1051

By place

Europe

• Spring - William of Normandy consolidates his power in Normandy. He fights over the control of Maine, and lays siege to the fortresses of Alençon and Domfront.
• May 19 - King Henry I of France marries Anne of Kiev at the cathedral of Reims. William of Normandy marries Matilda of Flanders, daughter of Count Baldwin V, which Henry sees as a threat to his throne.
• Summer - Drogo of Hauteville, count of Apulia and Calabria, meets Pope Leo IX in southern Italy – who has been sent by Emperor Henry III to re-establish the "freedom of the Catholic Church".
• Drogo of Hauteville is forced to promise Leo IX to stop the Normans from pillaging the Lombard countryside. On his way back, Drogo is assassinated near Bovino by a Byzantine conspiracy.

  England

• Eustace II, count of Boulogne, visits England and is receive with honour at the court by King Edward the Confessor. In Dover a fight breaks out between the Norman visitors and the locals, resulting in the deaths of several people. Edward blames the people of Dover and orders Godwin, earl of Wessex, to deal with them. Godwin refuses to obey Edward's order, and in response Edward raises an army and forces the Godwin family into exile.
• Edward the Confessor invites William of Normandy to England. It is at this point that it is thought that Edward promises the English throne to William in the event of his death.
• Heregeld is abolished by Edward the Confessor. It has been collected for many years to provide funds for defending the country from Viking raiders.

  By topic

Religion

• Hilarion of Kiev becomes the first non-Greek metropolitan bishop of the Eastern Orthodox Church, in Kiev.