ftglossary

Alfred Charles William Harmsworth, Viscount Northcliffe:

(1865-1922), British publisher, born in Chapelizod, near Dublin, and largely self-educated. In 1887 he established a general publishing house in London, and in 1888 he founded Answers, a popular weekly periodical. This periodical and others formed the basis of the Amalgamated Press, later the largest periodical-publishing enterprise in the world.

In 1894 Harmsworth purchased the nearly bankrupt (London) Evening News, and within one year he reorganized it into a profitable investment. Two years later he founded the Daily Mail, a London paper in which he introduced women's columns, serial stories, and other features. London's Daily Mirror was launched in 1903 as a paper for women; he acquired control of the Times (London) in 1908. Harmsworth introduced a number of reforms into newspaper management, notably a 5-day week and higher salaries for editorial employees, and a profit-sharing system for key staff members.

Harmsworth was elevated to the peerage in 1905 as Baron Northcliffe and was created a viscount in 1917. During World War I Harmsworth served as chairman of the British war mission to the U.S. After the war, his chief editorial efforts were devoted to resolving Irish opposition to British rule.

Domesday Book:

A survey of property in England conducted in 1086. Conceived by William I, but probably to some extent based on pre-Conquest administrative records, it was the most comprehensive assessment of property and land ever undertaken in medieval Europe.
The English shires were visited by royal commissioners and the survey yielded evidence relating to the identity of landholders, their status, the size of their holding, its use, its tax liability, and the number of animals maintained.
The information for each shire was then condensed and reorganized into feudal groupings. The final version comprised two volumes--Little Domesday (Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex) and Great Domesday (the rest of England except for the four northern shires, London, and Winchester).
Its purpose was to maximize the revenues from the land tax and it caused resentment and even riots. It was given its name on account of its definitive nature; today its volumes are housed in the Public Record Office, London.

Battle:

A town in East Sussex, southeast England, to the north of Hastings. It takes its name from the Battle of Hastings, which was fought here in 1066. There are the remains of a Benedictine abbey founded by the victor, William of Normandy.

Pipe-roll:

The financial account presented to the Exchequer by the sheriffs of England. The earliest surviving roll dates from 1130 and there is an almost unbroken series from 1156 to 1832.
The rolls were compiled by the clerks of the treasury and included details of rents, leases, and other royal revenues. Their name originated with the practice of enrolling the records on a rod, or 'pipe'.

Falaise:

A market town in the department of Calvados, Normandy, northern France; pop. (1982) 8,820. William the Conqueror was born near here in 1027. The 'Falaise pocket' was the scene of heavy fighting during the German retreat from Normandy in August 1944.

Yorkshire:

Former county, northeastern England. The largest of the former counties, Yorkshire was divided into the administrative counties (or ridings) of East Riding, West Riding, and North Riding, which had as their county towns Beverley, Wakefield, and Northallerton, respectively.
Yorkshire comprised a diversified terrain rising from the North Sea coast on the east to the Pennine Chain on the west. North and East Riding were chiefly agricultural counties. Manufacturing and coal mining were concentrated largely in West Riding. Before the Roman conquest the region was inhabited by the Brigantes, a powerful British tribe.
The Romans established one of their major settlements in Britain at Eboracum, what is now York. From the 6th century the area was invaded by the Angles and Saxons, subsequently becoming part of the kingdom of Northumbria.
Yorkshire was an important monastic center in the Middle Ages.
In the 1974 administrative reorganization, most of Yorkshire was divided into the new counties of North Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, Cleveland, and Humberside and the metropolitan county of South Yorkshire.

Ridings /radz/:

The name given to the three administrative divisions of Yorkshire in England prior to the reorganization of local government in 1974 but still used locally.
The North Riding extends over the Yorkshire Moors and Dales, the West Riding incorporates the industrial towns and cities of Leeds, Bradford, Huddersfield, Doncaster, and Sheffield, and the East Riding surrounds the port of Hull.
The name is derived from an old Norse word thrithjungr (= third part).

