There has been considerable debate about where Harold’s oath was sworn. The Norman chroniclers identify Rouen or Bonneville-sur-Touques as its location, but the Tapestry indicates that it was at Bayeux. The capital of Normandy would have been a natural location for such an important event, but logistically Bayeux or Bonneville would have made more sense as they were both closer to the Channel ports which would have taken Harold back to England. The imposing ducal castle at Bonneville overlooking the Seine would have been a fittingly dramatic place for the oath. Alternatively, the cathedral at Bayeux was second only to Rouen in status and would have provided a suitably sacred environment for the oath. Odo is not shown on the Tapestry at the time of the oath, but he would not need to have been depicted if the oath had been given in his own diocesan cathedral, where his presence would have been taken for granted. It would have been characteristic of Odo to have provided the collection of holy relics on which this declaration was made and to have placed himself at the centre of the events which were critical for the future of Normandy and of Odo and his family in particular.
19 The ducal castle at Bonneville-sur-Touques. One of the locations where Harold’s infamous oath could have been sworn.
Harold may have thought that as he was a virtual prisoner of William’s in Normandy he had no option but to agree to William’s terms, and he may also have felt that because there was implicit pressure to swear, his promises were not binding. Indeed, he was not actually in a position to offer the English throne to William – that remained the prerogative of Edward and the English witan. Events in England on his return did little to improve Harold’s position. A rising in the north in the autumn of 1065 succeeded in removing his brother Tostig as Earl of Northumbria; up until that point, with the exception of Edwin of Mercia, the Godwines had held a monopoly of the English earldoms. Harold’s failure to maintain the Godwines’ stranglehold on regional power weakened his position; not only had a member of the house of Wessex been removed from the northern earldom, but he was substituted by Edwin’s brother, Morcar. Furthermore, Harold had made an enemy of Tostig by the ambivalent way he had dealt with the Northumbrian crisis and his brother would return seeking retribution.
• The Death of Edward the Confessor •
In England, no sooner had the dust begun to settle on the Northumbrian crisis than the question of Edward’s successor became a real issue, as the king fell ill towards the end of 1065. Duke William and his Norman court would have been aware of King Edward’s failing health and would have been monitoring events across the Channel closely. Although there is no direct evidence that the duke was anticipating the king’s death by making any specific preparations to launch an invasion of England prior to Edward’s death on 5 January 1066, it has been suggested that the presence in his army of troops from Flanders, Brittany and even Aquitaine indicates that a campaign had long been planned. It is, nevertheless, possible that William was taken by surprise by the speed of King Edward’s demise. Edward’s new Westminster Abbey was due to be consecrated on Christmas Day 1065 while the court was assembled. Edward became unwell on Christmas Eve and, although he still made appearances in public over the next three days, the consecration was delayed until 28 December, by which time the king’s condition had worsened and he had taken to his bed. Just before he died, Edward took counsel with his immediate advisers and bequeathed the throne to Harold, with the stipulation that he should protect Queen Edith and her lands, saying, ‘I commend this woman and the entire kingdom to your protection.’ Edward also provided for those Frenchmen who had remained with him after the Godwines had regained influence in 1052. He instructed Harold to accept an oath of loyalty from those who wanted to stay in England and retain them in his service. Those who wished to return to France should be allowed to do so, taking their possessions, under safe conduct (Higham 1997, 174).
Edward’s options in his choice of successor were strictly limited. According to Saxon tradition, the new king should be a blood relative, however remote, and should have sufficient support within the witan, that is, the leading eoldermen in the kingdom. There was only one serious legitimate English blood contender, the 14-year-old Prince Edgar, known as Edgar Aetheling, who had little support at the English court despite his credentials as Edward the Confessor’s grand-nephew. By offering the crown to someone outside the royal lineage, Edward opened the way for Duke William’s interference in the process. In addition to the old king’s nomination, Harold required the support of the nobility and the clergy. It is the Bayeux Tapestry which provides the most detailed portrayal of Harold’s takeover with the consent of the secular and ecclesiastic community. Harold is shown holding a battle axe and being offered the crown by a secular figure, with the caption, ‘And here they gave the king’s crown to Harold’. This version of events is supported by the account of John of Worcester, ‘After the burial the underking Harold, Earl Godwine’s son, whom the king before his death had appointed successor to the kingdom, was elected to the royal dignity by the magnates of the whole realm and on the same day was honourably consecrated king by Ealdred, Archbishop of York’ (Higham, 175). The Norman chroniclers William of Jumièges and William of Poitiers both contest this version of events, claiming that Harold seized the throne unlawfully and, furthermore, that he was crowned by the discredited Archbishop of Canterbury, Stigand. On the Tapestry it is implied that Stigand alone crowned Harold. The archbishop had been excommunicated by several popes and was guilty of simony and pluralism as he held the See of Winchester at the same time as Canterbury.
