A Brief History of the Anglo-Saxons

by Geoffrey Hindley

  The Godwine family in the ascendant

  After 1052 the Godwine influence was paramount in England. Although Swein died while returning from his pilgrimage and Earl Godwine himself collapsed of a seizure in the king’s banqueting hall in April 1053, the family remained the arbiters of English affairs. Harold smoothly succeeded to the earldom of Wessex, though he diplomatically surrendered his position in East Anglia to Ælfgar of Mercia, Earl Leofric’s son. When Siward of Northumbria died two years later, however, the all-powerful family asserted its absolute ascendancy. Siward’s son was deemed too young to succeed his father and Leofric of Mercia was clearly too old to combine the two great earldoms. Mercian influence in the north was utterly excluded when his son Ælfgar was sent into exile and lost part of his earldom to Gyrth, one of the younger Godwine scions. (For a time, the embittered Ælfgar allied with the Welsh prince Gruffudd of Gwynedd). Northumbria now went to Tostig, Queen Edith’s favourite brother. The Northumbrians themselves seem to have considered him as the king’s representative, not as an imposed territorial lord, though they were to find his rule offensively strict. The great families of Anglo-Saxon England were not provincial in the sense that the French nobility commanded provincial power bases; their personal estates were scattered in relatively small units, not held in large blocs, and they, like their lands, were integrated into a wider, essentially nationwide whole.

  When Earl Leofric of Mercia at last died in 1057 he was succeeded by his son Ælfgar but Gyrth Godwineson became sole earl in East Anglia. That year Ralph of Herefordshire also died. Together with a number of other French lords settled by English policy in these Marcher territories, he had developed his earldom as a Marcher lordship using mounted troopers to harry and pursue Welsh raiders and building strong points with castles, Norman style, rather than building burhs in the English manner. But in the autumn of 1055 he and his fellow Marcher lords went down to a crushing defeat at the hands of the northern Welsh prince Gruffudd ap Llywelyn of Gwynedd and Powys. Early the following year an English force under Leofgar, the newly appointed warrior bishop of Hereford, was dealt with just as summarily. On Ralph’s death, Harold Godwineson took his earldom and its problems; the remaining brother, Leofwine, was accommodated with an earldom from the southeastern shires. By 1060 Mercia was the only English earldom not controlled, in the king’s name, by a member of the house of Godwine.

  The contradictions in Tostig’s image are exemplified by his activities in 1061. Unpopular though this West Saxon courtier might be in Northumbria, he felt confident enough in his governorship not only to campaign into Wales in support of his brother but also to continue to be absent from his post for the best part of a year while he led an embassy to Rome in company with Ealdred, the newly appointed archbishop of York. They travelled down the Rhine, presumably by way of Cologne and Mainz, devoutly visiting all the shrines on the route. Passionate in his politics, Tostig was also pious in his religion and is recorded with his wife Judith of Flanders as a patron in the Liber Vitae at Durham in letters of gold.

  It was the view of the family’s eulogist in the Vita Edwardi that, ‘When briefly joined in peace’, Tostig and Harold seemed as England’s ‘mainstays’.4 At court the family’s presence was felt in the person of Queen Edith as the king pursued his passion for hunting and increasingly concerned himself with ecclesiastical matters; later she may even have hoped to influence the succession. She certainly amassed wealth and land. At Edward’s death only the royal estate, Earl Harold and Archbishop Stigand outdid her personal holdings. The Domesday Book shows her with property scattered across England from Old Wessex to the eastern Midlands, the dower portions of the queens of Mercia, the bulk of these in the little territory of Roteland, known from the 1150s as the shire of Rutland. (It was ‘reformed’ away in 1974 but, thanks to local lobbying, restored some twenty years later. It would appear that the East Mercians are a determined breed!)

