The Battle of Hastings (6 page)

Gruffydd’s brothers swore fealty both to King Edward and to Harold. They divided up their brother’s lands between them. Harold ordered the construction of ‘a large building’ at Portskewet (Monmouthshire) in 1065. It would be interesting to know exactly what sort of structure this was and whether it was fortified in any way. It was used to store food and drink, and as a base for the English. But the precarious position of the invaders was soon demonstrated when the Welsh prince Caradoc attacked the new building, killed the ‘labourers’ and took the stores. This suggests that it was unfinished.
22

The unity of the Godwin family did not endure to the end of Edward’s reign. There was rebellion in Northumbria against Tostig at the end of 1065, partly caused by his attempts to tax the earldom with ‘a large tribute’, and for what some saw as his ‘iniquitous rule’, but it was mainly a chance to demonstrate the latent hostility towards him. It was also claimed that he robbed the church and took land. The comment of the
Vita
blames both earl and subjects: he ‘had repressed with the heavy yoke of his rule because of their misdeeds’.
23
In October, with Tostig at the king’s court, Northumbrian rebels led by thegns attacked his men in York, killing two hundred, including his Danish housecarls Amund and Ravenswart, and seizing his treasure.
24

The Northumbrians invited Morcar, the younger son of Aelfgar, whose brother Edwin was earl of Mercia, to be their earl, and virtually everyone bar Tostig was prepared to accept the change.
25
It seems likely that his brother Harold thought that Tostig had brought the rebellion on his own head, and believed that restoration was either not possible or not wise. He gave his brother no support. As a result, Tostig became enraged at his brother and did all in his power to oppose his interests; he even accused Harold of being involved in the rebellion against him. This rift in the Godwinson family probably did as much as anything to undermine Harold’s position in the long run. It was the division which gave William of Normandy his chance and made the Norman Conquest possible.

Harold and his brother Tostig were a striking pair, and caught the attention of contemporaries: ‘distinctly handsome and graceful persons, similar in strength … equally brave’.
26
They were even described as ‘the kingdom’s sacred oaks, two Hercules’. Harold was depicted as taller, more open, more cheerful, more intelligent; Tostig as quicker to act, more determined, more secretive and more inflexible.
27

How far Tostig’s failure in Northumbria was his own fault is difficult to say. It seems that he did try to introduce southern laws and to impose heavy taxation. Whether he was too harsh is hard to judge. He was accused of three killings, two of men under safe-conduct. However, they might have been involved in a conspiracy against him.
28
It may be simply that the imposition of this representative of the leading southern family was unpalatable to the northerners, however able he might be. He did retain power in Northumbria for a decade.

It is also difficult for us to judge Harold’s attitude to his brother. One might have expected more aid than Harold gave. But we cannot know if he believed his brother’s fall was his own fault and his brother not worth aiding, or if politically it was unwise to make such a move, or if already there was little brotherly love between them. One source suggests that Edward’s advisers believed Tostig to be at fault. There is some evidence that Edward preferred Tostig to his brother and was upset by his downfall, which further fuels the idea that Tostig was at fault, since Edward made no move to reimpose him.
29

It is not clear that
anyone
had the power to restore Tostig in Northumbria. What is certain is that after Tostig’s deposition and his brother’s failure to assist him to recover the earldom, he became thoroughly hostile to Harold. It seems likely that Queen Edith, who also favoured Tostig rather than Harold, and who may have influenced her husband’s attitude, thought Harold was at fault in the affair and became cool towards him. Her attitude is revealed by the
Vita
, in which it has been suggested that Tostig ‘is the real hero of the story’.
30

The fate of the English kingdom became increasingly open to question in the 1060s. Edward had no heir and seemed now unlikely to produce one. From the several claims made later it would appear that Edward promised the succession to a number of people. It is possible that they invented this later, but it seems more likely that Edward used the succession as elderly modern patriarchs brandish their wills over their heirs. It is likely that he favoured a different heir at different times through the reign. Among those given promises were William of Normandy, Sweyn of Denmark and Harold Godwinson.

Edward also thought about another possible successor, with a better claim by descent than any of those already mentioned, and who might also have been given private assurances about the throne. This was Edward the Exile. The Confessor made contact with Edward the Exile through the German Emperor Henry III, and invited him to come to England: ‘for the king had decided that he should be established as his heir and successor to the realm’. The Exile would hardly have made all the effort to come had he not been given some indication of the likely consequence. But having arrived in England in 1057, Edward the Exile died in London. He did not even get to see his relative the king, and was buried at St Paul’s.

In 1064 Edward the Confessor seems to have sent Harold Godwinson to Normandy. We shall look at the details of this expedition in the next chapter, but we need to consider its significance briefly. It is uncertain what was the purpose of the visit, and the main evidence for it comes from Norman sources. It is unlikely that Harold carried a promise of the throne to William, but the wily Edward may have seen the humour of the situation as the two potential rivals eyed each other up.

The chief puzzle of the situation is to see Harold’s motives for going. One can hardly envisage the Confessor being able to order his premier earl to go on an expedition of this kind, though at this juncture we should not necessarily believe Harold hostile to the duke. It is more likely that Harold saw his status as a kind of ambassador, concerned about the fate of two relatives who were currently held as hostages by the duke. It may indeed have been primarily a goodwill mission to keep warm the friendship between the two powers.

