Battle of Hastings, The Read online

  The main considerations in the selection of the heir were royal blood; nomination by the late king; election by the Witan; and the ability to defend the kingdom. With the death of Edward the Exile, the king’s councillors were left with no one who fulfilled all of them. Edgar, grandson of King Edmund Ironside, had the royal blood, but was not, by age, upbringing or experience, qualified to undertake the land’s defence. There were the two sons of King Edward’s own sister, Godgifu, who, like her brothers, had been brought up in Normandy and had been married, first to Count Drogo of the Vexin, and, after his death, to Count Eustace of Boulogne, the author of the fracas at Dover. Her elder son, Walter, had succeeded his father as Count of the Vexin, but had been offered the county of Maine in his wife’s right on the death of her brother the Count of Maine in 1051; Walter and his wife died by what was reputed to be poison shortly after William of Normandy’s conquest of Maine to which, he claimed, he had been promised the succession himself. The fact that Walter was so close in line to the English throne and that he and his wife were in Norman custody at the time they died did nothing to allay the suspicions that their deaths inevitably aroused. Orderic Vitalis says carefully that they were poisoned ‘by the evil machinations of their enemies’, of whom William was certainly one of the most prominent; he repeats the allegation later in his history. Poisoning was certainly not uncommon at the Norman court; William of Jumièges suggests that Duke Richard III was poisoned by his brother, William’s father, Duke Robert. Walter’s younger brother, Ralph, had followed his uncle Edward to England shortly after his succession and had been made Earl of Hereford; he was known in England, unenviably, as Ralph the Timid, and if he was of a naturally unwarlike disposition, the rule of an earldom on the Welsh marches can have done little to encourage him. He died in 1057, in the same year as Edward the Exile, leaving an infant son and was therefore out of the running, though in view of his reputation, it is unlikely that he would have received many votes in the Witan anyway.

  Outside the king’s close relatives, there were a number of other claimants. One of the most formidable, as well as the most absurd in lineal terms, was Harald Sigurdsson, King of Norway, known to history as Harald Hardrada or Harald Hardcounsel. His claim went back beyond King Edward to the reign of King Harthacnut who, he maintained, had made an agreement with Harald’s nephew, King Magnus Olafson of Norway, before Harthacnut returned to England to claim his crown and while he was at war with Magnus for the crown of Denmark. By this agreement, whichever of the two of them should outlive the other would inherit the other’s kingdom (or kingdoms, since Magnus continued to claim Denmark as well as England by right of this agreement); and under it, Harald maintained his claim to both the English and the Danish crowns as the heir and successor of King Magnus. Much of Harald Hardrada’s time as King of Norway was absorbed by his struggle with King Sweyn Estrithson for the Danish crown; if he had chosen to enforce his English claim earlier, he would have been a formidable threat, for he was regarded as beyond doubt the strongest and most dreaded warrior of his age and had, during a long life of battle and plunder in most parts of Europe and Byzantium, earned a reputation for courage, guile, cruelty and greed second to none. In his youth, after the death of his half-brother, King Olaf (later St Olaf), at the battle of Stiklestad where he also fought, he had fled through Sweden and the Viking states in Russia to Byzantium where he joined, and very soon captained, the renowned Varangian Guard, the elite Scandinavian bodyguard of the emperor. The Varangians’ reputation for expertise in every form of warfare was well deserved, and their skills were kept well honed by the continual wars, internal and external, that the Byzantine emperors were engaged in. They were also specialists in the acquisition of plunder, from which Harald is reputed to have amassed a colossal fortune. He left Byzantium in 1043, returned through Kiev, marrying Grand Prince Yaroslav’s daughter Elisabeth on the way, and reached Sweden in 1045. His immediate goal was the throne of Norway, held then by his nephew, Magnus Olafsson; after much negotiation, bloodshed and chicanery he eventually achieved a joint kingship with Magnus, inheriting the whole kingdom when Magnus died childless in 1047. Harald was then free to continue his struggle with Sweyn Estrithson for the throne of Denmark. His designs on England were well known there.