Edward died on either 4 or 5 January and was buried in his newly consecrated abbey on the morning of 6. Harold was crowned king the same afternoon, probably by both Archbishop Ealdred of York and Archbishop Stigand of Canterbury. The Bayeux Tapestry shows a shooting star, believed to be Halley’s Comet, appearing when Harold is sitting on the throne; but the comet actually appeared on 20 March 1066. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle also reported the appearance of the comet, concluding that it would bring ill fortune for some. The caption on the Tapestry reads, ‘Here resides Harold King of the English’, and it has been suggested that the building in which Harold is sitting was a palace, rather than Westminster Abbey and that this was a Crown Wearing ceremony. If so it could have been at Easter, which fell on 16 April in 1066 (Higham, 184). Whatever the precise nature of the occasion, it was meant to demonstrate that Harold was now firmly enthroned as king.
• The Invasion Fleet Sails •
According to the Tapestry, Harold sent a messenger to Normandy taking news of Edward’s death and at the same time the more unwelcome information that Harold had acceded to the throne. William would have been acutely aware that Harold was in a strong position. He had been nominated by Edward and supported by the English magnates, which meant that the only way to replace him would be by force. William would also have been well aware of Harold’s problems with his brother Tostig, who in late 1065 had moved to Flanders, where he had been welcomed by his brother-in-law, Count Baldwin of Flanders. Baldwin made Tostig his deputy and settled him and his family in St Omer, where he was able to attract the support of mercenaries, drawn by the possibility of loot and land in England in the event of an invasion. Orderic Vitalis claimed that Tostig travelled to Normandy to offer William his support in his bid for the English throne, but this is not mentioned by any of the other commentators writing closer to the events of 1066. There would, nevertheless, have been close communication between Tostig, Baldwin and William which would have been maintained right up to the time of Tostig’s unsuccessful invasion of England in September 1066.
Duke William’s response to Harold was little more than a formality, in the form of a protest to the English court asking Harold to step down in his favour. William convened a series of councils aimed at maximising support amongst the Norman nobility and named his wife, Matilda, as his regent in Normandy. The duchess was to be supported by Roger de Beaumont and Roger de Montgomery, and it was accepted that Robert (Curthose), his 12-year-old
son, was his heir. Odo was at these meetings and according to the Bayeux Tapestry appears to have played a significant role in persuading William to assemble an invasion fleet. During the first half of 1066 William travelled throughout the duchy, visiting his palaces at Rouen, Fécamp, Caen, Bayeux and Bonneville-sur-Touques, and met with his chief vassals; there were a series of rallies to encourage and organise the preparations. He had meetings with the rulers of those territories who were planning to join him as allies, notably, Eustace, Count of Boulogne and Aimeri, Vicomte of Thouars in Poitou. William also sent emissaries to obtain the support of Pope Alexander II, who, after some hesitation, blessed the mission and granted William the right to carry the papal banner. ‘Through it he achieved a remarkable coup which immediately transformed a buccaneering enterprise into a legitimate enterprise against a usurping king’ (Bates 1988, 85).
