Read Battle of Hastings, The Online
Authors: Harriet Harvey Harriet; Wood Harvey Wood
What is notable is that no other candidate than Harold seems to have been put forward at this stage. The king’s last word was important, but not overridingly so. If he had
bequeathed his
kingdom to an unacceptable candidate, perhaps more significance would have been attached to Stigand’s whisper at the deathbed (as the king recounted his
dream) that the old man was raving. As it is, no party seems to have supported the claims of the boy Atheling; no other candidate is even mentioned. Harold appears to have been elected unopposed by
the Witan; it would be the last occasion until 1689 on which an English king owed his title not to hereditary descent but to the will of the people as represented by the chief men assembled in
council. He was, as Ann Williams concludes after assessing the evidence, a popular choice for the kingship.
lxx
He was crowned by Ealdred, Archbishop of
York, the day after (some say the same day as) Edward’s burial in his new church, Westminster Abbey, probably in the same building. According to William of Poitiers, Stigand performed the
ceremony; but according to William of Poitiers, Harold was elected by ‘a few ill-disposed partisans’. Harold would have been very careful to avoid coronation by Stigand for the same
reason as he seems to have avoided asking him to consecrate his new church at Waltham: Stigand was under papal interdict, and his actions as archbishop could therefore have been seen as invalid.
Although written down later, the testimony of Florence of Worcester, who would have obtained his information from those who were present at the ceremony (probably his own bishop, Wulfstan, since
Ealdred himself, previously Bishop of Worcester, had died in 1069), is far more satisfactory.
The coronation ceremony followed hard on the heels of Edward’s funeral for reasons of practical convenience. Coronations normally took place at the great feasts of the Church. That
Christmas, all the magnates who should be present on such an occasion were gathered in London and would disperse after the funeral. They could probably not be reassembled until Easter. Kings in the
past had waited longer than from Epiphany to Easter
to be hallowed, but on this occasion, with the various threats facing the kingdom, it was desirable that there should be a
king on the throne, properly consecrated and acclaimed, who could speak with authority for the people. At no stage does it seem to have been disputed, even by William of Poitiers, that Edward had
indeed named Harold as his successor, and it would not have been difficult for a different story to be circulated after the conquest if any of those who had been present and survived had cared to
do so. And in fact all those whom we know to have been at the deathbed (with the exception of Harold himself) did survive the conquest: the queen, Stigand and Robert FitzWymark (a cousin of both
Edward and William) were all alive and able to give evidence if they had wished to. None seems to have done so, not even FitzWymark who clearly favoured the Norman takeover, or the queen who is
reputed to have done so.
A point of interest about Edward’s death and Harold’s election is the fact that William was not there. He had ample opportunities for getting news from England, and it would be most
surprising if he had not heard by Christmas that the king was failing fast. There were no such reasons in 1065 as there had been in 1051 to keep him in Normandy. If he truly believed that he was
Edward’s chosen heir, nothing could have been more natural than that he should go immediately to attend his cousin’s last moments and receive his final deathbed nomination. It would
have been his best chance of a peaceful succession. It can be argued that he placed his trust in Harold’s oath to represent his interests and support his election. But it seems strangely
unlike William to trust a rival to that extent.
At the opening of Harold’s reign, life seems to have continued normally. Again, the situation is described by Florence of Worcester in fulsome terms:
On taking the helm of the kingdom Harold immediately began to abolish unjust laws and to make good ones; to patronise churches and monasteries; to pay
particular reverence to bishops, abbots, monks and clerks; and to show himself pious, humble and affable to all good men. But he treated malefactors with great severity, and gave general orders
to his earls, ealdormen, sheriffs and thegns to imprison all thieves, robbers and disturbers of the kingdom. He laboured in his own person by sea and by land for the protection of his
realm.
lxxi
Few records of Harold’s short reign survive, for obvious reasons; no one, after Hastings, would want to produce any of his charters or writs in evidence, and in fact only
one writ has survived. But from what indications there are, there is no reason to doubt the general tenor of Florence of Worcester’s remarks. Of the few tangible pieces of evidence that
survive, the most impressive is his coinage, elegant silver pennies of good weight, bearing his crowned head in profile, struck in more than forty mints. The number of coins minted indicates the
urgent need he felt he was likely to have for ready money.
