Additionally, it has been argued that, given this interpretation, an appropriate location for the Tapestry would have been within a square Anglo-Norman castle keep – and where better than at Dover? Although the great stone keep at Dover was not built until the twelfth century, there may have been an earth and timber castle built there immediately after Hastings which would have been under Odo’s control in his role as Earl of Kent. Was the Tapestry designed to be hung within the square wooden tower of Dover Castle? (Henige 2005). There are, of course, serious objections to all these ideas, but they demonstrate that the Tapestry is still capable of radical reinterpretation which still gives Odo a central role in its creation and display. Other possible locations for the Tapestry include the church of St Augustine, Canterbury, as begun by Abbot Scotland (1070–87) and completed by Abbot Guy (1087–93). It is also possible that it was intended to be taken round ecclesiastical buildings in England and perhaps Normandy for set periods of public display. The Tapestry might also have been accompanied by guides and interpreters who offered a commentary on its details. It is possible that Odo’s fall from favour in 1082 led to the Tapestry being sent to Bayeux from England along with his other chattels for storage (Cowdrey 1988, 49–65).
• The Song of Roland •
According to Wace, at the start of the Battle of Hastings, ‘Taillefer, a very good singer rode before the duke on a swift horse, singing of Charlemagne and of Roland, of Oliver and of the vassals who died at Roncevales’ (Burgess 2004, 181). This is a story which appears in various forms in other accounts of the battle and relates to the Song of Roland, the first chanson de geste (song of deeds), an epic tale which presents an account of Charlemagne’s army in Spain in 778. Leaving Spain after a long campaign, the Frankish army is betrayed by one of Charlemagne’s own lords, Ganelon. The Song concentrates on Roland, Charlemagne’s nephew, who is bringing up the rearguard with his two companions, Oliver and Archbishop Turpin. They are ambushed by a Muslim (it was in fact Basque) force at the Roncesvalles Pass in the Pyrenees and fight to the death, protecting their honour and slaying all their attackers in the process. In revenge, Charlemagne returns to Spain with a large army and wipes out the opposing pagan kingdom.
The Song appears in the late eleventh or early twelfth century and it has been suggested that Odo was involved in its composition, as well as that of the Bayeux Tapestry. The Song, like the Tapestry, emphasises loyalty and feudal obligation as well as the dire consequences of treason and treachery. The heroes of both works have valour and common sense and have adversaries that are worthy, but are guilty of having broken codes and oaths (Caple, 82). There are several similarities between the Chanson and the Tapestry, notably, the role played by two clerics – Bishop Odo and Archbishop Turpin. Both are influential in the councils of war and both appear prominently in battle. In the Song, Turpin blessed the troops before the battle and offered martyrdom and instant salvation to those who fell fighting to ‘help sustain the Christian faith’ and fought to the end, and ‘Archbishop Turpin goes throughout the field. No tonsured priest who ever sang a mass performed such feats of prowess with his body’ (Roland v, 1129). Could Odo have consciously modelled himself on the Archbishop of Rheims from the Song of Roland in the Tapestry? Odo also blessed the troops before Hastings as well as presiding over the pre-battle banquet. In one specific area there is almost complete symmetry in the way the two men are portrayed: at the height of the Battle of Hastings, Odo is shown energetically rallying the young Norman knights who are showing signs of weakness, while at the height of the Battle of Roncesvalles, when many of the Franks have been killed, the surviving knights of the rearguard grow anxious and Turpin encourages them thus, ‘My lords and barons, don’t think shameful thoughts! I beg of you, for God’s sake do not run, nor let proud men sing mockingly of you; it’s best by far that we should die in combat’ (Roland v, 1515–18). In both cases, the sight of a warlike man of God leading the charge served to embolden the troops whose morale was failing.
There is not enough evidence to be certain either that Odo was involved in the writing of the Song of Roland or that he used the model of Archbishop Turpin in the depiction of his own actions on the Bayeux Tapestry. There is, however, enough circumstantial evidence to persuade us to consider the idea seriously. It should also be remembered that Odo ended his days on the First Crusade, making his way to Jerusalem to fight Muslim forces, perhaps still motivated by the Song and a desire to emulate Archbishop Turpin.
