Battle of Hastings, The Read online

  There is another way in which a promise to William might have been conveyed. In 1051 Robert of Jumièges succeeded Eadsige as Archbishop of Canterbury and set off for Rome to collect his pallium from the Pope. The pallium, a narrow band of white lamb’s wool, was bestowed on metropolitans and primates by the Holy See and was the symbol of the power delegated to them by the Pope. (In the Middle Ages, popes made a handsome income from the fees they charged recipients for it.) It has been suggested that Robert travelled south via Normandy, perhaps with a verbal message from Edward to William, and according to William of Jumièges this was what happened. It is even possible that he might have ventriloquized one, in a spirit of wishful thinking. However, it is relevant to note that there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever on the English side of any party supporting a Norman successor, although the question of the succession must have been becoming more urgent every year. The first indication of any action in the matter is the move to repatriate Edward the Exile.

  The final claimant to the throne was, of course, Harold Godwinson. It is fairly clear that William had set his sights on the English crown quite early in his career; it is less certain when Harold realized that he could be a contender, possibly not until after the death of Edward the Exile, since he appears to have supported and indeed negotiated for his return to England. He may not even have thought of it then. He might well have thought that he could re-enact the part played by the hero of the Old English epic poem Beowulf who, after the death of his lord, King Hygelac, acted as guardian to Hygelac’s youthful son Heardred until he came of age. As guardian to Edgar during his minority, his own position would be assured and he would be well placed to defend the kingdom and, indeed, the interests of the Godwin family. At some time, however, the idea of his own succession must have occurred to him and to others. In terms of blood lineage, he had, of course, no possible claim, and never pretended to any. None the less, even in these terms, his claim was better than William’s. William was the great-nephew of a woman who had married a reigning king; Harold was the brother of a woman who had married a reigning king. Neither of them had a drop of English royal blood. It has been suggested that Harold might have made a claim through his Danish blood, because his mother was a kinswoman of Cnut; but this claim would depend on the rather doubtful proposition that Edward had succeeded to the English throne as half-brother of Harthacnut who had brought him back from exile, not as son of Æthelred. Even if this were to be allowed, his cousin, Sweyn Estrithson, had a far more direct claim through the Danish line. Apart from blood lineage, Harold had the advantage of having been born in wedlock. The conditions for kingship had been set out at an ecclesiastical synod held in England in the presence of papal legates in 786, and specified that ‘Kings are to be lawfully chosen by the priests and elders of the people, and are not to be those begotten in adultery or incest’. These conditions had not always been observed in the past; there had, for example, been considerable doubt over the legality of Edward the Elder’s marriage to his first wife, Ecgwynn, and thus over the legitimacy of Athelstan, but when such doubts were ignored, it was usually for good reasons.

  Harold’s chief claim, however, was not of blood or legitimacy; it was that he was ‘lawfully chosen’. In a situation in which the only remaining member of the West Saxon blood line was a boy, and the kingdom faced the likelihood of invasion as in the days of Alfred and his immediate successors, the elders of the people looked for a candidate who had both the administrative ability and the military experience to defend the country. In 1066 the elders of the people, personified by the Witan, faced with the prospect of invasion on two fronts, had urgent need to find such a candidate. Harold qualified on both counts. He had to all intents and purposes ruled England efficiently as subregulus or under-king for many years (after the death of Gruffydd following Harold’s Welsh campaign, the Welsh swore fealty and obedience jointly to Edward and Harold); and he was beyond question the most experienced and able military commander in the country. He also appears to have been genuinely popular. The Waltham chronicler (admittedly probably as biased in one direction as William of Poitiers was in the other, but writing after the conquest when Harold had already been defeated and praise of him was not encouraged) records that he was elected king by unanimous consent ‘for there was no one in the land more knowledgeable, more vigorous in arms, wiser in the laws of the land or more highly regarded for his prowess of every kind.’xiii The more unbiased Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (C and D) recorded his election in terms that are not those in which one describes a usurper, though these, like the Waltham Chronicle, must have been written after Hastings:

  And the wise king entrusted that kingdom to the high-ranking man, Harold himself, the noble earl, who at all times faithfully obeyed his lord in word and deed, neglecting nothing of which the king had need; and here Harold was hallowed as king. And he enjoyed little stillness while he held the kingdom.

  In the context of the times, and in a situation where the royal line had failed, his succession in England was no more irregular than that of Hugh Capet to the throne of France on the collapse of the Carolingian monarchy some years earlier. Hugh Capet was crowned on the recommendation of Archbishop Adalbéron:

  Crown the Duke. He is most illustrious by his exploits, his nobility, his forces. The throne is not acquired by hereditary right; no one should be raised to it unless distinguished not only for nobility of birth but for the goodness of his soul.

