December 1066

William the Conqueror

William receives English submissions and is crowned king

The coronation nearly came apart when guards outside mistook bilingual cheering for an assassination attempt and set the nearby houses on fire.

December 1066: Wallingford, then Berkhamsted

In early December 1066 William crossed the Thames at Wallingford, where Archbishop Stigand met him and submitted. He had not marched straight on London — resistance at Southwark forced a wide movement west and an approach from the north.

At Berkhamsted, Archbishop Ealdred, Edgar Ætheling, Earls Edwin and Morcar and London's leading men submitted, provided hostages and swore oaths.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says William promised to govern them well, even as his troops went on plundering the country they crossed.

Christmas Day at Westminster

On 25 December, Archbishop Ealdred of York crowned William king in Westminster Abbey, according to the established English rite. Stigand attended but did not perform it.

Ealdred presented the new king to the English-speaking congregation and Geoffrey of Coutances to the French-speaking one. When both acclaimed him, Norman guards outside took the noise for an attack and set nearby houses alight.

Smoke and panic emptied much of the church. William and the clergy completed the rite regardless.

Not the end of anything

By Christmas night William had oaths and hostages from leading opponents and London under his authority. Control of the whole kingdom still took years of campaigning, and major rebellions followed.

The Dover and Canterbury stages belong to October and November rather than December; documentary tradition gives William eight days strengthening Dover's defenses.

The great stone keep visible at Dover today is chiefly Henry II's twelfth-century rebuilding, not William's 1066 work.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 7 sources 2 audit passes

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

What the sources leave uncertain

The Dover and Canterbury stages occurred earlier in William’s post-Hastings campaign, principally in October and November; they should not all be dated to December.
Sources differ over some submission locations. William of Poitiers places Stigand at Wallingford, while the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle securely associates the larger group of English leaders with Berkhamsted.
Archaeology confirms that some defense existed on Dover’s Castle Hill and that William strengthened it, but the exact form of the pre-Conquest fortification remains unresolved.
Edward the Confessor was buried before Westminster Abbey’s high altar. William chose Edward’s abbey and was crowned near the burial, but “directly over the grave” is more precise than the evidence warrants.