The heroic figure of Archbishop Turpin, who died fighting valiantly at Roncesvalles, would have provided an appropriate model for Odo, the battling bishop.
Archbishop Turpin rides about the field:
Never has such a cleric sung a mass
Who did so many deeds of gallantry.
To the pagan he said: ‘God’s woes on you!
You’ve slain a man for whom grief fills my heart.’
Forward he launches his fine battle-steed
And strikes him square on his Toledo shield
To hurl him lifeless down on the green grass.
(Owen 1990, 87)
6
• ‘A Second King in England’ •
The Battle of Hastings proved to be a major turning point in Odo’s career. Although he had been ‘a baron with the benefit of clergy’, after Hastings he became first and foremost a powerful secular magnate (Dodwell 1966). Presumably, Odo was present at William’s coronation, but he played no role in the ceremony; the Norman contribution was left to the other powerful baron-bishop, Geoffrey of Coutances, who, perhaps acting in his role of chaplain-in-chief to the Norman army, translated parts of the service. William was crowned king by Ealdred, Archbishop of York, who was acceptable to the papacy and he spoke in English, but the assent of the Normans was sought by Geoffrey speaking in French.
• Odo as Earl and Regent •
We begin to hear a great deal more about Odo after 1066 as he appears in a range of Anglo-Norman documents recording his various activities. William made Odo Earl of Kent late in 1066 or early in 1067 as part of his strategy to defend the south coast; he succeeded Harold’s brother Leofwine, who had controlled a much larger region in the south-east. The reduction in the size of the earldom would have been part of a policy to limit the power of the new earl, but also recognising the importance of Kent in the defence of England. William had himself proved how vulnerable the south-east was to foreign invasion, and his creation of the Sussex rapes and the earldom of Kent with a line of powerful castles running parallel to the coast was his response. Elsewhere in England, William largely took over and strengthened the English shire system for his local government, with county sheriffs acting as his representatives. Odo was responsible for choosing at least six of the new sheriffs, who were identified as his close allies (Green 1982). In the south-east and other sensitive areas the king adopted the Norman system of casteleries; these were well-defined districts ‘within which the whole arrangement of tenancies was primarily designed for the maintenance of a castle’ (Stenton 1961, 194). The intention was that these would form the front line of defence against an invading army trying to emulate William’s own successful invasion campaign. It is probable that William intended sub-dividing Kent into castleries as well as Domesday Book talks of the divisiones of Odo of Bayeux and Hugh de Montford, the same term used for the Sussex rapes. Odo’s base was at Dover Castle, which was the castrum Harold had promised to William in 1064; according to William of Poitiers. William had ordered the building of a castle here in 1066, work which had probably started as his forces made their way to London. Other major Norman castles in Kent were built at Canterbury, Rochester and Tonbridge and in total there were at least sixteen eleventh-century fortifications in the county. Some of these were motte and bailey castles, as at Tonbridge; others were large enclosure castles as at Rochester and Dover (Renn 1968).
In March 1067 King William felt safe enough to return to Normandy with hostages including Edgar Aetheling, Archbishop Stigand and Earls Edwi
n and Morcar. He also took money and items looted from English churches and monasteries; according to William of Poitiers, it was a virtuous act that large amounts of money were sent to a thousand churches in France and that the papacy received treasures worthy of Byzantium. Modern historians are less charitable, and describe the scale of losses from English churches as ‘unparalleled since the days of the Danish predators … in relation to the enormous losses of Anglo-Saxon objects in precious metal … the replacements by the Normans themselves were simply derisory’ (Dodwell 1982, 216). William then proceeded on a victory procession around the duchy during which the spoils of victory were displayed for the Norman people to see. During his absence William had appointed Bishop Odo and William fitz Osbern as his two regents. They were the most powerful men in the land, who were able to act without direct reference to the king, unlike other magnates such as Lanfranc who later acted as viceroys and undertook specific tasks allotted to them. No doubt they were given licence to take some English lands for themselves, and they started the process of piecemeal deprivation and demotion of the surviving English aristocrats and their families. Despite William’s rhetoric about continuity and inheritance, his regents’ actions spoke of high-handed superiority and dispossession.