  Harold was already virtual King of England, to much the same extent that Hugh Capet had been virtual King of France in 987. William, who received news regularly from England, would have been aware for some time that Harold was likely to pose an obstacle to his ambition. The question of how to circumvent that obstacle must have exercised him greatly. He could hardly have hoped for the accident that delivered Harold into his hands.

  The short story of the accident (which is only recorded in the Norman sources, though its essence has not been seriously challenged) was that Harold crossed the Channel, probably but not certainly in 1064, for an unknown reason. It has been suggestedxiv that the trip took place in late 1065, immediately after the exile of Tostig, on the grounds that William of Poitiers says that at this stage the king was very near death. Setting aside William of Poitiers’ doubtful veracity, Harold would have been extremely unlikely either to go on a pleasure trip or to make a diplomatic visit to Normandy to promise the crown to William when there had just been a major insurrection in England, as in 1065, and the king was very near death, especially if, as is assumed, he had designs on the crown himself by this time. The most reliable evidence indicates that Edward’s final illness began as a result of the exile of Tostig in 1065; after that, Harold would have been as mad to leave England as William would have been to leave Normandy in 1051, even if there had, in practical terms, been time to fit such a visit in between Tostig’s exile at the beginning of November 1065 and the king’s death on 5 January 1066. 1064, when he vanishes temporarily from the English chronicles altogether, is a much more likely date.

  At all events, by storm or miscalculation, he was cast up on the coast of Ponthieu. The inhabitants of Ponthieu were well known as wreckers; this is confirmed even by William of Poitiers. There were many stories that lights were frequently shown at dangerous points of the coast to mislead sailors, since ships that were wrecked in their territory were legal prey and the sailors could be imprisoned or tortured for vast sums in ransom. Whether by storm or misleading lights, Harold’s ship foundered, and he and his companions were captured; he might have been able to extricate himself by payment of a ransom if one of his captors had not recognized him and betrayed him to the Count of Ponthieu, who immediately realized that in him he had a prize far out of the common and incarcerated him and his men in a dungeon. Someone (possibly one of Harold’s men, he is depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry as moustached, the infallible sign of an Englishman) went to the neighbouring duchy of Normandy and told the duke, who was the Count of Ponthieu’s overlord, what had happened
. William immediately ordered Guy of Ponthieu to hand Harold and his men over to him. He was rewarded by William with cash and land. Harold remained in Normandy for some time, was treated with honour by the duke, campaigned with him in Brittany (where, with great heroism, he rescued two of William’s soldiers from the quicksands), and left again for England after swearing an oath on the bones of the saints that he would support William’s claim to the English throne after Edward’s death. This, at least, is the version of the Norman chroniclers and of the Bayeux Tapestry.

  Many explanations have been offered as to why Harold happened to be crossing the Channel at this particular moment. The Norman version (William of Poitiers) was that he was sent by King Edward to confirm his promise of the throne to the duke and did so voluntarily. An English version (Eadmer) is that he went on his own initiative to try to retrieve his brother and nephew who had been handed over to the duke as hostages. According to Eadmer, he went against the advice of the king, who warned him not to trust William. In the event he retrieved his nephew Hakon (of whom nothing is known and whose very existence is slightly suspect) but not his brother Wulfnoth, who remained in William’s custody. Yet another version is that he had gone sailing for diversion with no intention of going to Normandy, and had been caught and blown ashore by a storm. According to Henry of Huntingdon, he was on his way to Flanders, not Normandy; this plausible idea is not corroborated elsewhere. There is no possibility now of discovering the truth. One can only make a guess at the likelihoods. There is very little probability in the idea that he was sent by Edward to convey a promise and swear an oath that would have been repugnant to him. After the king, he was the most powerful man in the kingdom; if Edward had asked him to do such a thing, he would have had little difficulty in refusing or procrastinating. One modern apologist for William has offered the rather desperate explanation that he knew that if he refused to go, Edward would have sent his brother Tostig in his place.xv A message or an oath from Tostig, who had no support in England, would have been of little use to William; and moreover, if Harold were prepared to break his own oath on holy relics in his pursuit of the crown, he would surely have had few scruples about ignoring his brother’s. It would, in fact, have been very much better from Harold’s point of view that Tostig should have gone and sworn oaths. If Harold proposed to sail into Normandy with the intention of demanding Edward’s hostages back, he was more naive and trusting than history shows him to have been; William’s ambitions must have been common knowledge by this time, and Harold is described in the Vita Ædwardi as having made use of his foreign travels to acquire a detailed knowledge of European politics, with the comment that he had such an exhaustive knowledge of European princes that he could not be deceived by any of their proposals.xvi The idea that he was blown off course during a sailing trip is at least believable.