William I (of England):

Called The Conqueror (1027-87), first Norman king of England (1066-87), who has been called one of the first modern kings and is generally regarded as one of the outstanding figures in western European history.

Born in Falaise, France, William was the illegitimate son of Robert I, duke of Normandy, and Arletta, a tanner's daughter, and is therefore sometimes called William the Bastard. Upon the death of his father, the Norman nobles, honoring their promise to Robert, accepted William as his successor. Rebellion against the young duke broke out almost immediately, however, and his position did not become secure until 1047 when, with the aid of Henry I, king of France, he won a decisive victory over a rebel force near Caen.

During a visit in 1051 to his childless cousin, Edward the Confessor, king of England, William is said to have obtained Edward's agreement that he should succeed to the English throne. In 1053, defying a papal ban, William married Matilda of Flanders, daughter of Baldwin V, count of Flanders and a descendant of King Alfred the Great, thereby strengthening his claim to the crown of England. Henry I, fearing the strong bond between Normandy and Flanders resulting from the marriage, attempted in 1054 and again in 1058 to crush the powerful duke, but on both occasions William defeated the French king's forces.

Conquest of England
About 1064, the powerful English noble, Harold, earl of Wessex, was shipwrecked on the Norman coast and taken prisoner by William. He secured his release by swearing to support William's claim to the English throne. When King Edward died, however, the witenagemot (royal council) elected Harold king. Determined to make good his claim, William secured the sanction of Pope Alexander II for a Norman invasion of England. The duke and his army landed at Pevensey on September 28, 1066. On October 14, the Normans defeated the English forces at the celebrated Battle of Hastings, in which Harold was slain. William then proceeded to London, crushing the resistance he encountered on the way. On Christmas Day he was crowned king of England in Westminster Abbey.

The English did not accept foreign rule without a struggle. William met the opposition, which was particularly violent in the north and west, with strong measures; he was responsible for the devastation of great areas of the country, particularly in Yorkshire, where Danish forces had arrived to aid the Saxon rebels. By 1070 the Norman conquest of England was complete.

William invaded Scotland in 1072 and forced the Scottish king Malcolm III MacDuncan to pay him homage. During the succeeding years the Conqueror crushed insurrections among his Norman followers, including that incited in 1075 by Ralph de Guader, 1st earl of Norfolk, and Roger Fitzwilliam, earl of Hereford, and a series of uprisings in Normandy led by his eldest son Robert, who later became Robert II, duke of Normandy.

His Achievements
One feature of William's reign as king was his reorganization of the English feudal and administrative systems. He dissolved the great earldoms, which had enjoyed virtual independence under his Anglo-Saxon predecessors, and distributed the lands confiscated from the English to his trusted Norman followers. He introduced the Continental system of feudalism; by the Oath of Salisbury of 1086 all landlords swore allegiance to William, thus establishing the precedent that a vassal's loyalty to the king overrode his fealty to his immediate lord. The feudal lords were compelled to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the local courts, which William retained along with many other Anglo-Saxon institutions. The ecclesiastical and secular courts were separated, and the power of the papacy in English affairs was greatly curtailed. Another outstanding accomplishment was the economic survey undertaken and incorporated in the Domesday Book in 1086.

In 1087, during a campaign against King Philip I of France, William burned the town of Mantes (now Mantes-la-Jolie). William's horse fell in the vicinity of Mantes, fatally injuring him. He died in Rouen on September 7 and was buried at Caen in Saint Stephen's, one of the abbeys he and Matilda had founded at the time of their marriage as penance for their defiance of the pope. William was succeeded by his third-born son, William II.