  Sweyn Estrithson, son of Cnut’s sister Estrith, had his own claim to England to maintain. As Cnut’s nephew – who had survived Cnut’s sons – he was heir to a former King of England and he asserted that Edward the Confessor had promised that he should inherit if Edward died childless. There are reasons to doubt the likelihood of this promise. Sweyn was closely connected with the Godwin family. His father, Ulf, husband of Cnut’s sister Estrith, was brother of Godwin’s wife Gytha; Godwin had certainly fostered Sweyn’s brother Bjorn in his family, and Bjorn had made his home in England and prospered there, until he was treacherously murdered by Godwin’s eldest son, Sweyn. Sweyn Estrithson may also have spent part of his boyhood at least in the Godwin household. The idea that Edward would voluntarily bequeath his throne to Godwin’s nephew by marriage, even though he was Cnut’s heir in Denmark, is implausible. When Sweyn appealed to Edward in 1049 for ships to help him in his struggle with Magnus of Norway, and Godwin sensibly recommended sending them since Magnus was much stronger than Sweyn and was known to be planning an invasion of England, Edward refused to help (with, according to the D Chronicle, the support of all the people). On the other hand, Edward spent much of the early part of his reign under threat from Danish invasions, since Sweyn Estrithson had expected to succeed his cousin Harthacnut (from whom he claimed he also had a promise of the crown). A promise of succession to Sweyn would have defused the immediate situation, left Sweyn free to pursue his warfare with Magnus and Harald Hardrada, and enabled Edward to stand down his fleet and stop levying the unpopular Danegeld. If he made the undertaking (and he seems to have been remarkably free with promises of the crown, which in fact he had no right to give), he probably never expected to have to honour it. The life expectancy of the Danish kings was poor.

  The claims of Harald Hardrada and Sweyn Estrithson should be seen in the context of eleventh-century Scandinavia. Even a brief scrutiny of the history of Denmark, Norway and Sweden around this time would be enough to show that constitutional propriety and primogeniture played little part in the choice of their kings; even a remote connection with a previous monarch was sufficient to support a claim, and the outcomes were usually decided by force, not justice. The success of Cnut was still vividly remembered by the English. This should be borne in mind when considering the claims of the next contestant for the throne of England, who was also, if more remotely, of Scandinavian origin.

  The claim of William of Normandy was based on the marriage of his great-aunt, Emma, to King Æthelred. This, he contended, made him Edward’s kinsman and certainly he was cousin to the king at one remove, though not in the legitimate line of succession. In addition his family had given shelter to Emma, her husband Æthelred and her children when they were exiled from England, though, as has been noted, there is no evidence that any grant of land was ever made to Edward and Alfred while they were exiles in Normandy. In gratitude for the generosity of Normandy, William’s chroniclers allege, and in recognition of the outstanding abilities and merits of William himself and of the close and loving friendship between them, Edward promised him the succession when he returned to England. In the words of William of Poitiers:

  it was also through [William’s] support and counsel that, on the death of Harthacnut, Edward was at last crowned and placed on his father’s throne, a distinction of which he was most worthy, as much through his wisdom and outstanding moral worth as by his ancient lineage. For the English, when they had discussed the question, agreed that William’s arguments were the best, and acquiesced in the just request of his envoys to avoid experiencing the might of the Normans.ix

  It may be asked how close and loving a friendship could be between a man of forty and a boy of thirteen, how much of the might of Normandy cou
ld have been spared from its own problems in 1041 for Edward’s assistance (had it been needed, which it was not), or how Edward managed to detect in the beleaguered boy duke of Normandy the outstanding abilities that fitted him for kingship; when Edward left Normandy, the prospects of William surviving his minority and the many plots against him long enough to take control of Normandy were remote. It is, of course, perfectly possible to imagine a situation in which a middle-aged man might say lightly to a child cousin that he should be his heir, especially if there was then little prospect of there being a throne to inherit or of the child surviving long enough to inherit it. It was William’s contention that the promise was made, was made seriously and was renewed after Edward succeeded to the throne. If so, the timing of this renewal is problematic.

