers fought at the Battle of Hastings? One medieval chronicler claimed Harold commanded 1.2 million men while William brought a measly 150,000. Those numbers are medieval nonsense, exaggerated for religious effect. The truth is we don't know exactly how many men fought, but we can make a pretty good estimate by looking at the geography of the battlefield, Harold's army call-up system, and how many troops William could actually fit into his ships. The scholarly consensus is that William had around 6,000 to 8,000 soldiers with Harold commanding a similar number. That made Hastings a huge battle for its time, but compared with more recent wars it was tiny, roughly a tenth of Waterloo. Gobbit the Second. The harrying of the North. How much was destroyed? After victory at Hastings, William still had to secure his power in England. Yorkshire was

2:03particularly rebellious, and in 1069 William and his army headed north to Harrowward. This was dubbed the harrying of the North, and seemed to bring death and destruction on a massive scale, as William's knights burned and pillaged their way across the region. One chronicler claimed 100,000 people were killed, and that's probably Oldie Wildie for lots. The Doomsday book may give us a better sense of the devastation, it records properties as being in a state of waste, and 16 years after the harrying around 60% of Yorkshire's properties were recorded that way. Gobbit the Third. The totality of the takeover. The Norman Conquest wasn't a gentle merging of cultures, it was a hostile takeover in which a new ruling elite almost completely replaced the Old. The Doomsday book gives us a pretty good idea of the scale. It records around 13,000 properties across England with a total annual value

3:08of about 73,000 pounds, essentially what their lords could extract from them each year. William controlled around 20% Norman Barons 50% and the Church 25%, that left just 5% in Anglo-Saxon hands. Now that's what I call a conquest. There were still plenty of Anglo-Saxon middle managers, but they all had to pay their dues to the Norman Barons above them. Gobbit the Fourth. The Dawn of the Warhorse. The Bayer Tapestry, technically not a tapestry, shows around 200 horses, reinforcing the myth of massive Norman Warhorses. But well, there, because in 2021 archaeologists found horses actually became slightly smaller after 1066. Norman Horses averaged just 1.3 meters at the shoulder, technically ponies by modern standards, about the size of a new forest pony. They were 5cm shorter than late Saxon horses and around 50

4:09centimeters shorter than many modern shires. And there was no post-conquest horsey growth spurt, average height stayed stable until the 1300s. The Saxons already had more horses too, they just didn't seem to use them as full cavalry. Gobbit the Fifth. Norman Language. When the Normans invaded, they didn't just bring conquering, they brought words. Norman French began its long merger with Old English, and the relationship was basically conqueror and conquered. English peasants kept their cow, while a French overlords ate birth, or beef, even tapestry as fancy French. But how big was the linguistic takeover? That depends which words you look at. But among the thousand most frequently used English words, a little over 50% still have Old English, Germanic or Norse roots. But expand that to the 5000 most common words and the tables turn, almost 60% have French or Latin

5:09origins. So yes, the Normans conquered England and some of its vocabulary. Gobbit the Sixth. The Rise of Sirnames. Before 1066, most English people didn't have hereditary surnames. They used by names, describing their job, family, appearance or home. Think Ethelred the Unready, Wolf Stan the Smith, Tim the undercover economist. After the conquest, Norman family names became a way to signal status and identify who owned what. Norman first names took over two. 150 years after 1066, just 5% of the male English population had Anglo-Saxon names. Sirnames increasingly helped legal records differentiate between all those Williams, Henry's and Roberts. Hereditary surnames spread gradually. Nobles by the 12th century, wider society by the 13th, and almost everyone by the 14th. 6. Energising Little Shots of Statistical Information

6:15With Which You May Regale Your Friends at Your Next Gathering And if you like that, well, tough because we won't be doing it again. But dry those tears for our new longer podcast, airs on Wednesday 9th September, alongside our weekly 9-minute program, A veritable feast of statistical satisfaction for your listening pleasure. And until then, goodbye.