Orkney Islands:

Group of about 90 islands and islets, northern Scotland, constituting Orkney Island Area (an administrative region), separated from the northern coast of the Scottish mainland by the Pentland Firth. The administrative center and largest town is Kirkwall, on Mainland (or Pomona), the largest of the islands.
Other major islands include Hoy, Sanday, Westray, Stronsay, and South Ronaldsay.
The islands are generally low-lying and treeless, and fewer than 30 are inhabited. Soils are fertile, and agriculture, the chief economic activity, is productive. Many of the islands have brochs (Pictish stone towers) and other relics of prehistoric habitation.
The sea basin Scapa Flow, which was a British naval base during World War I and World War II, is located here. Area, 905 sq km (349 sq mi); population (1991) 19,450.

The Orkney Islands are separated from the north of Scotland by the Pentland Firth, which is less than 13 km (8 miles) wide. Only thirty or so are large enough for habitation, the biggest being Pomona (or Mainland), Hoy, and South Ronaldsay, which together shelter the bay of Scapa Flow.
They are very irregular in shape and all are of red sandstone weathered and worn by the sea into undulating, treeless plateaux edged by steep cliffs; an extreme example of this erosion is the Old Man of Hoy.
The plateaux are fertile, nevertheless, and support much mixed farming. The Shetland Islands are 80 km (50 miles) to the north-east. History.
Colonized first by the Picts (c.200 BC), they were already Christian when the first Norse colonists settled in the late 8th century. The Norse earls of Orkney extended their authority over the Shetlands, Caithness, and Sutherland, and their exploits are recorded in the Orkneyinga Saga (c.900-1200). The islands passed to the Scottish crown in 1472 as part of the marriage contract between James III and Margaret of Norway.

Battle of Hastings:

One of the most fateful military engagements in English history, fought on October 14, 1066, between a national army led by Harold II, Saxon king of England, and an invasion force led by William, duke of Normandy, afterward William I (the Conqueror).
William was a claimant of the English throne, which he maintained had been promised to him previously by his cousin, King Edward the Confessor.
William challenged the election of Harold as king on Edward's death and, with the blessing of Pope Alexander II (reigned 1061-73), prepared to invade England. His seaborne forces, which included infantry armed with crossbows and contingents of heavily armed cavalry, landed on the English coast near Hastings on September 28, 1066.
After a forced march from Yorkshire, where Harold had just defeated and slain his rebellious brother, Tostig, earl of Northumbria, in the Battle of Stamford Bridge, the English army, numbering about 7000 men, occupied a height (later called Senlac Hill) on the Hastings-London highway about 10.5 km (about 6.5 mi) northwest of Hastings.
The royal force was composed exclusively of infantry, armed with spears, swords, and battle-axes.

The initial Norman attack, launched at 9:00 AM on October 14, failed to dislodge the English, who met the barrage of enemy arrows with interlocked shields.
The English axmen turned back a Norman cavalry charge, whereupon a section of the Norman infantry turned and fled. At this juncture, several units of the English army broke ranks, contrary to Harold's orders, and pursued the retreating Normans. Other Norman troops quickly surrounded and annihilated these units.
Taking advantage of the lack of discipline among the English soldiers, William ordered a feigned retreat.
The stratagem led to the entrapment of another large body of English troops. Severely weakened by these reverses and demoralized by the mortal wounding of Harold by an arrow, the English were forced to abandon their strategic position on the crest of Senlac Hill.
Only small remnants of the defending army survived the subsequent onslaughts of the Norman cavalry. William's victory at Hastings paved the way for Norman subjugation of all England.

Norfolk (England):

Eastern England; Norwich is the administrative center. Norfolk comprises a lowland area bounded on the north and east by the North Sea.
It is primarily agricultural, producing grains, vegetables, and flower bulbs; livestock and poultry raising are also important. Norwich is the county's principal manufacturing center and Great Yarmouth the chief resort and fishing port.
The area was included in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of East Anglia. During the Middle Ages Norfolk had a thriving wool industry. Area, 5368 sq km (2073 sq mi); population (1991 preliminary) 736,700.