The events of the trip certainly increased its significance and gave William a new lever, albeit through some rather underhanded action to force an oath out of Harold. We may believe that when Harold left Normandy, both he and his rival had their own views about how they would act when the English king died. They each had new cause to respect the abilities of a rival seen close up. Events were to catch up on them, perhaps more quickly than they expected. Edward became ill in 1065 and died at the very beginning of the new year. The future of the English crown seemed uncertain.

Notes

  
1
.  F. Barlow (ed.),
Vita Aedwardi Regis
, 2nd edn, Oxford, 1992, p. 19.

  
2
.  Barlow,
Edward
, pp. 70–1; Barlow (ed.),
Vita
, p. 42.

  
3
.  John in Campbell (ed.),
Anglo-Saxons
, p. 221, from F. Maitland.

  
4
.  Barlow,
Edward
, p. 74.

  
5
.  Barlow,
Edward
, p. 39.

  
6
.  Barlow (ed.),
Vita
, p. 8.

  
7
.  Barlow (ed.),
Vita
, p. 44.

  
8
.  Barlow,
Edward
, pp. 81–4, 130; Barlow (ed.),
Vita
, pp. 14, 24, 90, 92.

  
9
.  Whitelock
et al.
(eds),
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
, 1043, p. 107; Cubbins (ed.),
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
, p. 67.

10
.  Barlow (ed.),
Vita
, pp. 28–30.

11
.  Barlow,
Edward
, p. 97: Edward ‘provoked Godwin beyond endurance’.

12
.  Whitelock
et al.
(eds),
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
, 1051, pp. 117, 118.

13
.  Barlow (ed.),
Vita
, p. 32.

14
.  Barlow (ed.),
Vita
, p. 36.

15
.  John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk, p. 576: ‘
timidus dux Rauulfus
’.

16
.  Whitelock
et al.
(eds),
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
, p. 124; Cubbins (ed.),
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
, p. 73.

17
.  John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk, p. 572.

18
.  Barlow (ed.),
Vita
, p. 44.

19
.  Barlow (ed.),
Vita
, p. 46; John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk, p. 572.

20
.  Barlow,
Edward
, p. 208; John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk, p. 578.

21
.  John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk, p. 592.

22
.  John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk, p. 596.

23
.  Whitelock
et al.
(eds),
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
, 1065, p. 138; Barlow (ed.),
Vita
, p. 76; John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk, p. 598.

24
.  John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk, p. 598.

25
.  Barlow (ed.),
Vita
, p. 78.

26
.  Barlow (ed.),
Vita
, p. 48.

27
.  Barlow,
Edward
, pp. 195, 198;
Vita
, pp. 48–50, 58.

28
.  Barlow,
Edward
, p. 235.

29
.  Barlow,
Edward
, p. 239, Barlow (ed.),
Vita
, p. 78.

30
.  Barlow,
Edward
, p. 298.

I
n the first two chapters we have reviewed, along with the earlier history of England, reasons why England might be invaded in 1066: in brief, the attraction of a wealthy land, together with the hope of success against a divided and unstable state. Now we need to consider, along with Normandy’s earlier history, how the ruler of that duchy was able to invade in 1066. This is an important consideration, for it is probably true that before 1066 such a venture would not have been viable.

Under the early rulers, from about 911 to 1026, Normandy grew into its recognised boundaries, and the interest of its rulers was inevitably upon this internal growth. Normandy then underwent a period of troubles, under Richard III (1026–7) and Robert I (1027–35), lasting through the minority of William the Conqueror. Only by about 1047 was the Conqueror really safe in his own duchy.

There then followed a period when his main task was to deal with enemies and rivals in France. He could not possibly have invaded England, and left Normandy open to invasion from the Capetian monarch or the count of Anjou. Only with the deaths of his main enemies on the continent, in 1060, was William relatively free to contemplate some broader project.

Even after 1060 for some time those broader projects were still nearer to home, in Maine and Brittany. That the death of Edward the Confessor occurred in 1066 and not earlier was in many ways a stroke of luck for the Conqueror. It came at just the moment when he could truly think about pursuing claims in England, with sufficient stability in the duchy and on its borders to leave it for some months, and with a degree of wealth and support which had not been available to him before the 1060s.

We shall note more closely than in the opening chapters the growing links between England and Normandy after ad 1000. The geographical proximity of the two was bound to bring some connection, but in the first half of the eleventh century there were new dimensions to the relationship: economic, social and political.

Both areas had strong Scandinavian settlements, and common interests from them. According to Dudo of St-Quentin, a clerk from Picardy who came to the Norman court, the links went back as far as Rollo or Rolf, the Viking leader and first ruler of Normandy. Dudo’s work, especially for the early years of Norman history, is now widely questioned. One historian has seen the
Customs and Acts of the First Dukes of Normandy
as ‘a mere farrago of distorted and altered fragments from the old annalists’.
1
Dudo was a chaplain at the court of Duke Richard II, and becomes more trustworthy when dealing with his own lifetime, though never exactly reliable.
2

The English kings, after a period of hostility, began to seek better relations with Normandy, and to make agreements for mutual benefit. In 991 Richard I of Normandy and Aethelred II of England made an agreement not to aid their respective enemies. Stemming from this, Emma, Richard I’s daughter, married Aethelred of the old West Saxon line in 1002. (After his death she married Cnut, the greatest of the Scandinavian kings of England in 1017.) She and Aethelred, with their two sons, took shelter in Normandy when Aethelred was in difficulties in 1013; and the sons, Edward and Alfred, were brought up at the Norman court.