  In the last ten years of his reign Edward presided over a kingdom prosperous within its borders and more or less holding its own against its Celtic neighbours. Malcolm III of Scotland, who owed his throne to English help, made a courtesy visit to the English court at Gloucester in 1057, though that did not stop him from making inroads into Northumbria in the following years. As to Wales, the late 1050s and early 1060s were years of Welsh ascendancy. It was not until 1063 that the situation was adjusted. In the spring Gruffudd managed to weather a punitive expedition led by Earl Harold. Tostig marched down from Northumbria and joined forces with Harold, who burnt the palace at Rhuddlan. Their successful campaign in the Marches forced the Welshmen to sue for peace and traitors killed their own charismatic prince. His head and the beak of his raiding ship were brought to Harold, hostages yielded up and tribute paid.5 A century later, standing stones were still to be seen along the border recording Harold’s numerous victorious engagements.

  At this time Harold was just forty: England’s greatest landholder, her richest man and most powerful royal minister. The Anglo-Norman historian Orderic Vitalis (writing in the 1120s) recorded him as tall, well built and noted for his eloquence, courage in battle and affability to his supporters. His partner, the beautiful Edith Swanneck, was a rich woman in her own right with extensive landholdings in the east of England. They had five children and if their liaison did not conform entirely to the church’s requirements they formed a formidable and loyal couple. A man of great consequence in the nation’s affairs since his early twenties – his eastern earldom had covered much of East Anglia, Essex and Cambridgeshire (including Huntingdonshire) – Harold was also a person of conventional piety. For example he was a keen and discriminating collector of relics and a great patron of religious establishments. The abbey of Peterborough was a favourite and, much to its disadvantage, Abbot Leofric was with Harold at the Battle of Hastings. By contrast, the small religious community of Waltham Holy Cross greatly benefited from the beautiful stone church that Harold had built for them, much to the approval of King Edward. Harold apparently had a special devotion for the cult of the Cross, like other English nobles at this time.

  Like them too he seems to have visited Lotharingia and been much impressed by the religious reforms going forward there, and to have been a connoisseur of fine manuscript illumination. He may even have visited Rome; he is certainly known to have been in Saint-Omer in November 1056, when he witnessed a charter there for Count Baldwin V of Flanders, his brother-in-law. Of his other visits to the Continent, the one to Normandy, when he is supposed to have pledged his oath to William to support him as successor to the English crown, should in the view of Professor Frank Barlow, in his recent book on the Godwine dynasty, be dated to the year 1064 – if it ever took place at all. It certainly features dramatically on the Bayeux Tapestry but, Barlow argues, the detail ‘must be viewed with caution’. There is no mention of this visit in the Chronicle and he considers the later English sources that do mention it, such as Eadmer, are merely ‘refashionings’ of the Norman version of events. He points out that there are differences as to where the ceremony took place – at Bonneville-sur-Touques according to William of Poitiers, at Rouen according to Orderic Vitalis – while the Bayeux Tapestry specifies no location. From the start, the Norman apologists claimed, Edward wanted William to be his heir but, Barlow observes: ‘There is no good evidence that Edward ever or consistently regarded William as his heir.’6 Even so it was central to William’s case for papal support in his invasion plans and one wonders whether the papal curia would have credited a total fabrication. And the Bayeux Tapestry unequivocally depicts Harold in Normandy.

  Whoever actually made the famous piece of needlework (the question is discussed in Appendix A), it was surely commissioned as a record of the Norman version of how the crown of England was acquired by the duke of the Normans. It follows the account in William of Poitiers of how Harold visited Normandy on a mission from King Edward with instructions to confirm his oath, first made during William’s visit to England in 1051–2 along with the other Eng
lish magnates at that time, to accept William as the next king of England. He was wrecked off the coast of Ponthieu in Picardy and seized by the local count, who ransomed him to Duke William. While the duke’s guest, Harold joined him in his military campaign against Conan fitzAlan, count of Brittany – which features extensively in the Tapestry. The earl’s mission, we are told, was to convey to William that King Edward had designated the duke his heir to the English crown. William had his English visitor swear to support him as king and then had the cloth removed from the table on which he had placed his hand – to reveal a cache of saints’ relics beneath!