Normandy:

A former province in north-western France, originally the home of Celtic tribes, and part of the kingdom of Clovis. It was in Neustria under Merovingian rule and suffered from Viking invasions in the 9th century.
The Viking Rollo accepted it in 912 as a fief from the French king, who was powerless to prevent its falling to the Vikings, and the present name derives from those invaders.
They accepted Christianity and adopted the French language but Norman expansion meant that their power rivalled that of the French kings. In 1066 Duke William of Normandy conquered England, becoming William I.
The duchy was recovered for France by Philip Augustus in 1204, but fell once more to England in the Hundred Years War. After the battle of Formigny in 1450 it was permanently reunited with France.

Vikings:

Scandinavian traders or pirates of the 8th to 12th centuries. In the 8th century the Vikings began one of the most remarkable periods of expansion in history. Setting sail from Denmark and Norway, they voyaged westward in their longships through the Shetlands, Iceland, and Greenland, as far as Vinland (modern Newfoundland).
They attacked Britain and Ireland, ravaged the coast of continental Europe as far as Gibraltar, and entered the Mediterranean, where they fought Arabs as well as Europeans.
From the Baltic they sailed down the rivers of western Russia to a point from which they threatened Constantinople. In Europe they were able to strike far inland, sailing up the Rhine, Loire, and other rivers.
Local rulers often preferred to buy them off, rather than resist.
The Vikings were also traders, and showed skills as farmers in the areas they settled, including Normandy, the north of England, and the area around Dublin in Ireland.
They were skilled wood- and metalworkers and manufactured superb jewellery. They had a powerful oral poetic tradition, manifest in their sagas. Moreover they were an extremely adaptable people, able to absorb the cultures which they encountered while retaining their own vital qualities.
This adaptability was perhaps forced upon them, because they were greatly outnumbered by the native populations; it was easier to modify existing forms than to impose their own.
They adopted languages and quickly modified fighting styles to suit land-based operations. From Rollo's settlement in Normandy descendants of the Vikings (Normans) were a most powerful element in the Crusades, and throughout the Mediterranean.

