William the Conqueror Trivia
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57 free William the Conqueror trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This William the Conqueror trivia quiz follows the illegitimate boy-duke of Normandy from Falaise to Westminster Abbey: guardians murdered in his bedchamber, a marriage the pope forbade, a papal banner, a fleet waiting weeks for the wind, the shield wall on Senlac Hill, the coronation on Christmas Day 1066, the Harrying of the North, the Domesday Book and a funeral in Caen that went horribly wrong. The easy questions cover the outline: his birthplace, his mother, his wife, the year, the king he killed, the survey he ordered. The harder half is for readers of Orderic Vitalis and David Bates: the grandfather who may have been a tanner, the battle of 1047, the two monasteries at Caen, the port the fleet sailed from, the marching pace of Harold's army, the feigned retreats, the gold offered for Harold's body, the crown worn in the ruins of York, the son who unhorsed him at Gerberoi, the danegeld rate per hide, the nineteen Channel crossings, the Salisbury Oath, the saddle pommel at Mantes, and the thigh bone that is all that survives of him. Every answer was checked against William the Conqueror's encyclopaedia entry before publishing. If you enjoy this, try our Battle of Hastings, medieval England and British monarchs quizzes next.
30 of 57 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which Norman town was William born in 1027 or 1028?
Falaise
Falaise: nine centuries on, Allied bombing destroyed two-thirds of his birthplace as a German army was trapped in the 'Falaise pocket' of 1944, though the castle on its crag survived.
Q 02What was the name of William the Conqueror's mother?
Herleva
Herleva later married a Norman viscount, and the two sons of that marriage, William's half-brothers, rose to be among the most powerful men in his England.
Q 03By what unflattering nickname was William the Conqueror also known?
William the Bastard
William the Bastard: his parents never married, yet before leaving Normandy his father made the magnates swear to accept the boy as heir, and they did.
Q 04William was a descendant of which Viking leader who was granted the lands around Rouen in 911?
Rollo
Rollo: King Charles the Simple gave him the land in return for an end to his raids, and his followers' name, the 'Northmen', became 'Norman'.
Q 05William's father, Duke Robert I, died in 1035 on his way home from a pilgrimage to which city?
Jerusalem
Jerusalem: he reached the city but died at Nicaea, in Asia Minor, on the journey back, and his only son, a child of seven or eight, became duke.
Q 06What happened to several guardians of the boy duke William?
They were killed
They were killed: three guardians met violent deaths before he came of age, one of them, the steward Osbern, in the very room where the young duke was sleeping.
Q 07Which animals did the forest law William brought to England chiefly protect for the royal hunt?
Deer
Deer: the law put great tracts of country under special rules to guard the king's hunting, and the English resented it enough to put a verse complaint into the chronicle's obituary of him.
Q 08Which ally, later his enemy, helped William win at Val-ès-Dunes in 1047?
The King of France
The King of France, Henry I, rode in to save his young vassal, then switched sides five years later and twice invaded Normandy himself, losing both times.
Q 09Whom did William marry in the early 1050s, gaining a powerful ally?
Matilda of Flanders
Matilda of Flanders brought William a mighty father-in-law: Count Baldwin V became regent of France for its boy king, so that border stayed quiet while he was away invading England.
Q 10What did William do when the pope forbade his marriage?
Went ahead anyway
Went ahead anyway: Leo IX condemned the match in 1049, yet the marriage took place within four years, and peace with Rome apparently cost the couple an abbey each, built in Caen.
Q 11What kind of castle did William's Normans raise across England by the hundred?
Motte-and-bailey
Motte-and-bailey: a timber tower on an earth mound beside a fenced yard needed neither stone nor skilled labour, and the Bayeux Tapestry depicts William's men raising one at Hastings before the battle.
Q 12Which half-brother did William make Bishop of Bayeux around 1049?
Odo
Odo is the likeliest patron of the Bayeux Tapestry, which shows the bishop rallying troops at Hastings with a club; William later kept him in prison for five years.
Q 13Which childless English king appears to have chosen William as his successor in 1051?
Edward the Confessor
Q 21On which hill did Harold's army form its shield wall on 14 October 1066?