  Back in England Harold, as head of the house of Godwine, faced trouble from the Northumbrians angered by the harsh administration of his brother Tostig as earl of Northumbria. Scandal darkened the last weeks of the dying king. The Christmas court of 1065 was in uproar at the death, most said the murder, of the northern magnate Gospatric, who like Tostig had been at court for the festivities and was a known enemy of the earl. Such a breach of the king’s personal peace rocked the foundations of established order; worse still, another rumour accused the queen of having set it up.7

  Northumbrian loyalties were divided between the Anglian lords of Bamburgh, of whom Gospatric was one and who were dominant north of the Tyne, the church community of St Cuthbert at Durham, and the predominantly Scandinavian aristocracy of Yorkshire. Tostig’s appointment as earl in 1055 had brought rough but effective, and hence contested, rule. He and his wife Judith of Flanders were renowned for their generosity to St Cuthbert, including the donation of a large crucifix, covered in gold and silver and accompanied by images of the Virgin Mary and St John. Tostig had identified the ringleaders as the house of Bamburgh and had two of its members murdered at York while under safe conduct.The rebels, among them Yorkshire thegns, declared Tostig outlaw and invited Morcar, younger son of Ælfgar of Mercia, to be their earl.

  They marched south to ask the court to authorize the appointment. In a sense it was a vindication of Tostig’s rule since it seems his brief had been to bring the northern region into line with the rest of the kingdom.8 Harold met them at Oxford and agreed their demand. King Edward rubber-stamped the appointment; Tostig was forced into exile, with no support from his brother.

  Some regarded this quarrel as responsible for the collapse of the Godwine family fortunes. Harold, ignoring his ‘Danish marriage’ with Edith Swanneck, now married Morcar’s sister: their son would no doubt have succeeded to the throne had Harold won at Hastings.

  The last Anglo-Saxon reign

  Harold was crowned king of England in Westminster Abbey on 6 January 1066, the day following the death of King Edward. The great church had been dedicated some ten days earlier on 28 December as the king its patron lay dying. Preparations for the forthcoming ceremony must surely have been under discussion. It was certainly hasty; some could say unseemly. But Bishop Wulfstan of Worcester, who prophesied to the king disaster if the country did not mend its debauched ways, did not level the charge of perjury against Harold. There were other candidates, most strongly Edgar Ætheling, grandson of Edmund Ironside, as well as William of Normandy. But there is no evidence that either had a party of supporters in England. It seems that Harold had right on his side when he claimed that the dying king had named him his successor, and the council had acclaimed him. Why should they do otherwise? Norman influence had been strong enough in the first half of the Confessor’s reign; with the ruler of the duchy on the throne of England, their position as English magnates would be parlous.

  The ‘E’ version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, written in the scriptorium of Peterborough Abbey, whose abbot Leofric was with the English army at Hastings, records straightforwardly that ‘Earl Harold succeeded to the realm of England, just as the king had granted it to him and as he had been chosen to the position.’ The twelfth-century English historian John of Worcester would confirm this and even William of Poitiers believed that the dying Edward had nominated the earl his heir. John also tells us that Harold was crowned by Archbishop Ealdred of York. Norman sources, however, claimed that the coronation had been conducted by Stigand of Canterbury, who had received his pallium of office from Benedict X, whose reign ended after just nine months when he was expelled by reformers and declared anti-pope. Pope Alexander II, sponsor of the invasion of England, did not of course recognize Stigand. The Tapestry tellingly depicts his ambiguous position – he stands to one side of the enthroned King Harold, not wearing his pallium but displaying it to the spectator. Evidently he had not conducted the coronation. Interestingly, Stigand was not replaced at Canterbury until 1070.

  Harold’s nine-month reign was largely occupied with preparations against invasion. The country’s fabled wealth was mobilized for war, the mints striking thousands of pennies bearing the new king’s head at more than forty sites from Romney in the south to York and Chester in the north. The Welsh threat had revived under new leaders. But more serious was the fact that Tostig, determined to recover his position in England, had made common cause with the Norwegian king, Harald Hardrada, the most renowned warrior of the time, who was now ready to prosecute the claim dating back to his grandfather’s deal with King Harthacnut. (In Harald’s opinion, even Edward the Confessor had been an intruder, let alone the Godwineson now in place.)