Vikings, collective designation of Nordic people-Danes, Swedes, Norwegians-who ranged abroad during a period of dynamic Scandinavian expansion in the Middle Ages, from about AD 800 to 1100. Called the Viking Age, the period has long been popularly associated with unbridled piracy, when freebooters came swarming out of the northlands in their predatory longships to burn and pillage their way across civilized Europe.
This, however, is now recognized as a gross simplification. Modern scholarship emphasizes the achievements of the Viking Age in terms of Scandinavian art and craftsmanship, marine technology, exploration, and the development of commerce-the Vikings as traders, not raiders. Extension of Viking Activities The derivation of the word Viking is disputed; it may be from Old Norse vík (a bay or creek) or Old English wic (a fortified trade settlement).
Not every Scandinavian, however, was a professional warrior or Viking, and not every Viking was a pirate. The motive causes of Viking Age expansion are complex. Land shortage in Scandinavia, improved iron production, and the need for new markets probably all played a part.
The first recorded Viking raid was a seaborne assault (793) by Norwegian marauders on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, just off the northeast shoulder of England. Growing evidence indicates, however, that considerable overseas Viking migration, west across the North Sea and east across the Baltic, occurred long before that.
Swedish entrepreneurs penetrated the hinterland of Russia, pioneering new trade routes down the Volga and the Dnepr, founding city-states such as Kyyiv and Novgorod, and opening the way to Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) and the exotic markets of Arabia and the Far East. In Constantinople, Vikings formed the elite bodyguard of the Byzantine emperors, the feared and famous Varangian Guard.
Danish warriors hammered at the cities of the crumbling Carolingian Empire-Hamburg, Dorestad, Rouen, Paris, Nantes, Bordeaux-until one of the armies in 911 accepted by treaty huge tracts of land in northern France (now known as Normandy, "land of the Northmen") and settled there. Briefly, under King Canute (Knut) II in the 11th century, a Scandinavian empire of the North Sea was established, comprising England, Denmark, and Norway.
Norwegian adventurers joined Danish Vikings in subjugating the whole of northern England (the Danelaw) before settling there as farmers and traders and developing great mercantile cities such as York.
They also took over the Northern Isles of Scotland (Shetland and the Orkneys), the Hebrides, and much of mainland Scotland as well. In Ireland they played a lusty part in the internecine squabbles of rival Irish clans, and they founded Ireland's first trading towns: Dublin, Waterford, Wexford, Wicklow, and Limerick.
They discovered and settled uninhabited lands in the Atlantic-first the Faroes, then Iceland, then Greenland. From Greenland they launched ambitious expeditions to settle on the eastern seaboard of North America (Vinland), but these attempts to colonize the New World 500 years before Columbus were soon abandoned in the face of hostility from the native peoples.
Stories of the abortive American venture are recorded in the medieval Icelandic sagas; but little authentic evidence of the Viking presence has been found, apart from substantial traces of a Viking Age settlement at L'Anse-aux-Meadows, in northern Newfoundland. All other Viking "finds," such as the Kensington Stone, have been exposed as forgeries or hoaxes, or merely wishful thinking. Lasting Influences The impact of the Vikings was less enduring than might have been expected.
In general, they had a great capacity for being assimilated into local populations. A century and a half after settling in Normandy, however, their Franco-Viking descendants were strong enough to conquer England (1066) and Sicily (1060-90).
The settlers brought to the British Isles energetic art forms, new farming techniques, mercantile acumen, and a vigorous language; Scandinavian traces are still apparent in the dialects of Scotland and northern England.
They introduced new forms of administration and justice, such as the jury system; even the word law is from an Old Norse word. Perhaps the most enduring legacy of the Viking Age is to be found in Iceland, which produced the great medieval literature of the sagas.
In their time the Vikings had crisscrossed half the world in their open boats and vastly extended its horizons.
Having achieved that, however, they had neither the manpower nor the staying power, neither the reserves of wealth nor the political experience, neither the cohesion at home nor the confidence abroad, to master effectively the older, richer, more stable states they tried to overrun.
Their dynamism was gradually exhausted, and even their swift, magnificent ships were superseded-replaced by much larger, more prosaic vessels better suited to bulk cargo carrying.

The Vikings were both a warrior and farming society from the region now known as Scandinavia. They were also seafaring explorers who sailed beyond their homelands to not only raid, but build settlements in other parts of the world. The Danish Vikings went south toward Germany, France, England, Spain, and into regions on the northwestern Mediterranean coast. Swedish Vikings went to eastern Europe, while the Norwegians sailed to Greenland and North America.

Norman:

An inhabitant or native of Normandy, France, a descendant of a mixed Scandinavian ('Northmen') and Frankish people established there in early medieval times.
The area, secured by Rollo in 912 from Charles III of France, was inadequate for settlement since inheritance laws left younger sons without territory; land hunger provided the impetus towards conquest and colonization.
Under Duke William the Normans conquered England (1066), and later Wales, Ireland, and parts of Scotland as well as large areas of the Mediterranean.
Their expansion southwards, led by a spirited adventurer Robert Guiscard, was initially as mercenaries fighting the Muslims but they soon controlled much of Europe.
In 1154, the year of Roger II of Sicily's death and Henry II's accession to the English throne, Norman power was at its height, witnessed in the highly efficient governments of Sicily and England which were renowned in Europe for their sophisticated legal and administrative systems.

Rollo:

(c.860-931), leader of a band of Vikings which invaded north-western France. In 912 as Duke Robert he accepted Normandy as a duchy from the French king Charles III, and was baptized, but remained quite independent of French authority.
He married a French princess, gave parcels of land in Normandy to his followers, and began the long chapter of Norman influence on Europe.

