There is much documentation describing the Harrying of the North, but modern historians have doubted their accuracy. The 12th-century monk John of Worcester documents that food was rare and that the survivors ate animals and resorted to cannibalism. While this is extremely likely, John of Worcester died around 1140, around seventy years after the event. It is doubtful that he was an eyewitness to the Harrying, and he probably took the information from other sources, making his account less than reliable.
A contemporary of John of Worcester, Orderic Vitalis, blames about 100,000 deaths on the Harrying. Even though Vitalis is generally considered a reliable source in his chronicles of Anglo-Norman England, he wrote fifty years after the event, and he was born five years after it happened. One hundred thousand deaths were about 5% of England’s population at the time, so that number may be an over-exaggeration, especially when you consider that the campaign only stretched over one hundred miles. The death toll was definitely very high, and tens of thousands of deaths is entirely possible.
Other evidence also shows and supports the Harrying of the North. In 1086, the Domesday Book, William’s collection of tax records, claimed that most of the north was still damaged and uninhabitable over fifteen years after the Harrying. Specifically, it states that about 60% of all of Yorkshire was still completely ruined, and even the more valuable areas of the county had lost almost two-thirds of its value since 1066. The Harrying of the North severely damaged the economy of northern England, and it took decades for it to recover.
There is archaeological evidence that supports the burning and razing behavior that is described in written sources. There are batches of coins found buried in Yorkshire, indicating that people were hiding their valuables before they fled. Excavated villages in Durham and Yorkshire were found on an even level, as if they were built at the same time, not a progressive growth over a number of years or generations. This suggests that the original settlements were destroyed and were rebuilt in a regular grid pattern, indicative of Norman architectural patterns.
The Harrying of the North was the most violent and shocking event of the Norman invasion, and many modern scholars describe it as an act of genocide. With the whole of the damage that is documented, modern scholars also doubt that either what is documented is factual or if William acted on his own. Part of his army was needed to guard his castles, and the Harrying of the North only took place over three months. The damage that he could inflict would be limited unless he had outside help. Many scholars have suggested that William hired soldiers from Scotland or Denmark to help with his slash-and-burn campaign.
Despite our hesitation to completely trust the documentation from the time period, the Harrying of the North was designed to scare the people of England into submission to Norman rule and it shaped the idea that we have today of the Normans as merciless warriors. In executing the Harrying of the North, William the Conqueror attempted to show the people of England what happened to people who rose up against their king: he dealt with more rebellions over the years, but he never again had to deal with such uprisings like in the years directly after the Battle of Hastings.
Sources For Further Reading:
BBC Channel – Revolt, Resistance and Control in Norman England
Medium – The Harrying of the North
ThoughtCo – William the Conqueror and The Harrying of the North