1066 (16 page)

This is not to say that the Tapestry, or any other source, is necessarily giving a true account of Harold's death. Battles are confused; stories differ. The most that can be said is that there is nothing inherently implausible about the notion that an arrow hit him around the eye and that he was then struck down by advancing knights. An arrow-wound in the face, leaving him bloodied and maimed, would have allowed the interpretation that the shaft had struck him specifically in the eye, whether or not this was actually the point of impact. It has been argued by an American historian, David Bernstein, that blinding would have had symbolic value in contemporary thought: the perjurer had received an arrow in his eye, his eye had been put out as God's punishment.
¹⁷
Such a story would have quickly spread and the tapestry's artist may be following it on account of its resonant symbolic overtones. This may be so; but the tapestry does not actually show the arrow in Harold's eye, rather it enters his head at some undisclosed point on the other side of his helmet. Strictly speaking, the belief that it has hit him specifically in the eye is merely a matter of surmise on the part of the observer. Had the artist wished to show the arrow entering Harold's eye, he could no doubt have done so more explicitly.

Are we being teased again with double meaning? Is the artist hinting at another version of Harold's death? The story of the arrow was not the only early story. In the
Carmen de Hastingae Proelio,
the very earliest account of the battle, the description of Harold's death is quite distinct from any Norman or Anglo-Norman source and it makes no mention of any arrow. Instead Harold is killed by four aristocrats, or rather the poem singles out the four aristocrats who led a melee that descended upon Harold all at once: 'Others indeed were there,' the poet admits, 'but [these four] were better than the rest.'
¹⁸
The
Carmen
is quite clear about the identity of one of the four: it is none other than Count Eustace II of Boulogne, who apparently arrives first at the scene. As to the other three, the passage is unfortunately ambiguous but they are probably Duke William himself, Hugh of Ponthieu (Count Guy's younger brother) and Robert Gilfard (another French baron). Of these four persons only one, the duke, is Norman; the rest are French in the narrow non-Norman sense.
¹⁹
Curiously William of Poitiers is silent on the manner of Harold's death, although in other respects he set about correcting the French bias of the
Carmen.
Was this because the thrust of the
Carmen's
story was uncomfortably close to the truth, that the French, and specifically Count Eustace, had played the greater part in the killing of Harold? It seems at first sight that the tapestry leaves us guessing as to the identity of the knight who is portrayed as cutting Harold to the ground. However, we shall return to this enigma in chapter 15. There are reasons to believe that the name of this person, shown as he inflicts the mortal blow at the very climax of the battle, is not unknown at all but has been ingeniously encoded in the tapestry: it is, once again, Count Eustace II of Boulogne.

The death of King Harold is the decisive moment. The morale of the English, an already exhausted and depleted force, has been cruelly sapped by the loss of their leader. The fighting seems to continue for a short while, but it is not long before any further resistance becomes futile. The last straggling remnant of Harold's worsted army is now pursued off the field of battle. Duke William has won, his enemy is dead and he can look forward to wearing the crown that he covets. Even as battle is still raging, looters have arrived in the lower border, hoping to retrieve anything of value from the littered dead. One man bundles more swords into his arms than he can possibly hope to carry. Two more quarrel over a shield, pulling it greedily between them as if it were a Christmas cracker. Others are slipping chain-mail suits off the sprawled white corpses of the dead, nonchalantly removing armour from fallen warriors as if they were doing no more than help the wearer undress. One of the looted corpses may even be Harold's, for William of Poitiers notes in his own account that Harold's body was 'despoiled of all signs of status'.
²⁰

Eadmer summed up the Battle of Hastings and all the death, turmoil and suffering it caused in a way that made sense to his fellow countrymen: 'although fickle fortune veered from one side to the other, so great was the slaughter that the victory they gained is truly and without doubt to be ascribed to the miraculous intervention of God who by punishing the evil crime of Harold's perjury in this way showed that He is not God that countenances iniquity'.
²¹
This, too, is the most basic underlying meaning of the Bayeux Tapestry, and as such it would not have displeased the Normans. We have seen, however, how the story is told in an enormously subtle way, one that secretly undermines the Norman claim to the throne and records the English version of the succession, long before Eadmer was able to put that version in writing. Ultimately the tapestry seems to add its own twist by covertly turning the French under Count Eustace II of Boulogne into the true champions of divine will.

