The siege of Exeter took place early in 1068, when King William I of England led a combined force of Normans and loyal Englishmen westward into Devon to compel the submission of Exeter, which had become the principal centre of Anglo-Saxon resistance to Norman rule in the West Country. The city harboured Gytha Thorkelsdottir, mother of the slain King Harold Godwinson, who had taken refuge there after the Battle of Hastings. Gytha possessed considerable wealth and was in contact with her nephew, Sweyn II of Denmark, as well as awaiting the hoped-for arrival of Harold's three sons, Godwin, Edmund and Magnus, who had crossed to Ireland to raise an army. When William issued a demand of fealty, the citizens of Exeter declined to swear allegiance, refused him entry into their city, and would not pay taxes beyond pre-Conquest levels, a defiance William would not tolerate. He returned to England in December 1067 and celebrated Christmas in London before marching into the depths of winter, a season wholly unusual for such a campaign, revealing the urgency he placed on delivering a pre-emptive blow against the Godwinsons. On his march through Dorset he pillaged towns he believed were supporting Exeter, and damage inflicted at Dorchester, Shaftesbury and Bridport was still evident when the Domesday survey was conducted some eighteen years later.
On arriving near the city, William made camp probably at Clyst Honiton, where a delegation of prominent Exeter citizens met him, pledged submission and handed over hostages as surety. Yet when William advanced to the East Gate he found it shut against him and the walls crowded with armed defenders. He responded by having one of the hostages blinded in full sight of the garrison, but this did not break the defenders' resolve; William of Malmesbury records that a man on the battlements answered the gesture by lowering his breeches and farting towards the Norman army. The siege lasted eighteen days, during which William's forces suffered significant losses, according to the D version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. At some point Gytha escaped from the city by boat along the River Exe, a detail that confirms William's army had no naval support. Orderic Vitalis records that William eventually breached the walls by mining, which constitutes the earliest known instance of that technique being used in England.
Despite the mining of the walls, the siege ended by negotiation rather than outright storm. The gates were opened, and the townspeople, preceded by their clergy carrying sacred books and relics, came forward to plead for clemency. William's terms were generous: in return for the city's fealty, he agreed to the citizens' demand that they pay tax only at pre-Conquest levels, and he prevented his soldiers from exercising the customary right of looting a surrendered city by posting reliable guards at the gates. To consolidate Norman authority over Exeter thereafter, William ordered the construction of a stone castle, and Rougemont Castle was duly built inside the northeast corner of the ancient city wall.
The single most vivid moment of the siege is recorded by William of Malmesbury: when William of Normandy had one of his hostages blinded before the walls in an attempt to shock Exeter's defenders into submission, the response from the battlements was not terror but contempt. One of the men defending the city lowered his breeches and farted towards the Norman army. It is a startling image, utterly undiplomatic and entirely human, capturing the defiant spirit of a city that had sheltered the family of a dead king and refused, at least for eighteen days, to yield to the conqueror.
William's army suffered large losses according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; no further detail is recorded.
William's army comprised Normans and English fyrd militia infantry. No precise numbers are recorded.
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