  It has usually been assumed that the northern version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (D) was right in stating that William came on some sort of state visit to England in 1051, after the outlawry of the Godwin family in September, and that this was the occasion of the promise, though it should be noted that William’s biographer, D. C. Douglas, has suggested that this entry in the Chronicle may have been a late interpolation; he points out that the surviving manuscript of D is almost certainly post-1100 and thus must have been copied from another version, now lost.x There are, however, grave difficulties with this 1051 scenario. Setting aside the peculiarity of this reference in the version of the Chronicle furthest from the scene of events in the south, why did the two main Norman chroniclers (William of Jumièges and William of Poitiers) fail to mention the visit? Both were anxious to include in their accounts anything that tended to strengthen William’s claim. It has been suggested that they omitted it because it showed William as a suitor to Edward, which would have demeaned him. This seems most improbable. There would have been nothing demeaning in the ruler of Normandy paying a state visit to his cousin in England and if, while he was there, the English king had decided to make him his heir, this would have given him more, not less, prestige and would have been no more than they claimed had already happened in Normandy.

  There is then the claim of William of Poitiers that the king’s promise was formally witnessed by the most important men in England, namely Siward of Northumbria, Leofric of Mercia, Godwin of Wessex and Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury. There was no occasion, certainly not in 1051, when all these people could have been assembled at court holding these particular offices. In late 1051 Earl Godwin was in exile, and it was not Stigand who was Archbishop of Canterbury but the Norman Robert of Jumièges, who might indeed have been happy to witness such a promise; it is highly unlikely that either Siward or Leofric would have been. Rumours of such an intention or such a promise might well explain why both Siward and Leofric declined to oppose Godwin’s return in the following year, since he of all of them had most strongly opposed the Norman faction at court. If, on the other hand, such a promise had been publicly given and formally witnessed, as this account implies, it is even more incredible that there should be no record of it in any of the English sources. The only point in favour of this extraordinary story is the indication, oblique though it is, that William of Poitiers realized that the crown was not Edward’s to give away on his own whim. The alleged assent of the foremost men of the kingdom might be regarded as an earnest of the Witan’s reaction later on. It has been suggested that Edward’s promise might have been witnessed in two stages, at the time he gave it by Leofric and Siward and later, in 1052, by Godwin and Stigand as a condition of Godwin’s reinstatement, and that this would account for Godwin giving hostages at this point, but the idea is unconvincing.xi Godwin, when he returned, was in a position of strength; he would not have needed to make such a concession.

  There is also the allegation that at this time Edward gave hostages to William as a pledge of his promise; the hostages are named as Wulfnoth, the youngest son of Earl Godwin, and Hakon, the son of Godwin’s eldest son, Sweyn. Nothing is known of Hakon. Wulfnoth certainly did pass into William’s hands as a hostage at some stage, since he spent his life in Norman captivity, was released by William on his deathbed and promptly re-imprisoned by his son William Rufus. But at what stage and why he was handed over is not clear. It is highly unlikely to have been in 1051. At that date, he must have been little more than a boy, and it is very improbable that Godwin, removing all his family to exile in Flanders in September 1051, should have overlooked this one son or obliged Edward by leaving him to become a hostage. However, the Chronicle (E) does say that when the king and Godwin were reconciled in 1052, they exchanged hostages, a normal procedure on such an occasion; this is the most likely time for Wulfnoth and Hakon to have been handed over and sent by Edward to Normandy for safe-keeping. The idea that the hostages were given to William by Edward in 1051 in support of his promise is in any case a little ridiculous – and if his promise was, as maintained by the Normans, witnessed by all the chief men in the kingdom, why only Godwin family hostages? Where were the hostages, for example, from the family of Leofric? In any case, a man would hardly be expected to give hostages to another on whom he was conferring a massive favour; and even if he did, it would normally be a two-way affair; there is no indication of any hostages being given by William to Edward.