  And then, of course, there was the relentless build-up of William of Normandy’s invasion forces along the Channel coast. All summer Harold held his troops on stand-by in the southern counties with ships in readiness at Sandwich and off the Isle of Wight. There are hints that he may have ‘raided the Norman coast at some time during the summer’. Week after week the wind blew from the north, making it impossible for William to launch his troop transports. In the first week of September the supplies provisioned for the English troops on standby ran out ‘and the men were allowed to go home, while the fleet returned to London.’9 But if the winds hampered the Normans they favoured the Norwegians and in September news reached Harold that they, with Tostig and a fleet of some 300 ships, had sailed into the Humber estuary and marched upon York. Edwin and Morcar led the forces of Northumbria against the invaders and were routed on the banks of the River Ouse, ‘south of York’. (The twelfth-century chronicler Symeon of Durham sites the battle at Fulford.) By forced marches that were a tribute to his army’s discipline and fitness, Harold arrived to face the enemy at Stamford Bridge on 25 September. The fighting lasted the best part of the daylight hours; the invaders were crushed, both Harald and Tostig met their deaths, as did a great proportion of their troops both ‘Norwegians and Flemings’.10 Harold gave quarter to the survivors. Figures vary as to the slaughter. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ‘the very great raiding army’ arrived in 300 ships and, after their defeat, returned in 24 ships. John of Worcester gave the figures as 500 and 20, respectively. According to Orderic Vitalis a mountain of whitened bones was still to be seen on the battlefield in the 1120s.11 Harold’s triumph was brief. The winds in the Channel had changed. On 28 September the fleet from Normandy crossed the narrow seas and William was able to land his invasion force unopposed at Pevensey. The duke himself stumbled and fell and, to avert the omen, a quick-thinking lieutenant let it be known that the duke wished to embrace his new kingdom.

  Raising his army had presented problems for William too. It is not clear that his vassals owed him service outside the duchy. From outside, Eustace of Boulogne was his principal ally but he also recruited soldiers from Brittany, Maine and even Aquitaine. He was able to hire mercenary archers and crossbowmen. It seems that the building of the fleet and troop transports did not begin until after news of Edward’s death reached Normandy. He seems to have sailed with a fleet of between 500 and 700 ships. His delayed sailing played in his favour in so far as Harold was in the north of England during the vital days that the Normans crossed the Channel. This gave them time to deploy from the old Roman fort at Pevensey to Hastings.

  The Battle of Hastings

  Again Harold of England traversed his kingdo
m, he and a number of his troops no doubt on horseback. By 7 October he was in London. There a family conference is said to have ensued and, among other things later tradition tells us, his mother urged him not to fight and his brother Gyrth proposed that he, not Harold, should command the army because he was an oath-breaker.12 Contemporary English sources say nothing about the oath and the story is first found in Orderic Vitalis, who may have had in mind the oath supposedly sworn to William in 1051/2.

  It seems that Harold spent the best part of a week in London assembling an army. One presumes this entailed dispatching writs for the raising of levies through the southern counties, for we are told that men came in as he rode through Kent and Sussex. The chronicle of Abingdon Abbey records that the thegns owing duty to the abbey fought at Hastings and as we have noted Abbot Leofric of Peterborough was there, presumably with the men at arms owing service to the abbey.

  William of Malmesbury records that the night before the battle the English were carousing. Supposedly the English thought the Normans must be priests because they lacked the flowing moustaches of true warriors; and the Normans thought the English a womanish bunch with their combed and pomaded hair.13 If Wace is to be believed the Normans’ battle cry at Hastings, the semi-Latin ‘Deus aïe!’ (‘With God’s help’) was answered by the Anglo-Saxon cry ‘Ut!’ (‘Out!’)