According to the chroniclers, William’s main advisers were William fitz Osbern and Roger de Montgomery. Odo only appears with William occasionally, but it is difficult to believe that the man who was to wield such immense powers after the Conquest did not play a significant role in these preparations. The Tapestry conspicuously shows that Odo played a seminal role in the decision making both before and after the invasion fleet sailed. It is only the Tapestry that implies that it was Odo who advised William to build an armada and it is only the Tapestry that tells us that William took counsel with his half-brothers, Odo and Robert, on the eve of the Battle of Hastings. The preparations for the invasion culminated with the dedication of Matilda’s abbey of La Trinité in Caen on 18 June. It was a grand religious occasion attended by Archbishop Mauritius of Rouen and at least four bishops and eight abbots. No description of the ceremony survives, but we can be sure that as the abbey lay within the diocese of Bayeux, Odo would have participated fully in the day’s events.
In England, Harold’s troops were deployed along the south coast from the Isle of Wight to Dover in anticipation of William’s invasion. However, by early September it looked as if the long anticipated attack was not going to take place and on 8 September Harold dismissed the Wessex militia and with his housecarls he returned to London. The English fleet, which had been patrolling the south coast, was also disbanded. On 18 September a Scandinavian army led by Harald Hardrada, King of Norway, with the assistance of Tostig, landed at Riccall on the Yorkshire Ouse. Two days later, Harald, a seasoned warrior, decisively defeated an English army led by the Earls Edwin and Morcar at Gate Fulford and subsequently negotiated the surrender of York. In response, King Harold assembled an army, marched it north and surprised Harald and Tostig on 25 September, defeating them at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. The king’s overwhelming victory at Stamford Bridge would be seen as one of the greatest battles in English history, were it not for what followed. There is no reference to Harold’s northern campaign on the Tapestry.
20 La Trinité, Caen in 1819, known as the Abbaye aux Dames and the burial place of Queen Mathilda. It was consecrated just before the invasion of England. After Cotman, J.S.
21 The route of the invasion fleet in late summer 1066 and William’s journey to London after the Battle of Hastings.
In July 1066 the Norman invasion fleet was assembled at the mouth of the River Dives, about 20km to the north-east of Caen. It stayed there for about a month before being moved up the coast to St-Valery-sur-Somme in Ponthieu. The conventional story was that William was delayed, waiting for a favourable wind, before sailing and that there were prayers for the wind to change. The chroniclers imply that he was waiting the whole summer for this change to take place; in fact, it may only have been a few weeks. In any case, the news William was waiting for was of a military rather than a meteorological nature. The religious underpinning of the venture was emphasised when William ordered that the relics of the local saint, Valery, be taken in procession around the town, prior to the departure of the fleet. It has been suggested that Odo may have led the pre-invasion ceremonies at St Valery. After the Conquest, William endowed the church of St Valery with lands that he had promised in the event of a successful campaign.
It would seem that William was aware of Harold’s movements and timed his sailing to coincide with the Scandinavian invasion in the north of England, and the fleet sailed to England on the night of 27/28 September. The Norman ships landed in Pevensey Bay, close to the Roman fortifications at Pevensey Castle (Anderitum). It is difficult to believe that William landed here by accident; if he did it was great good fortune for him. The heavily defended walled enclosure, covering almost 4ha, provided a ready-made stone castle which would have given protection to much of his army. It had been garrisoned by Harold’s men before they had dispersed, but there was no opposition waiting for the Norman forces and they were able to dig in without any hindrance.
• Pevensey and Hastings •
The geography of the coastline on which the Normans landed has changed dramatically over the last millennium. Several watercourses flowed into Pevensey Bay and then into the sea, having passed through the low-lying marshy area now known as the Pevensey Levels. The levels were open water in Roman times and the distribution in Domesday of dozens of saltworks in what are now inland areas shows that tidal water still covered much of the area in the eleventh century. References to Pevensey during the eleventh century are normally linked to ships taking refuge in a harbour there. There has been a great deal of drainage, canalisation and river diversion as well as woodland clearance in the surrounding Weald, which has resulted in the silting up of Pevensey Bay. Consequently, Anderitum, which lay on a narrow peninsula at the mouth of the bay in 1066, is now separated from the sea by a swathe of marshland about a mile wide. The conventional story told by the chroniclers, which appears to be confirmed on the Bayeux Tapestry, is that after landing at Pevensey William built a castle. The next day he moved his fleet and troops eastwards to Hastings where he built a second castle. Yet topographically this is distinctly odd. Saxon Hastings was little more than a small fishing village, which is not recorded in Domesday Book, with a harbour that would have been quite inadequate for a fleet the size of William’s. It would have made little sense to move from the safety of Anderitum and Pevensey Bay, with all its safe inlets, until such time that the army needed to move on.