  The most convincing argument against William’s visit in 1051, however, is William’s own situation in Normandy. He had succeeded his father as Duke of Normandy in 1035 at the age of seven, on the death of Duke Robert who was returning from pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and had had a troubled minority, mainly through the resentment of legitimate adult kinsmen who objected to the succession of a bastard child, partly through the ambition of those who aspired to dominance of the duchy through the guardianship of the child duke. Several of those originally appointed his guardians met violent or suspicious deaths, and there was more than one attempt on his own life. During his minority, all order and prosperity in the duchy disintegrated. The idea that William was in any way responsible for Edward’s return to the English throne, as his chroniclers claimed, can hardly be borne out by the situation in which the thirteen-year-old duke found himself in 1041. In 1046 he was confronted by a rebellion raised by his cousin, Guy of Brionne, a grandson of Duke Richard II, who was strongly supported by many of the Norman nobility. William was forced to flee and to ask for the help of his overlord, King Henry of France, under whose leadership he confronted and defeated the rebels at the battle of Val-ès-Dune in 1047. It was his effective coming of age. Guy took refuge in his castle of Brionne, and it took William about three years to eject and banish him. In the meantime, King Henry demanded his quid pro quo in the form of William’s help against another turbulent vassal, Geoffrey Martel, Count of Anjou. William provided the help, but found himself, in consequence, with another dangerous enemy to the south of him in the form of Martel, who lost little time in challenging him. He was joined in this by King Henry who had clearly decided that William was, after all, even more dangerous than Martel. From 1050 onwards, William was under constant threat from both. If his biographer, D. C. Douglas, is correct, in 1051 he was occupied with the sieges of Alençon and Domfront on his frontier, and also with marrying the Count of Flanders’ daughter, Matilda, a matter of much delicate negotiation since they were declared by the Church to be within the prohibited degrees of affinity. His dealings with the defenders of Alençon and Domfront were less delicate; the former defied him by beating pelts over the battlements in allusion to his birth as the bastard of a tanner’s daughter. William retaliated by chopping off their hands and feet when the castle eventually capitulated. The sieges of Alençon and Domfront are placed by Douglas in the autumn and winter of 1051, precisely the time at which the visit to England would have taken place.xii William must also have been aware that he was likely in the near future to face another family rebellion closer to home from his uncle, the Count of Arques; the rebellion eventually broke out in 1052 or 1053, supported by the King of France and by a powerful coalition of neighbouring princes. It has been suggested that William’s Engl
ish ambitions and the possibility of a shift in the balance of power in France if he won the English throne had alarmed other northern French rulers. The Count of Arques’ rebellion was crushed and Arques himself exiled for life. From that date, however, until Martel and the king both died in 1060, William was under constant attack from both of them. The idea that in the midst of these threats to his rule, actual or threatened, William would have contemplated leaving his duchy undefended for long enough to pay a visit to his cousin in England, even with the possibility that he might receive the promise of a throne in the course of it, is quite simply incredible. There was no Channel tunnel in the mid-eleventh century; if William had come to England in late 1051, he ran the risk of being trapped there by contrary winds for as long as he was prevented in 1066 from launching his invasion fleet. He could not be sure of getting home in a hurry if Martel or the French king, both constantly on the lookout for an opportunity to attack, broke his borders. In 1051 Edward, though by contemporary standards an elderly man, was in good health. He hunted regularly and led an active life. There was no imminent likelihood of his death. William, constantly in the battlefield, was much more at risk. Never a man to act without careful consideration, he would have been insane to risk his bird in the hand (Normandy) for the possibility of a bird in the bush (England) at this particular juncture. Promises, after all, like piecrusts, are made to be broken. Edward can hardly have been pleased by William’s marriage to the daughter of a man whom he regarded as an enemy and hostile to England; and his action in sending into Hungary so shortly afterwards to urge the return of Edward the Exile indicates clearly that, whether or not he had made any promises to William in the past, he was prepared to break them in the interests of a peaceful succession that would be acceptable to his councillors.