Senlac
Senlac: the English chronicle says only that they fought 'at the hoary apple tree', and the name Senlac comes from the monk Orderic Vitalis, decades after the battle.
Q 22Although it is called a tapestry, what kind of textile is the Bayeux Tapestry, which tells the story of William's conquest?
An embroidery
An embroidery: its scenes are stitched in coloured wool onto linen rather than woven into the cloth, and the 70-metre strip only narrowly escaped destruction in the revolution of the 1790s.
Q 23What advantage did William's army have over Harold's at Hastings?
Cavalry and many archers
Edward the Confessor had spent some 25 years in exile, probably mostly in Normandy, and his Norman mother was William's great-aunt.
Q 14In the Bayeux Tapestry, what is Harold touching as he swears his oath to Duke William?
Holy relics
Holy relics: Norman accounts said Harold swore on them to back William's claim to the throne, but no English chronicle of the time mentions his trip to Normandy at all.
Q 15Which neighbouring county did William conquer in the 1060s, claiming it through his son Robert's betrothal?
Maine
Maine: when its count died in 1062, William claimed it for his young son, who was betrothed to the count's sister, and marched in when the local lords resisted.
Q 16According to the chronicler William of Poitiers, what did the pope send William for his invasion of England?
A banner
A banner, as a sign of Rome's blessing, the chronicler says; after the conquest succeeded, papal legates came to England and ceremonially crowned William again at Easter 1070.
Q 17Which omen in the sky, shown in the Bayeux Tapestry, appeared over England a few months before William invaded?
Halley's Comet
Halley's Comet appears in the tapestry straight after Harold's coronation, and beneath it the border shows a fleet of ghostly ships, a hint of the invasion to come.
Q 18Three days before William landed, Harold beat which invaders at Stamford Bridge in 1066?
Harald Hardrada and Tostig
Harald Hardrada and Tostig were both killed: Tostig was King Harold's own brother, outlawed the year before, and he died fighting beside the King of Norway.
Q 19Where did the Norman fleet land on 28 September 1066?
Pevensey Bay
Pevensey Bay: nobody opposed the landing, because Harold's army was far away in Yorkshire, and William's men came ashore beside an old Roman fort before moving on to Hastings.
Q 20Where did Harold pause for about a week on his march south to face William?
London
London: Harold had left much of his army in the north, and he pressed on to the coast with barely half of England's trained soldiers rather than wait for the rest.
Cavalry and many archers: the two armies were about the same size, but Harold's men all fought on foot, and for much of the day their shield wall on the ridge still held.
Q 24What did William do at Hastings to kill a rumour that he had been slain?
Showed his face
Showed his face: he pushed back his helmet as his left wing was fleeing, and the English who chased it downhill were cut off and killed; the Normans later faked two more retreats to repeat the trick.
Q 25How does the Bayeux Tapestry apparently show Harold dying?
With an arrow to the eye
With an arrow to the eye, or so the scene seems to show; an early Norman poem instead has Harold cut down by four knights, the duke probably among them.
Q 26According to one account, what did Harold's mother Gytha offer William for her son's body?
Its weight in gold
Its weight in gold, and in that telling William still refused; where Harold was finally buried is unclear, though a church he had refounded later claimed his grave.
Q 27Whom did some English clergy and magnates nominate as king after Harold's death?
Edgar the Ætheling
Edgar the Ætheling, a boy in his early teens and the last male of the old royal house, was never crowned; within weeks he and his backers had submitted to William at Berkhamsted.
Q 28On what day was William crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey?
Christmas Day 1066
Christmas Day 1066: when the congregation shouted its acclaim, the Norman guards outside mistook the noise for a riot and set fire to nearby houses, and smoke filled the abbey.
Q 29Which walled city in England's south-west, sheltering Harold's mother Gytha, defied William for 18 days in 1068?
Exeter
Exeter surrendered only after costing William heavy losses, and he at once built a castle inside the old Roman walls to hold the city down.
Q 30In December 1069 William symbolically wore his crown where?
In the ruins of York
In the ruins of York: Danes and English rebels had just taken the city, so William paid the Danes to leave, kept the feast in the wreckage wearing his crown, then laid waste the country around.