Middle Ages:

The period in Europe from c.700 to c.1500 (though this is not a period for which precise dates can be given).
The decline of the Roman empire in the West and the period of barbarian invasions in the 5th and 6th centuries (Dark Ages) was followed by the emergence of separate kingdoms and the development of forms of government.
The coronation of Charlemagne in AD 800 is held to mark the end of anarchy and the revival of civilization and learning. England, under Alfred, similarly saw the encouragement of learning and the establishment of monastic houses.
Territorial expansion by Vikings and Normans throughout Europe in the 9th and 10th centuries, initially violent and disruptive, led to their assimilation into local populations.
Trade and urban life revived. The High Middle Ages (12th and 13th centuries) saw a growth in the power of the papacy which led to clashes between the pope and secular rulers over their respective spheres of jurisdiction.
The creation of new monastic orders encouraged scholarship and architecture.
The obsession with pilgrimage to holy shrines was the impetus behind the Crusades, in which thousands of Christian knights went to Palestine to fight the Muslims and convert them to Christianity. Society was organized on a military basis, the feudal system in which land was held in return for military service.
But although war dominated this period, it also saw the growth of trade (notably the English wool trade), the foundation of universities, and the flowering of scholarship, notably in philosophy and theology (scholasticism).
Gothic art and architecture had its finest expression in the cathedrals built from the 12th century. During the 13th and 14th centuries various factors combined to cause social and economic unrest.
The Black Death, and the Hundred Years War between France and England, resulted in a falling population and the beginnings of anticlericalism. In the 15th and 16th centuries the Renaissance in Italy marked a new spirit of sceptical enquiry and the end of the medieval period.

Heraldry (Coats of Arms):

The Blazon (the description of a coat of arms in heraldic language) for

Harmsworth / Hemsworth is exactly as follows;

Colours:

· Ar = argent/silver

· Or = gold

· Sa = sable/black

Saltire (Shield):

Fields are divided with the (Ar) sections top and bottom.

The other sections are (Or).

A black leopard's face (Sa), there is no position for the leopard's face.

Crest:

A dexter arm embowed in armour grasping a sword transfixing a leopard's face (Sa).

Motto:

"Manus haec inimica tyrannis"

meaning "This hand is an enemy to tyrants".

Rules of Heraldry:

Rule one is that colour should never appear on top of a colour nor metal on top of metal.

The exception is when a feature is described as ppr (which means in its proper colours).

For example a gold spur would not be allowed on a white or yellow background but a 'Boot spurred or' would be all right.

As yellow and white represent gold and silver it would not be correct to place one on top of the other and it is even bad design to have them side by side without an intervening band of alternative colour.

Only one, not both may appear as mantling and the other colour will be the main colour of the shield excluding yellow or white.

Rule two is that only in Scottish heraldry is the motto place above the coat of arms and the person's name never forms part of the achievement.

So in your case the mantling would be "Black doubled or" (Black and yellow).

There are cases where the 'main colour' rule is not applied but in such cases the colour and metal are described in the blazon for that particular coat of arms. Blazons are not open to any other interpretation.

The study of coats of arms worn for individual identification, and of the accessories of crests, badges, mottoes, and flags which accompanied them.
Its origins are military. Soldiers in armour and helmets could not easily be identified in battle and so the practice evolved of displaying a sign or device on the shield and on the linen surcoat worn over the armour (from which the terms 'coat-of-arms' and 'court armoury' derive).
The Crusaders may have worn the first heraldic designs, but their use became widespread in Europe in the 12th century. A similar system also emerged in Japan during the 12th century. By the 13th century heraldry had so developed that it had its own terminology, based on Old French.
Its colours are called 'tinctures' of which there are two metals--gold (or) and silver (argent)--and five colours--blue (azure), black (sable), green (vert), purple (purpure), and red (gules). In England heralds were formed into the College of Arms (1484).
Scotland has its Court of the Lord Lyon (1592).