2. Ralph de Mortimer

On 14 October 1066 on at the bottom of a hill near Hastings an army of soldiers gathered led by Duke William of Normandy.  Among those resolutely facing the troops of the English King Harold was Ralph de Mortimer.  After the Normans were victorious, Ralph expected a reward for his efforts and over the next few years William duely obliged granting him considerable amounts of land including that which would one day be Hull.

The area around the river Hull had belonged to an English woman named Eadgifu, or Edith.  Following the Battle of Hastings however, she and others like her simply had their land taken from them or were forced to become tenants subservient to their conquerers.  It didn’t matter if they were earls, country gentry, or one of the 15,000 smaller landowners.  8000 Normans came to settle in England and they enjoyed spoils of victory ranging from single properties to ownership of several estates.

Ralph de Mortimer had by 1086 acquired land in 12 counties all over England, although concentrated in Hampshire, Yorkshire and Herefordshire near the Welsh border.  As one of the King William’s tenants-in-chief he held this land in return for military service.  Ralph then had his own tenants including eighteen knights who owed military service to him.  Following his father’s death he also inherited land in Normandy.  All this made him an important Anglo-Norman baron, although not quite one of the topmost rank.

Like many of the Anglo-Norman nobility, Ralph’s life became more complicated after William I died in 1087.  William left the dukedom of Normandy to his eldest son, Robert Curthose, but left the crown of England to his second son, William Rufus.  Given that the brothers were far from friends, barons holding estates on both sides of the Channel faced an impossible situation; offend Duke Robert and lose their lands in Normandy or offend King William II and lose their lands in England.

In order to solve this problem, Ralph de Mortimer was one of a number who wanted Duke Robert to succeed to both thrones.  Looking to achieve this, in 1088 Ralph helped plot an invasion of England on Robert’s behalf but it ended in failure.  Ralph though was not beaten and quite the politician he was perfectly willing to alter his opinions.  Over the next few years he switched loyalties a number of times depending on which brother could best serve his own interests.  The last recorded mention of him is in 1104 when it was noted that he was siding with Henry I, the new King of England, against Duke Robert.

Picture: Section of the Domesday Book recording Ralph de Mortimer’s ownership of ‘Hull’.  
From: http://opendomesday.org/book/yorkshire/55/. Credit Professor J.J.N. Palmer and George Slater.

1. Before the Normans

Stand at the mouth of the river Hull and you can watch the water slowly flowing out into the vast expanse of the Humber estuary.  On the horizon it wends its way past Spurn Point and out into the North Sea.  The breadth of this view gives a sense of awe but can’t really be called picturesque.  One glance downwards brings into vision murky liquid lapping against a sticky brown mud that is calling for items to swallow up.  This is a functional, practical river not one on which to mess about in boats or enjoy a delightful picnic.

During the time of the Anglo-Saxons a thousand years ago this spot was even less appealing.  Back then the river Hull had two channels and where Hull’s city centre now stands was just a bleak, marshy, uninhabited island between the two.  It wasn’t until the 1200s that the river began to flow as a single stream and the land drained enough to settle on.  Before that any hamlets or farms could only be found further upriver where the land was slightly higher and drier.

The Anglo-Saxons kings established a system of counties, each of which was subdivided into hundreds. The future site of Hull was placed in Hessle Hundred, part of the East Riding of Yorkshire.  Hundreds were then further split up usually into hides or carucates.  The size of both of these was determined by farming.  One hide was the amount of land needed to support a family while a carucate was the amount of land that could be cultivated using a team of eight oxen.

All this organisation was not just for neatness but allowed kings to raise substantial amounts of cash via a land tax called the Geld.  In every county a Sheriff, or ‘Shire-Reeve’, collected money from each hundred with the amount depending on how many hides or carucates the hundred contained.  Originally this money was used for the specific threat of paying off invading Danes but it continued to be levied for various military uses afterwards including by the early Norman kings after 1066.

The counties left by the Anglo-Saxons existed largely unchanged for the next 900 years.  It was only in the local government reorganisation of 1974 that they were swept away.  New counties were needed for a 20th Century full of technology, equality, flares and shoulder pads.  Civil servants hunched over maps drawing precise new boundaries and placed Hull in the shiny new county of Humberside.  Humberside was the product of the best of modern technology, calculation and logic.  It lasted just 22 years.

Photo: The Deep aquarium at the mouth of the River Hull.