Odo’s initial responsibilities involved the defence and subjugation of south-eastern England. Odo would have inherited the prehistoric and Saxon fortifications at Dover, where the Norman army camped after Hastings. Two detached towers ‘of Norman date’ in the outer bailey of the later castle, destroyed in the eighteenth century, could have been Odo’s work (Colvin 1963, 630–1). The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 1067 reported that Odo, with fitz Osbern based in Winchester, ‘wrought castles widely through this country, and harassed the miserable people; and ever since has evil increased very much’. Orderic Vitalis complained that ‘petty lords’ oppressed both nobles and commoners with ‘unjust exactions’, while Odo and fitz Osbern, ‘swollen with pride’, ignored all complaints against the Normans. Such was Odo’s power that Orderic called him, ‘a second king in England’. Orderic stated that the two regents ‘would not deign to hear the reasonable pleas of the English or give them impartial judgement’. Some of these complaints involved the treatment of English women, with whom illicit relationships were prohibited. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reported that William was ‘stern beyond all measure to those that resisted his will … if any man had intercourse against a woman, he was forthwith castrated’. However, there are some indications that Odo may have condoned rape and forced marriage between Normans and English women. Orderic Vitalis reported that ‘noble maidens were exposed to the insults of low-born soldiers and lamented their dishonouring by the scum of the earth’ (OV, ii, 268–9). It was also recorded that Englishwomen were known to have taken refuge in nunneries, ‘not for love of the religious life but from fear of the French’ (Williams 1995, 12).
Predictably, William of Poitiers had a more charitable view of the regents’ activities than the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ‘Odo bishop of Bayeux, William fitz Osbern laudably performed their respective stewardships in the kingdom; sometimes they acted singly and sometimes together … Also the local governors, each placed in a castle, zealously administered their districts … But neither fear nor favour could so subdue the English as to prefer peace and tranquillity to rebellions and disorders …’. On his return in the autumn of 1067 the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle claims that William ‘gave away every man’s land’.
34 An extract from William of Poitiers’ Lives of the Norman Dukes, written within a few years of the Battle of Hastings. Art de Basse-Normandie, 1985
• Odo – The First Justiciar? •
There has been some dispute about the precise nature of Odo’s position in England between 1066 and 1082 and whether he can be described as England’s first justiciar. Orderic Vitalis referred to Odo as comes palatii (count of the palace), the designation used for the most powerful official in the Carolingian court; this may have been because the term regent was not specifically applied either to Odo or to William fitz Osbern. Bates argues persuasively that Odo alone ‘could act with the equivalent of royal authority when William was not in England’ (Bates 2004–11) – an interpretation that appears to be confirmed in Domesday Book, which insisted that only Odo’s seal had the same status as the king’s. Clearly Odo was acting as justicias when he presided over pleas and mobilised shire courts.
The bishop’s itinerary reflected his disparate activities as William’s regent, as Earl of Kent, as a general, as a great landholder and as a bishop. Unlike other magnates Odo perambulated the country adjudicating small and large land disputes; he confirmed freehold tenure, decided between alternative claims and organised the royal demesne. However, his social status and his role as Earl of Kent would have prohibited him undertaking continuous administrative activity. Odo’s chief residences in England were at Dover and Rochester in Kent, at Deddington in Oxfordshire and at Snettisham in Norfolk. He was present at Queen Matilda’s coronation at Westminster on 11 May 1068 and at the primacy dispute at Winchester in 1072, where it was declared that Canterbury was the senior of the two archbishoprics. The main event in the court calendar, at which Odo was regularly present, was the Crown Wearing, where the king would ceremonially show himself to his people. These ceremonies were held on a regular basis at Easter, Whitsun and Christmas each year, taking place at Westminster, Winchester, Windsor or Gloucester. Odo witnessed the signing of Crown documents on thirty-four occasions; only Roger de Montgomery witnessed more, with forty attestations. Orderic Vitalis talked of a very small group of magnates like Odo as ‘those wise and eloquent men who for many years lived at King William’s court, observed his deeds and all the great activities there, were privy to his deepest and most sacred counsels, and were endowed by him with wealth that raised them above the condition to which they were born’.
