1066 (11 page)

The story of this strange dream owes much, of course, to the fact that the author of the
Life
was writing after the Battle of Hastings. With the benefit of hindsight he knew the subsequent course of events. The dream-story, and its implicit likening of the Normans to 'devils' sent by God, is revealing nonetheless. It shows how the Norman Conquest appeared to the English, as they tried to comprehend the totality of their defeat. It also shows how the Conquest sometimes appeared to continentals from beyond the borders of Normandy, men like the anonymous Flemish author of the
Life of King Edward.
In this view, Duke William did not have a lawful claim to the English throne. He was an unwanted pretender, but after he had won the sheer fact of his victory was undeniable. God, the author of all things, must surely have caused that victory. He cannot have done so because William was right, but rather in order to punish the English. It followed that prior to 1066 the English must have been sinful - and sinfulness is never particularly hard to find once you start looking for it in earnest. In the world-view of the time this seemed to be the lesson to be learnt from the Bible. When David sinned, the author of the
Life
notes, God's vengeance fell from the heavens upon the whole people of Israel.
⁷
Was this not (the people asked themselves) what had really happened to England in 1066?

The little company gathered around Edward's bed 'were sore afraid' and 'stupefied and silent from the effect of terror'when they heard him speak of this dire prophecy. The author of the
Life
now points his finger explicitly at Archbishop Stigand, whose embroidered counterpart is seen leaning over the king's bed, with his eyes fixed intently on the king. 'He ought to have been the first to be afraid . . . [but] with folly in his heart he whispered in the ear of [Earl Harold] that the King was broken with age and disease and knew not what he said.' Stigand was a great survivor. He was a man with a dubious past and an even more dubious present.
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A cleric of enormous wealth, he had risen to prominence in the days of King Canute and in the course of a long life he contrived to remain in high office under six very different kings. He had been made Archbishop of Canterbury in 1052 when his Norman predecessor, Robert of Jumieges, fled the country in haste as the Godwins returned in force. Stigand's appointment in such circumstances was regarded by Rome as null and void and although in 1058 he did obtain recognition by Pope Benedict X, Benedict was deposed a year later and was spoken of as an 'anti-pope'. Stigand's position was also dubious in that he remained the Bishop of Winchester although such pluralism was frowned upon. As a consequence he had been excommunicated by five popes and the sentence of anathema still clung to him like a nasty cold. Yet he used his wily skills and long experience to remain in office. In the aftermath of the Norman Conquest, and especially after Stigand's replacement by Lan-franc in 1070 and his death in 1072, it was easy to find a scapegoat in Archbishop Stigand and to portray him as symbolic of all that was wrong with the English Church. With a man like that occupying the ancient see of Canterbury, it was hardly surprising in this religious-minded age that it appeared God's sleeping anger had been roused. To contemporaries it seemed that God had punished the whole nation for the sins of its leaders.

As King Edward lay dying, the question whether Earl Harold might yet adhere to the sacred oath he had given to Duke William was still hanging on a knife-edge. The
Life of King Edward
makes no reference to the oath, nor to Duke William's claim at all, but it does describe Edward's dying bequest.
⁹
This must be the very moment, the very gesture, that we can see in the Bayeux Tapestry [scene 26; plate 6]. 'And stretching forth his hand to [Harold], he said: "I commend [Queen Edith] and all the kingdom to your protection."' These words, reported by the author of the
Life of King Edward
and illustrated in the Bayeux Tapestry, still seem to hang in the air with an eerie ambiguity. Is Edward bequeathing the kingdom to Harold? Or is he saying that Harold should act as protector and regent, perhaps for the young Edgar? If anything like these words were truly spoken, the king's voice fell silent and he faltered and died on that very bed before he could make himself clearer. The living were left to decipher what he meant. The general view seems to have been that Harold, at the last moment, had been nominated as king. The E version of the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,
written at St Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury, also states in the clearest possible terms that Edward bequeathed the kingdom to Harold ('And Earl Harold succeeded to the kingdom of England just as the king granted it to him . . .'). Even William of Poitiers, the arch-propagandist of the Normans, admits that Edward on his deathbed nominated Harold.
¹⁰
This, no doubt, was an inconvenience for the Normans; but the testimony of witnesses such as Queen Edith and Robert fitz Wimarch could hardly be impugned. Poitiers deals with the point by arguing that, whatever had happened at Edward's deathbed, William already had the better claim: Harold had quite simply disqualified himself by swearing to be William's man. In any event it seems that under Norman law Edward's earlier choice of William (as a
post obitum
gift) would have been regarded as final and irrevocable. In England the custom was different. Since time immemorial ('ever since St Augustine came to these parts') a gift made by an Englishman at the point of death
(verba novissima)
was regarded as valid and binding.
¹¹
Whereas to modern eyes it might seem that a dying person's mental faculties would be at their most questionable, to the Anglo-Saxons a person's thoughts were then at their most lucid and close to God. If this is the true nature of the legal dispute between Harold and William, it has no obvious solution, for it is a dispute between the laws of Normandy and the laws of England. In the absence of an agreed system of supranational law to determine which nation's law should apply, the dispute between two such proud and determined warriors as William and Harold could only be resolved by war.