When evening fell on 14 October 1066 a large part of England's warring classes lay lifeless with their king on the field of Hastings. The body and face of Harold are said by William of Poitiers to have been so horribly mutilated that no one could be sure which corpse was his. Thus, according to one later story, his mistress, Edith Swan-Neck, was brought on to the scene of carnage and, picking her way over the corpses, was able to identify her lover - not by his face but by marks on his body known only to her.
²²
William of Poitiers tells us that Duke William took charge of the corpse. Harold's mother, Gytha, then approached him and pleaded to have custody of her beloved son so that she could give him a fitting burial. She even offered Harold's weight in gold in return for his body. William refused. In his view, Harold was a faithless perjurer; he had opposed God's will and his army had fought for an unjust cause. Had not the result proved William right?William of Poitiers tells us that the duke ordered that the mass dead of the English should be left where they fell, unburied and unremembered, and that Harold's body should be taken away and placed unceremoniously under a simple cairn of stones at the seaside. There, the Normans joked, he could continue to guard the coast that he had sought in vain to defend. It has recently been suggested that the bones of an eleventh-century warrior discovered in Bosham church in 1954, adjacent to the supposed remains of Canute's little daughter, may be those of King Harold.
²³
The evidence of written sources, however, indicates that Harold's body was shortly afterwards moved to his foundation of Waltham Abbey.
²⁴
An important tomb once marked his grave there but it was destroyed at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII. Today only a simple plaque on the ground within the ruined Waltham Abbey bears witness to the final resting place of Harold Godwinson, King of England.

There are a few final images in the embroidery, but they have been poorly restored and may not reflect the original. The yarn ends abruptly in the immediate aftermath of battle. In the upper part of a split scene, several prisoners, most linked by a rope, are filing past [scene 59]. Two of them, interestingly enough, seem to have arrows in the eye. In the lower part riders with whips are chasing a man who appears to be hiding in a bush. Originally, no doubt, there were some further scenes - the tapestry probably continued for several more yards - but even in the drawings of 1729 it ends where it ends now. The extremities of the work were no doubt especially vulnerable to damage. The ending must have been destroyed at some point before 1729, but rather than lamenting the loss, we should remind ourselves how amazing it is that so much has survived.

Modern embroiderers have produced reconstructions of the missing last section.
²⁵
This, of course, is largely guesswork as far as the details are concerned, but the gist of the lost scenes may probably be deduced from the poem of Baudri of Bourgeuil.
²⁶
Baudri probably saw the original tapestry before1102. His poetic description of the one he imagined in Countess Adela's bedchamber may be taken as a broad, personal account of the original work. After the death of Harold, Baudri tells us that the Normans attack the remaining English 'more savagely than a tiger' and that the English fall 'more meekly than a sheep'. When night falls the English take flight and hide wherever they can; some occupy caves while others 'find shelter in bushes'. Thus far it is possible that Baudri is describing what survives of the existing work. The following day, so Baudri tells us, William's army resumed the business of war. Baudri writes that the houses of the English resounded with wailing: 'No woman, youth or elder is spared the tears.' It thus appears that there was a second scene of civilians caught up in the conflict. A city, no doubt London, is surrounded. The men of the city are leaderless and disorganised and without proper arms. 'What shall they do?' asks Baudri. 'The frightened people imagine their walls torn down, their houses burned, themselves murdered.' In a pathetic effort at defence 'an unwarlike legion' of 'girls, old men and boys' gird up the city walls with whatever they can find. At this point, however, William offers peace. The city gratefully accepts the offer and the tapestry, as described by Baudri, ends with William's triumphant acclamation as king.

This abbreviated version of events between October and December 1066 is much as would be expected if the Bayeux Tapestry had continued until Duke William's coronation. It is known that he stayed for about a week at Hastings before moving slowly into Kent and taking Romney, Dover and then Canterbury. By late November he had advanced to Southwark and was ready to cross the bridge over the Thames at the site where London Bridge now stands. He judged, however, that the people of London still needed softening up and instead he led his army on a rapid rampage through Surrey, northern Hampshire and Berkshire. Once again his forces ravaged the countryside and the trail of devastation can still be traced in the Domesday Book written twenty years later. The English will to resist was sapped by this crude display of military might. The first major submissions, including that of Archbishop Stigand, took place at Wallingford, where William crossed the Thames. Queen Edith submitted to a Norman delegation at Winchester. Although she was Harold's sister she was able to retain for herself an honoured position as Edward's widow.

For a brief moment it seemed as if the city of London would hold out. The remaining English leaders rallied around the boy Edgar and in London they elected him as king. But the hopeless reality of their plight soon dawned on them and Edgar, Earls Edwin and Morcar, Archbishop Ealdred and the chief men of London all submitted to William at Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, by late November or early December 1066. William eventually came to terms with Edgar Ætheling, who went on to lead an eventful life and was still living in the English countryside as late as the early 1120s.
²⁷
On Christmas Day 1066 Duke William of Normandy was crowned king of England at a tense service in Westminster Abbey, less than twelve months after Edward had been buried and Harold crowned within the same great walls. He was the third of England's kings in that tumultuous year of 1066. Of his two battle companions highlighted by the embroidery, Odo of Bayeux became Earl of Kent and was granted enormous landholdings in many English counties as his reward. Count Eustace had arrived back in Boulogne by Easter 1067.
²⁸
By the autumn of that year, and perhaps already at Easter, he was not a happy man.

