It's fiendishly difficult to get the perspective of the "common man" in the best of times, let alone in times a millennium gone. Histories written in that era tended to focus on the specific doing of "great men" for a given value of great. For example, as noted in The Barbarian Conversion by Richard Fletcher, biographies written by monks and priests tend to focus on the actions of the founders of their monasteries or the archbishops of their diocese, not on the actions of Monk Theo in the cell next to yours.

Still, we can deduce that word penetrated to different areas at varying speeds. William was crowned on Christmas Day, 1066, so the folks in Westminster Abbey and throughout London knew within a day. On the topic of abbeys, The Barbarian Conversion observes Mass was a frequent event in each medieval community and each one was "sponsored" to offer prayers to different patrons and deceased, with the King at the very top of that list. Once the Church knew there was a new King, instructions would be passed along to the local priests to update their prayer list.

In addition, William only initially dispossessed Harold's family of their lands and titles, leaving most of the Anglo-Saxon hierarchy intact. By March, 1067, revolts were beginning to flare up throughout southern England, with an attack on Hereford and an uprising in Exeter. In 1068, two of the northern earls revolted, so it's safe to say that the closer you were to London, the sooner you found out, and that by the end of 1067, all of England was aware of their new King.

Hello everyone,

Unfortunately, we have already had to remove a number of poor quality responses in this thread, mostly dealing with wild speculation. There have been a large number of incorrect, speculative, or otherwise disallowed comments, and as such, they were removed by the mod-team. Please, before you attempt answer the question, keep in mind our rules concerning in-depth and comprehensive responses. Answers that do not meet the standards we ask for will be removed.

Additionally, it is unfair to the OP to further derail this thread with off topic conversation, so if anyone has further questions or concerns, I would ask that they be directed to modmail, or a META thread.

And would you hear his name as William, or as Guilliam?

If you had asked about a generic village, I would have told you that a peasant likely found out about the Norman invasion through new Norman organs and agents of the church. For the early medieval peasant, the church would have been the primary source of news and information about events outside their settlement. However, your question identifies Warwick, and a peasant in Warwick may have learned that William rules them in a unique way – by seeing the conqueror himself enter their village under arms.

One thing you can say with certainty is that it wouldn’t be any time in 1066. After the Battle of Hastings on October 14th, William expected the surviving English nobles to submit and give homage, but Edgar the Aetheling was proclaimed king. Edgar had the support of the major surviving Earls as well as the Archbishops of Canterbury and York. William ended up maneuvering his forces for the remainder of the year, finally advancing on London from the north-west. Edgar’s supporters lost their nerve to fight at the last minute, and the English leaders surrendered. It was finally on Christmas 1066 that the Archbishop of York officially crowned William king. So the earliest anyone in Warwick could have been told that William was king was early 1067. Yet even this would be highly unlikely. Warwick is in an area that launched constant revolt and did not recognize William during 1067-1068. In fact, the construction of Warwick Castle was in direct response to these events.

Anyone who visits Warwick Castle today will see an impressive stone fortification, but that structure was built during the Hundred Years War far later. In 1068, Warwick Castle was quickly built as a simple wooden motte-and-bailey fort. It was constructed to secure the Midlands as William advanced north. According to Orderic Vitalis, a Norman historian and monk, William himself travelled through Warwick during his 1068 campaign in the Midlands, and is said to have appointed a close friend as constable of the new castle. So most Warwick peasants probably found out that William rules them when his company of bizarre looking Norman knights and men-at-arms marched into town. And the full implications of what had happened to their community and nation were certainly explained to them, in a heavy foreign accent, by the new Norman cleric appointed by William.

EDIT - Found one of the relevant quotes from Orderic Vitalis about pacifying the Midlands in 1086:

All were ready to conspire together to recover their former liberty, and bind themselves by weighty oaths against the Normans. In the regions north of the Humber violent disturbances broke out…To meet the danger the King rode to all the remote parts of his kingdom and fortified strategic sites…For the fortifications called castles by the Normans were scarcely known in the English provinces, and so the English, in spite of their courage and love of fighting – could put up only a weak resistance to their enemies. The King built a castle at Warwick and gave it into the keeping of Henry, son of Roger of Beaumont.

I would love to read about peasants in this time. Very curious on what it was like day to day for them. (Serious)