The Battle of Hastings (16 page)

49
.  John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk, p. 576: ‘
contra morem in equis pugnare
’.

50
.  William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, p. 199.

51
.  William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, p. 13.

52
.  William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, pp. 25, 81–3.

53
.  William of Jumièges, ed. van Houts, p. 104; Giffard may be the ‘Gilfardus’ in
Carmen
, eds Morton and Muntz, p. 34, l. 539.

54
.  John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk, p. 376, on Towcester, and Colchester which was repaired by Edward the Elder, who ‘restored the wall’.

55
.  John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk, e.g. about 885, p. 318, calls the fortification built against Rochester in the siege, therefore at least performing the function of a siege castle, a ‘
castellum
’; and p. 341 seems to distinguish smaller fortifications as ‘castella’ from towns.

56
.  Abels,
Lordship
, p. 92; G. Beresford, ‘Goltho Manor, Lincolnshire: the buildings and their surrounding defences c.850–1150’,
ANS
, iv, 1981, pp. 13–36, pp. 18, 31, 34.

57
.  Whitelock
et al.
(eds),
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
, 1052, p. 125; 1055, p. 131.

58
.  William of Jumièges, ed. van Houts, pp. 102, 122, 124; William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, pp. 19, 37, 43, 55.

59
.  J. Yver, ‘Les châteux forts en Normandie jusqu’au milieu du XIIe siècle’,
Bulletin de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie
, liii, 1955–6, pp. 28–115, pp. 47, 49; William of Jumièges, ed. van Houts, p. 208; William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, p. 106.

B
y 1065 Edward the Confessor was ageing: ‘with locks of snowy white he blooms’, but he was still seemingly in good health.
1
The question of the succession was as open as ever. Probably more as a political counter than from any great favour for one or the other, Edward had at various times given hope of the succession to William, duke of Normandy, and Harold Godwinson, earl of Wessex. One can make this interpretation since both were able apparently with confidence to believe they were Edward’s choice, and yet the old king had never made any formal or public declaration of his intentions.

If he favoured anyone it was probably for a time his relative Edward the Exile, son of Edmund Ironside and grandson of Aethelred II, whom he had sought out in Hungary and invited to England. That Edward the Exile was brought to England after the Confessor’s promise to William seems fairly convincing proof that if the king ever had favoured the succession going to William, he had changed his mind by the late 1050s. It is true that William was his first cousin once removed, which marauded as a claim after the Conquest, but in truth gave faint right. Even fainter was Harold’s claim, as the king’s brother-in-law, no right by heredity at all. Neither William nor Harold, nor for that matter Harold Hardrada in Norway, had any close claim to the English throne by descent, so that Edward the Exile seemed the most likely choice to continue the line of old Wessex kings. His only real rival, in terms of relationship, was Ralph, earl of Hereford, who was Edward the Confessor’s nephew. Ralph’s parents were Edward’s sister Godifu and the count of Mantes. He too had been shown favour by the Confessor, who had brought him to England after his accession, and made him an earl. But Earl Ralph died in 1057.

The relatives of Edward the Confessor.

Edward the Exile had three children including a son, Edgar the Aetheling, who had come to England with him. But, as we have seen, Edward the Exile died on arriving in England, also in 1057, and with him probably died any clear intentions of the Confessor for the future of his throne. With the deaths of his two closest relatives, Edward probably accepted Harold Godwinson as the powerful claimant nearest to the throne, but it is unlikely that he felt any great enthusiasm that his crown should go to a commoner who was the son of his old rival, Earl Godwin. There were some who, now that the father was dead, did favour Edgar the Aetheling for the throne, perhaps initially this even included members of the Godwin family and Harold himself.
2

But Edward the Confessor, no doubt contemplating difficult times ahead and the tender years of his relative, does not seem to have given Edgar the Aetheling his support. Many others were concerned that Edgar was simply too young to cope with the problems which loomed for the successor; he was only about five when his father died. Even by 1066 he was only fifteen, had not received an earldom or been given estates of great value, and so had no significant following. Edgar’s claims remained important, and would be raised again, but he played only a small part in the events of 1066. Only the strongest man was likely to succeed in the circumstances.

On Christmas Eve 1065 Edward the Confessor was seriously ill, perhaps having suffered a stroke. His piety overcame his weakness, ‘the holy man disguised his sickness’, and he was still able to come to table in his robes on Christmas Day, though he had no appetite, and go on to attend a Christian service.
3
The effort proved too much for him, and on the following day he had to stay in bed. He was not well enough on 28 December to get to another event which he must have greatly desired to attend, the consecration of the great new church at Westminster. Queen Edith had to stand in for him.

After Christmas, the Confessor gradually sank into a coma. However, after two days he recovered consciousness sufficiently to retail a rather garbled vision which he had experienced. He told of a dream about two monks he had once known in Normandy, both long dead. They gave him a message from God, criticising the heads of the Church in England, and promising that the kingdom within a year would go to the hands of an enemy: ‘devils shall come through all this land with fire and sword and the havoc of war’. This certainly smacks of a tale told with hindsight. There followed a strange forecast relating to a green tree cut in half.
4
This was probably no more intelligible to his hearers than it is to us. His wife went on compassionately warming the old man’s feet in her lap.

This may have given rise to the suggestion that Edward’s mind was disordered. Those at the bedside whispered together about the king’s words. They included Harold Godwinson, Robert fitz Wimarc and Archbishop Stigand. The latter, no doubt irritated by the visionary reference to failings among those at the head of the English Church, suggested that ‘the king was broken with disease and knew not what he said’.