10

English Art and Embroidery

We have seen that the Bayeux Tapestry is a many-layered masterpiece, how cleverly it seems to be shot through with the English viewpoint and how its account of the Battle of Hastings subtly and unexpectedly puts the emphasis on the controversial Count Eustace II of Boulogne and his Frenchmen rather than the Normans. Is there any further evidence of this?What can be known of the true origin and meaning of this extraordinary work?

When Bernard de Montfaucon found the Bayeux Tapestry in the late 1720s he reported that 'the common opinion in Bayeux is that Queen Matilda, wife of William the Conqueror, had the tapestry made'. 'This opinion,' he wrote, 'passes for a tradition in the region. It seems highly probable.'
¹
In this way one of the most enduring myths about the Bayeux Tapestry was propagated. To eighteenth-century observers, the most obvious thing about the tapestry was that it told the story of Duke William's famous conquest of England. How natural it must have been to assume that Queen Matilda and her ladies-in-waiting spent their idle hours, with needle in hand, embroidering the Conqueror's famous triumph over Harold while the man himself was busy reducing the English to final and complete submission. Despite the lack of evidence this story was for a long time accepted as true. In the nineteenth century a debate did occur between those who attributed
Ha tapisserie de la Reine Mathilde'
(Queen Matilda's Tapestry) to William's wife and those who thought, for various reasons, that it must be a later work and that it was, therefore, to be ascribed to another Matilda, the Empress Matilda who was the Conqueror's granddaughter. No one, however, seemed to doubt that it was the work of some Queen Matilda or other. The only problem was choosing the right one.

Study of the Bayeux Tapestry has always been hampered by the fact that there is not a single reference to it in any surviving contemporary document. Step by step, however, close examination of the tapestry itself and ingenious detective work have enabled these early assumptions to be discarded. Early observers assumed that this heroic frieze, which at first glance seemed to be a straightforward celebration of the Norman triumph, must itself be of Norman origin. Several distinct clues quite apart from its subversive content have overturned this belief.
²

The Bayeux Tapestry is an embroidered wall hanging, and herein lies the first clue which suggests an English origin. From surviving texts it is known that Anglo-Saxon women, in particular, were renowned for their skill at embroidery. No tradition comparable in either quality or quantity seems to have existed on the other side of the Channel. The Normans excelled at building, the English at the smaller arts. Pious Anglo-Saxon nuns and wealthy noblewomen alike occupied their hands making exquisite vestments and decorative wall hangings.
³
The skill, in particular, of Harold's sister Edith, the Con fessor's queen, is attested by contemporary sources. In
The Life of King Edward
there is fulsome praise for Edith's needlework. The anonymous author tells us that Queen Edith was 'another Minerva' in this art and according to William of Malmesbury she herself embroidered the costly robes which King Edward wore on festive occasions.
⁴
It cannot be without interest that Edith appears unnamed, almost inconspicuously, at Edward's deathbed in the Bayeux Tapestry. It could even be that her hands, not Matilda's, were among those that stitched this famous work - making it the tragic record of a brother's death rather than the triumphant account of a husband's victory.

Edith aside, there were certainly many female embroiderers in England. Even William of Poitiers, no friend of the English, noted that 'the women are very skilled at needlework and weaving gold thread'.
⁵
Similar remarks were made by another foreigner, an expatriate Fleming named Goscelin, who became English by adoption (and who may possibly be the author of
The Life of King Edward).
⁶
Written sources attest to Anglo-Saxon embroideries being frequently embellished with gold thread and fine jewels, although the Bayeux Tapestry, being so vast, has no such rare adornment, a fact that may have helped its survival intact through so many centuries. In addition to fine garments, wall hangings which commemorated Anglo-Saxon heroism on the field of battle were certainly not unknown. The lost work presented to the church at Ely by Æfflaed in memory of her late husband's heroic death at the Battle of Maldon in 991 is evidence of this.
⁷