One contemporary primitive form of justice, trial by ordeal, was applied by Odo, both in secular and ecclesiastical cases. According to custom the accused would normally be subject to ordeal by iron; the plaintiff would be obliged either to hold a red-hot iron or to walk across heated ploughshares. Their wounds would then be bandaged and if the injuries had healed or begun to heal within three days they were deemed innocent. However, if the wounds were festering then the accused was guilty and further punished accordingly (Bartlett 1986, 179–84). Ecclesiastical cases involving trial by ordeal had to be authorised by the appropriate bishop and before 1066 ordeal irons were held only by cathedrals in Normandy. Trial by ordeal was not only used to prove a man innocent or otherwise, it was also used as a means of confirming the honesty of jurors in a number of cases in England. In an infamous trial over landownership between Gundulf, Bishop of Rochester and Picot, Sheriff of Cambridgeshire the intrinsic unfairness and dangers of this system were graphically demonstrated. The county court, which was caught between a rock and a hard place, pronounced in favour of Picot but was reconvened on the intervention of Bishop Odo, who did not trust the judgment. Picot was the most famous villain in Domesday Book and known to the people of Ely as ‘a ravenous lion, a prowling wolf, a cunning fox, a filthy pig, a shameless dog …’. The jurors, all of whom were English, gave their judgement ‘out of fear of the sheriff’ and ‘were struck with terror by a message from the sheriff’. Odo did not believe them and he presented the jurors to an assembly of ‘the greater barons of all England’, where it was judged that they had committed perjury. Consequently, twelve representatives of the shire were obliged either to recant or undergo an ordeal by red-hot iron. When the jurors who had not confessed to the crime protested, they were put to the iron and failed, as a result of which they were fined the considerable sum of £300 (Cooper 2005, 175–9).
• Rebellion •
The first few months of William’s reign were relatively peaceful; the first signs of organised rebellion did not emerge until the latter part of 1067 when a revolt broke out in Odo’s own backyard. According to Orderic Vitalis, the Englishmen of Kent, ‘goaded
to rebellion by Norman oppression’, identified Count Eustace of Boulogne as a preferable alternative to William the Conqueror and invited him to attack Dover Castle. Earlier, Eustace had quarrelled with William and returned to Boulogne. With William away in Normandy he welcomed an opportunity to meddle in Anglo-Norman affairs. With the help of Kentish forces, Eustace attacked the castle. Odo and Hugh of Montford, warden of Dover Castle, together with most of the castle garrison, had travelled north of the Thames, where they were probably involved in land confiscation and transfer. The remaining defenders of the castle resisted fiercely and Eustace signalled to his men to return to the ships. As they did so they were pursued by the Normans and, believing that Odo had returned, they panicked, resulting in a rout. Eustace escaped, but many of his men were killed and his nephew was captured and presumably ransomed by Odo. This episode demonstrates the difficulty the English would have had in dislodging determined Norman defenders from their fortified castles. The scale of this uprising, and particularly the extent of involvement by English rebels, has been questioned. Eustace came with a force of chosen knights, but did not bring horses, which hardly sounds like a serious invasion attempt. Eustace’s involvement with Dover went back to the early 1050s, when there was an abortive attempt by King Edward to install him perhaps as castellan of a projected castle. It is possible that Eustace was simply trying to gain that which he believed belonged to him, i.e. Dover Castle, while King William was away (Williams 1995, 14–16).
The Man Behind the Bayeux Tapestry Page 11