But the deathbed wishes seem utterly sane and sensible. As those close to him wept at his condition, he made his last requests. He praised Queen Edith, who was there beside him, for the zealous solicitude of her service: ‘she has served me devotedly, and has always stood close by my side like a beloved daughter’. He asked Harold to give protection to Edith: ‘do not take away any honour that I have granted her’, suggesting that he was aware of the bad feeling which had grown up between brother and sister over their brother’s fall.
5

The king also asked Harold to protect foreigners in England. This implies that he feared the hostility of Harold and others to his continental friends and courtiers. It is also clear that on his deathbed he saw Harold as his likely successor, who might be able to carry out his last wishes. It is impossible to know Harold’s mind, but one interpretation that would fit most of the details we are given by the sources is that Harold in 1064 still had not seen himself as becoming king. He and his family had apparently been happy to favour Edward the Exile until his death. It seems likely that Harold went to Normandy freely, and there is no evidence that he was forced into making oaths to William. He was not the duke’s prisoner, as is often said. He went with the duke on campaign and was knighted by him. In other words, it seems possible that it was only after 1064 that Harold began to consider taking the throne.

The
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
states that Edward had ‘entrusted the realm’, had ‘granted’ the kingdom to Harold, while the
Vita
records that he commended ‘all the kingdom to his protection’. Even the French chronicler William of Poitiers spoke of Harold ‘raised to the throne by Edward’s grant on his deathbed’. Wace, with his usual vivid embroidering, has Harold demanding ‘Consent now that I shall be king’, to which Edward replies, ‘Thou shalt have it, but I know full well that it will cost thee thy life’. The deathbed scene is vividly portrayed on the Bayeux Tapestry, with the unshaven archbishop in attendance on the dying king. Wace has the Confessor going on to mutter: let the English decide to make Harold or William king as they please. But there seems little doubt that at the end Edward was prepared to name Harold as his successor.
6

In the early days of the new year, 1066, probably on 5 January, Edward the Confessor died. According to the
Vita
, his beard gleamed like a lily, and there was a rosy blush on the face of the corpse, and pale hands held as if in sleep. On the following day, the king was buried at Westminster Abbey, built for him in what was then a beautiful spot near the river and open fields, its ‘most lofty vaulting surrounded by dressed stone, evenly jointed’, the roof of wood covered with lead.

John of Worcester wrote that the king was ‘most bitterly mourned, not without tears, by all who were present’.
7
When the Confessor’s tomb was opened in 1102, Osbert of Clare described what they found when the stone slab was lifted: the body wrapped in a pall, sceptre by its side, crown on head, ring on finger, sandals on feet. They cut through the pall to reveal a bearded face. Osbert also mentioned a perfumed fragrance. By this time, men were beginning to think of Edward as a saint and the preservation of his body as miraculous. When the tomb was opened a second time, later in the twelfth century, the crown and sceptre were missing, presumably kept by those who had uncovered the tomb in 1102.
8

The Tapestry portrays the funeral: the body wrapped and tied in its pall, in a decorated bier marked with a cross at either end. The bier was borne by eight men, four at the front and four at the rear. Beside it are portrayed two small figures, probably their size indicating their humble social rank, who are ringing bells. The bier was followed by a procession of clergy, one carrying a crook, and two carrying what are probably psalters. They move towards the new church of Westminster with its rounded arches and domed tower, the most apposite site for the body of the pious king.
9

In England there seemed a general acceptance that Harold Godwinson should be king. Many must have had reservations, but few were prepared to oppose him, and the majority probably thought him the least of the various evils, which included rule by another Scandinavian (Hardrada), by the foreign and unknown William, or by a boy, Edgar, who would find it difficult if not impossible to fight off the rivals. For men in Wessex, Harold was their obvious lord; for earls in the north, he was at least the devil they knew and perhaps respected. Events in any case moved so fast that it is difficult to see any other immediate choice.

On the day of Edward’s burial, Harold Godwinson was proclaimed king, and crowned in the new church at Westminster. The Normans would later claim he had acted with indecent haste, but they could hardly deny that England had accepted him. Those magnates who were in London, no doubt anticipating the old king’s death, favoured Harold. He had achieved some recognition of a special position in the kingdom, being referred to as ‘dux Anglorum’ (duke/general of the English) and ‘subregulus’ (sub-king). The
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
says that Harold took the crown ‘as the king had granted it to him, and as he had been chosen’. Even the Bayeux Tapestry, made after the Conquest for a Norman owner, shows the English offering the crown to Harold.
10

However, the Tapestry also shows Stigand beside the throne in the next scene, with Harold on the throne.
11
Stigand was already under fire from the papacy, and after the Conquest would be displaced as archbishop. To show him, apparently involved in the coronation, hints at its illegitimacy. William of Poitiers directly states that Stigand carried out the ceremony. But it is not certain that this is so. English sources say that Harold was crowned by Eadred, archbishop of York, who had always been on good terms with the Godwin family. Stigand had received the pallium from the antipope ‘Benedict X’ (1058–9), who had been deposed in 1059. The previous archbishop, as we saw, was ejected, and Stigand’s position always remained precarious. But he was still in place as archbishop, and remained there until 1070, and the ceremony was seemingly accepted by the Church, whoever presided. There seems little reason to believe that Harold’s coronation was not legitimate. Comments to the contrary stem from Norman propaganda. Harold Godwinson was king but, as the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
tersely comments, he was to have ‘little quiet’.
12