  It is here, for the first time, that some help may be derived from the Bayeux Tapestry, for it begins at this point in the story. The first panel or frame shows King Edward sitting in his chair of state, holding his sceptre and apparently conversing affably with two men standing beside him. The taller and more impressive of these is not named but is assumed to be Harold, since in the next panel Harold is shown setting off for Bosham with his men. Harold’s conversation with the king seems to be amicable. This is the image that has been interpreted as Edward instructing Harold to travel to Normandy to confirm his promise to William. But there is absolutely nothing in the picture or the text to confirm this. There is, in fact, no text over the picture, which would as well fit any of the other explanations for his voyage; Harold might be asking permission to go on a fishing or hunting trip or to Flanders or proposing to go to redeem the hostages, though in that case the expression on the king’s face would perhaps be more concerned or anxious. If the mission were as important as the designation of the king’s successor, it would surely have been glossed; it would, after all, have been the foundation of the whole Norman claim.

  The next few panels follow the standard version of the story: Harold arrives at Bosham, where there was a family manor, prays at the church there, eats and drinks with his companions, boards the ship and, with the sails ‘full of wind’, comes into the territory of Count Guy. Here he is arrested by Guy’s men and taken to Beaurain. There is no explicit mention of a storm, though the wind in the sails might be interpreted that wayxvii. The narrative then shows his transfer to the hands of William, his campaign with William in Brittany (including his rescue of two of William’s men from the quicksands) and finally the most important scene, the swearing of an oath to William. According to William of Poitiers, who alone gives a detailed account, this oath consisted of undertakings to support William’s claim to the throne, to act for him in England until the king’s death, to fortify Dover and other places that William would specify for the duke’s use and garrison them with Norman knights whom Harold would maintain, to marry the duke’s daughter and to send his sister into Normandy to marry a Norman. Immediately after this, he is shown returning home to England, where he has another interview with the king – but a very different king this time. He is drawn and haggard, the finger extended towards Harold no longer indicating merely conversation but rather admonition or accusation. Harold for his part is apologetic and contrite, his head bowed, his hands extended in an exculpatory gesture. It is impossible to misread this scene: the king has heard something that worries and distresses him greatly, Harold is apologizing and excusing himself. If Harold had gone in the first place to confirm promises and make vows on the king’s behalf, why should he be apologizing? We have seen him do this. The only obvious answer is that he did not go to do this, but he has, for whatever reason, sworn a vow and in so doing has landed himself in bad trouble with his king. It is interesting that, having portrayed the situation so graphically, the designer has not attempted to explain it; the legend overhead simply says ‘he [i.e. Harold] came to King Edward’. It is here, more than anywhere else, that the Tapestry is most ambiguous.

  The only explanation that makes sense of everything is that offered by the monk Eadmer. According to him, Harold wanted to go to redeem the family hostages in Normandy and asked permission from the king to do so. The king apparently gave this reluctantly, but warned him that he would only bring misfortune on the whole kingdom and discredit upon himself, for ‘I know that the Duke is not so simple as to be at all inclined to give them up to you unless he foresees that in doing so he will secure some great advantage to himself.’xviii

  The duke was not simple and he did indeed gain great advantage for himself. Without the oath sworn and broken by Harold, it is highly improbable that the Vatican could have been persuaded to turn an unprovoked attack on a neighbouring independent and peaceful kingdom into a holy war against a perjurer (if indeed it did, as we shall see in due course). And without papal backing, William’s success would have been much less likely.

  It is extremely improbable that Harold would willingly and freely have sworn to the conditions recorded by William of Poitiers; as has been noted by previous historians, at least two of them would have amounted to treason against the present king. On the other hand, he was in a desperately precarious situation. As Eadmer points out, he was in danger whichever way he turned. He cannot have been unaware that his recent host, Guy of Ponthieu, had been captured by William after the battle of Mortemer and had been held incarcerated in Normandy for two years until he freed himself by swearing allegiance to the duke and accepting him as his overlord; nor that after William’s recent unprovoked conquest of Maine, the rival claimants, Count Walter and his wife (also possible claimants to the throne of England and with a much stronger claim than William’s), had died by poison in his custody. However courteously entertained at the Norman court so far, he was in fact a prisoner, and if he refused to swear, his conditions were likely to become less comfortable. And as the effective deputy king of England, his prolonged absence would be disastrous. If he took the oath, he probably did so relying on the generally accepted belief t
hat a forced oath was not regarded as binding. He might also have remembered Alfred’s law (the very first in his code) that, ‘If a man is wrongfully constrained to promise either to betray his lord or to aid an unlawful undertaking, then it is better to be false to the promise than to fulfil it.’ No wonder that on his return the king is reported by Eadmer as saying reproachfully, ‘Did I not tell you that I knew William and that your going might bring untold calamity upon this kingdom?’xix Such an explanation makes perfect sense of the expression on the king’s face in the Tapestry and of Harold’s abject stance.