It remained for the king's nominee to be elected by the Witan, the council of the great in the land, who were already in attendance in large number at Westminster. Accordingly, in the next scene, we see two nobles offering the crown to Harold, one of whom points back at the previous image of King Edward's dying bequest [scene 27]. HIC DEDERUNT HAROLDO CORONA[M] REGIS (Here they gave Harold the king's crown). This, evidently, is the reason why the tapestry depicts Edward's funeral and death in reverse chronological order. The inscription alone tells us very little, but a visual link is clearly being made between the king's last words and the offer of the crown to Harold. If events had been portrayed in their natural sequence, the men offering the crown would have been pointing at Edward's funeral, and not his dying wishes. By pointing to the dying king, the thrust of what they are saying to Harold becomes immediately clear. 'Here is the crown,' the English nobles are telling him. 'It was Edward's last wish that you should have it and we urge you to accept.'

Once again, the story is not being told 'from the Norman point of view'. The tapestry makes not the slightest reference to Duke William's claim to the throne, which was founded upon his earlier designation by Edward, but it does show Harold's own nomination as entirely lawful under English custom. There is no sense in which Harold is a usurper, a man who, in the words of William of Poitiers, 'seized' the crown with the connivance of a few and who was 'the enemy of the good and the just'. Yet although Harold has been duly nominated by the last king he still seems reluctant to accept the highest office. He does not thrust out his arm and seize the crown of threads; he keeps his hand firmly upon his hip. This is a hesitant, pensive man; he is wondering what to do next. Without doubt, the young Edgar Ætheling had a superior blood claim to the throne, but Edgar was barely a teenager and it must have appeared to those who mattered in the Anglo-Saxon state that Earl Harold, an experienced warrior, was truly the man for the moment. Archbishop Stigand, it seems, was one of them; and it may have been his worldly-wise voice that won the doubters over. At the forefront of Harold's mind there was bound to be the memory of the oath he had sworn to William. By now he must have been convinced (by Stigand, perhaps) that the oath was involuntary and invalid - not only in the eyes of man but in those of God as well.

No one, in truth, wanted Duke William as king. Even King Edward had long since changed his mind. In any event the Normans were hardly the sort of people whom you would expect to invade England. Who did this William think he was? Harold, we may imagine, was still smarting at how foolish he had been in Normandy, at the way he had been cornered into swearing an oath. This was his chance to show the Norman duke just how much he was scared. He would brazen the matter out; and he would do so in the most robust manner possible. Harold would be King of England. He would accept the crown himself, just as it seemed the old king had wished, and the blood of the Godwins would now occupy the highest, most glorious office in the land.