Although the conquerors generally despised the language and culture of the Anglo-Saxons, scoffing at English saints with their uncouth names like Egwin and Aldhelm, and pulling down unstylish English churches, they seem to have made an exception in the case of English embroidery. This was what the natives were good at. Some items the Normans purloined for sending home, some they commissioned anew. The Domesday survey of 1086, the great landholding record in England commissioned by William towards the end of his reign, intriguingly mentions some English needleworkers who were still esteemed for their art and in possession of land. One, AEflgyd, held land at Oakley in Buckinghamshire 'which Godric the sheriff granted her . . . on condition of her teaching his daughter gold embroidery work'. Another, Leofgyd, held a moderate estate at Knook in Wiltshire, because 'she made and makes the gold fringe of the king and queen'.
⁸
There is further evidence for Queen Matilda's taste for English embroidery. When she died in 1083, her will reveals that she bequeathed two exquisite items of English embroidery to her favoured church of Holy Trinity in Caen. The will specifically mentions that one of these items, a chasuble, was as yet in the course of being embroidered and it names the embroiderer as 'Aderet's wife' at Winchester.
⁹
This is not to say that there was no embroidery in Normandy or France; but the evidence for the quantity and quality of English work is much more abundant. The accumulated evidence thus strongly suggests that the Bayeux Tapestry was not made by triumphant stitchers. It was made by Englishwomen and they would have had sadness in their eyes, as their needles picked like crows over the corpses of their mutilated menfolk.

The next, and most vital, clue came from a close examination of the artwork of the tapestry. It is important to distinguish the designer of the work from the embroiderers who carried out the task of stitching. There is no similar surviving embroidery and historians of art have thus been obliged to draw parallels with manuscript illumination and drawings. In the 1950s the art historian Francis Wormald turned his attention to the Bayeux Tapestry.
¹⁰
He found that he was able to identify a number of stylistic affinities, narrative analogies and visual quotations which strongly suggested, as many now suspected, that the tapestry's master artist was working within the Anglo-Saxon world, and not in Normandy at all. In particular, the designer seems to have drawn inspiration from a number of illuminated manuscripts which were produced at, or possessed by, the monasteries at one specific place - Canterbury. There were two monasteries at Canterbury: Christ Church Abbey and St Augustine's Abbey. The closest connections have been found to be with St Augustine's Abbey, the oldest and most prestigious abbey in England, founded by St Augustine himself in the sixth century as part of his mission to convert the pagan Anglo-Saxons.

Since the 1950s, Wormald's pioneering observations have been built on by other art historians.
¹¹
Once again, those who have assumed that nothing new awaits to be discovered about the Bayeux Tapestry have been proved to be very wrong; much of the most exciting and intriguing art historical work was done in the 1990s, and it is entirely possible that more remains to be discovered. The artist of the tapestry seems to have made much use of the
Old English Illustrated Hexateuch
(a copy of the first six books of the Bible produced at St Augustine's Abbey in the mid-eleventh century). He also drew from a collection of texts known as the
Canterbury Miscellany
and a sixth-century work known as
The St Augustine's Gospels.
In the eleventh century
The St Augustine's Gospels
were kept on the high altar of the abbey church at St Augustine's Abbey. The
Gospels are
said to have been brought to Canterbury in 597 by St Augustine; they are still used in the ceremony for the enthronement of archbishops of Canterbury. So impressive is the range of parallels that, in the words of one recent historian, 'the art historical evidence for the design and manufacture of the Tapestry at St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury is now so extensive and formidable that it should be taken as an established fact'.
¹²

These parallels are drawn with artwork produced at male monasteries and the master artist of the tapestry was probably (as has often been assumed) a man, although it is also likely that the embroiderers were women. The tapestry's unity of style suggests that there was a single master designer, though he may have worked with one or more assistant. The designer could have been a monk at St Augustine's or a layman with a close connection with the abbey. Not all those who lived and worked in monastic communities had taken the vows of monks or were fully accepted as monks. The artist may have transferred his parchment designs on to the linen surface with a charcoal marker, although no trace of the outline has been found. Embroiderers would have then set to work with needle and thread. How long it took can only be guessed. The fact that it took two years for the Leek embroiderers to complete their nineteenth-century facsimile is of little help, for it is not known how many embroiderers were employed to stitch the original. Intriguingly there was a small nunnery in Canterbury on part of the estate owned by St Augustine's Abbey, though no positive evidence has been found indicating that this is where the tapestry was made. The linen could, of course, have been taken anywhere for this purpose. The surviving tapestry has been found to consist of eight joined-together sections; it is thus conceivable that a number of different workshops were engaged on the task.

In sum, it now seems well established that the artist of the Bayeux Tapestry was someone with a very close connection with St Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury and that the tapestry was made by English embroiderers, probably at or near Canterbury. This is entirely consistent with our analysis of the tapestry's story. Covertly the work tells the same story about Harold as the one later told, around forty or fifty years afterwards, by Eadmer, a monk of the other great Canterbury monastery, Christ Church. It does not seem unreasonable to conclude that this was a story known to and preserved by the monks of Canterbury.