An intriguing, somewhat heretical, suggestion that requires further investigation is that in the late Saxon period the place-name ‘Hastings’ covered the whole region which included Pevensey and the later town of Hastings (Combes and Lyne 1995). It can also be argued that the name Pevensey was used in connection with the bay and river rather than specifically with the fort at Anderitum. The use of the place-name suffix ceastre is invariably associated with Romano-British sites and there is no evidence of any significant Roman or Saxon occupation at Hastings. As many other Alfredian burhs were sited within former Roman fortifications, at places such as Winchester, Chichester and Porchester, it is possible that the place name Haestingaceaster was applied to the Roman fort at Anderitum. If this is the case, then William landed his fleet in Pevensey Bay on 28 September and moved his forces the short distance to Anderitum the following day. On the Tapestry he is later seen supervising his troops building a castle at Hestinga, which might have been an earthwork constructed within the Roman fortifications. In logistical terms this seems more likely than William moving his recently landed troops 10km to the east across the difficult terrain of the Pevensey Levels and the Sussex Weald to a smaller harbour with far less capacity than the one he was leaving.
Within a few years of the Conquest, Sussex was organised into north–south corridors, called rapes, which were placed in the hands of some of William’s most trusted magnates. Pevensey was in the hands of his half-brother Robert of Mortain; Robert’s father-in-law, Roger de Montgomery, held Chichester and Arundel; William de Warenne (1st Earl of Surrey), a distant relative of the Conqueror, held Lewes; Robert, Count of Eu held Hastings; and William de Braose held Bramber. Odo held the strategically vital county of Kent, immediately to the east of the Su
ssex rapes. Although rapes existed in some form before the Conquest, as compact semi-autonomous power bases they were a post-1066 creation, centered on castles, similar to the castleries found in Normandy. Each of the rapes had its own sheriff, who answered to the tenant-in-chief, not to the Crown. The rapes had an artificial profile, running in roughly parallel strips between the coast and the northern boundary of Sussex, each controlling a corridor of communication between London and the Channel. The vital routes between England and Normandy were thus in the hands of six (or seven, with Odo in Kent) of William’s most trusted relatives or lieutenants; but no one or two of them could conspire against the king and block his way southwards to the coast (Cownie 1998, 111–22).
22 The Sussex Rapes and Kent after 1066.
• The Battle •
Having landed successfully William’s troops set about the systematic raiding of the countryside around Pevensey and Battle. This was essential to keep his forces properly fed, but was also undertaken to provoke a hurried response from Harold. The coastal area of Sussex involved was at the heart of the Godwines’ territory; most of the land terrorised by the Normans was recorded in Domesday as having belonged to Harold. This was a direct challenge to the king and one which he must have felt it necessary to respond to. With hindsight, it would have been better to have allowed the Normans to exhaust local supplies and be forced to move away from the coast and from their ships which provided them with a lifeline in the event of military defeat.
The English army moved quickly from London and reached present-day Battle on 13 October. Harold’s strategy appears to have been the one he had used with such success at Stamford Bridge, which was to take the enemy by surprise. William’s intelligence was good and anticipating Harold’s arrival he moved his troops to the battlefield early on the morning of 14 October. Harold’s troops were weary from the long march and he did not have time to deploy them properly along the ridge which they occupied before the Normans were upon them. During the battle William is said to have worn the relics from Bayeux Cathedral, on which Harold had sworn his oath, on a string around his neck. The battle lasted the whole day, during which the English army was progressively weakened by the Normans’ mobile and well-organised cavalry. The end came late in the day with the death of King Harold. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle laconically observed, ‘And the French had possession of the place of slaughter, just as God granted them because of the people’s sins’ (Higham, 213).
The Man Behind the Bayeux Tapestry Page 7