So we see King Harold seated in majesty [scene 28]. He sits on his throne, wearing his crown, proudly holding the royal orb and sceptre for everyone to see. HIC RESIDET HAROLD REX ANGLORUM (Here sits upon the throne Harold, king of the English). In the post-Conquest period, the full implications of the tendentious Norman case against 'the usurper' Harold were gradually worked out. If Harold had no right to accept the throne, he had never been king at all. The Normans therefore airbrushed the reign of Harold II out of constitutional history. Quite simply, in legal terms, it had never happened and all those who had supported him were guilty of treason and liable to confiscation and banishment. William of Poitiers, writing in the 1070s, is generally careful never to refer to Harold as 'King Harold', though he drops his guard once or twice. By the time of the Domesday Book, in 1086, Harold is always referred to as earl, never as king. By contrast, the tapestry's Harold is a truly regal figure. He is without doubt HAROLD REX, every inch the King of the English, as he stares at us without commentary in that full frontal pose, inviting our judgement upon his actions, sitting there on a royal throne which was scarcely cold from the departure of its previous occupant.

Harold was crowned the very day of Edward's funeral. Westminster must have been exceptionally busy over that Christmas period, with much backroom politicking and earnest whispering in stony halls. A great assembly of earls, bishops and abbots was already
in situ.
They had come to attend King Edward's Christmas court and to witness the consecration of the new church; they had stayed for Edward's funeral; now they took part in the election of Harold, or at least they would have been present at his coronation. It is not known for certain where the coronation took place. It is often said that William the Conqueror 'inaugurated' the famous practice of English monarchs being crowned at Westminster Abbey. This is what the abbey's own tourist material states. It would, however, be very surprising if, during the course of that short winter's day, the whole party was made to decamp from Westminster to St Paul's in London. Harold, moreover, lacked the authority of the ancient bloodline of the Wessex kings. His was to be a brave new dynasty. He would have wished, so far as he could, to associate his kingship with that of his predecessor, and what better way to do that than to be crowned in the very church that Edward had built and where he now lay buried? It is therefore much more likely that Harold, not William, was the first English monarch to be crowned at Westminster Abbey.
¹²

The tapestry does not show us the ceremony of coronation that ushered in the brave new age, or rather reign, but standing next to the newly crowned king is none other than STIGANT ARCHIEP[ISCOPU]S (Archbishop Stigand). Like the enthroned Harold, Stigand confronts us in the face, inviting our judgement upon his open pose. William of Poitiers, raising every argument he could think of in order to justify the Norman Conquest, alleges that Harold's coronation was actually carried out by Stigand. It was therefore 'an impious consecration' by a man 'who had been deprived of his priestly office by the just zeal and anathema of the pope'. A later English source, however, maintains that the rite was carried out by Ealdred, the Archbishop of York.
¹³
This is much more likely. Harold would have been as conscious as anyone of Stigand's dubious position. When Harold's own church of Waltham Holy Cross was consecrated in 1060 he used the services of Cynesige, the then Archbishop of York. It can also be shown that the only occasions when Stigand was chosen by the English to consecrate any bishop occurred during the period when he was briefly recognised by Pope Benedict X.
¹⁴

All that may be so, but the tapestry is still widely interpreted as following the Norman propaganda line - that it was Stigand who anointed Harold and placed the crown on his head. As Archbishop Stigand is named and depicted adjacent to the newly crowned king, and Ealdred of York is nowhere in sight, the work is certainly open to interpretation in the Norman manner. This, however, is only a superficial reading. Any image of the coronation itself has been studiously avoided. Rather, what the tapestry is suggesting is that Stigand, by his very occupation of the see of Canterbury at this time, has sullied the proceedings. He - and corrupt priests like him was about to draw the wrath of God upon the whole country. The
Life of King Edward,
which the artist certainly knew and used, is evidence of this perspective on events. The Flemish author's criticism of Stigand is scarcely veiled. Stigand was one of those who 'dishonour the Christian religion', one of those who were 'irreparably attracted to the devil by riches and worldly glory'. According to the author of the
Life,
God'sanger is sometimes roused to such a terrible extent that there is, quite simply, no hope of mercy in this life. 'Under these scourges of the chastising God, many thousands of people are thrown down and the kingdom is ravaged by fire and plunder;and this in times past has been shown to come from the sins of the priests.'
¹⁵
Thus it seemed that Stigand's sins were so great that a whole people was about to suffer for them.