Trouble began in the late spring. On 24 April Halley’s comet made its appearance, causing wonder and consternation on both sides of the Channel. Shortly after, the exiled Tostig appeared
with a fleet, pillaged along the south coast from Wight to Sandwich, pressganging men as he went, and, scared off by King Harold’s arrival, continued up to Lindsey where he is said to have
burnt many villages and put many men to death. There he was encountered by Earls Edwin and Morcar, who beat him off with much loss. Most of his remaining men deserted, and he limped with his
remaining twelve small ships up to Scotland
where he was sheltered by King Malcolm, his sworn brother.
In the meantime, the main activity shifted to Normandy. William must have got early news of Harold’s coronation. William of Poitiers tells how he consulted the Norman barons who at first
discouraged an armed attack on England, thinking it beyond the resources of Normandy, but were brought by their confidence in his judgement to agree; how he set in hand the building of ships; how
he received the many foreign knights who came to join his standard, ‘attracted partly by the well-known liberality of the duke, but all fully confident of the justice of his
cause’.
lxxii
His diplomatic efforts, however, were no less intensive than his military preparations. According to his biographer,
The chronology of the duke’s acts during the earlier half of 1066 is somewhat confused, but their nature and purpose is clear, as is also the ultimate end to which
they were all so steadfastly directed. During this critical interval, Duke William of Normandy secured the support of his vassals. He fostered divisions among his rivals. He successfully
appealed to the public opinion of Europe. And he made the preparations essential for equipping the expedition which was, at last, to take him to victory overseas.
lxxiii
He was in a particularly favourable position in 1066. If Edward had died ten years earlier, it is possible that William would have felt it too risky to invade England. In 1056
he had just repelled the latest in a series of joint attacks by his overlord the King of France and the Count of Anjou; in 1060 both died. The former left a boy as his heir, and appointed as his
regent and guardian the Count of Flanders who
was William’s father-in-law; the latter had no direct heir and left Anjou to be contested between two nephews. By 1066
William had secured possession of Maine and the Vexin, which safeguarded his southern borders; he was overlord of Ponthieu on his eastern flank, Flanders under his father-in-law was unlikely to be
any threat to him and even the erratic Count of Brittany to his west, who took the opportunity of William’s venture to stake a claim to Normandy, died conveniently (reputedly by poison) while
preparations for the invasion were in progress. Neither the Breton count’s death nor William’s recent campaign there appears to have harmed his reputation among the Bretons, judging by
the number of them who fought at Hastings. He controlled all the Channel ports from the river Coesnon to the Flemish frontier. Within Normandy, he had formed a tight network of landed magnates, all
allied to him by kin or by interest, to the oldest of whom he could confide the oversight of his duchess (nominally his regent), his heir and his duchy during his absence. None of his predecessors
had ever felt himself as secure in Normandy as William did in the summer of 1066. It is a proof of his efficacy that he was able to undertake the English invasion without any attempt, internal or
external, being made on his power at home. But luck favoured him too. He could not have dictated the deaths of the French king and Martel; nor could he have foreseen the chance that had delivered
Harold into his hands, nor the rising that led to Tostig’s outlawing and caused a weak spot at the heart of England at the worst possible moment. Indeed, if Edward had died in 1063, not 1066,
William’s situation would have been much weaker; at that stage, Harold had not made his ill-fated journey, had sworn no oaths and the bond between the two Godwinson brothers had not been
broken. But Edward did not die in 1063; he died in 1066, at the moment most favourable to William’s ambition.
Duke William did not delay in appealing to public opinion in
Europe; according to William of Poitiers, he sent delegations to the Holy Roman Emperor and to the King of
Denmark; what answer he received from the empire is not known, probably at best neutral, but it appears that Sweyn Estrithson sent men to the support of his cousin Harold rather than to William.
But these were comparatively small fish. His most important appeal was to the Pope. His delegate to the Vatican is said to have been Gilbert, Archdeacon of Lisieux. No records of his appeal have
survived, but it is not difficult to imagine its grounds: his promise from the late king and Harold’s oath and perjury would have formed the central plank of it, but there would have been
more. And for an understanding of what he could offer and what the Pope could offer him, we must look at the situation in the Vatican in 1066.
The occupant of the papal chair at that time was Pope Alexander II, who had succeeded Nicholas II in 1061. The short reign of Nicholas had been marked especially by three policies: the energetic
pushing forward of the movement for ecclesiastical and monastic reform, the transfer of the responsibility for the election of the Pope to the College of Cardinals; and an intensification of the
Vatican’s relationship with the Normans of southern Italy. In all of these Nicholas had the vigorous support of Cardinal Hildebrand, himself to succeed Alexander II in 1073 under the name of
Gregory VII. Hildebrand’s power under his two predecessors was enormous; once he had succeeded, his ambitions went much further than earlier popes would have contemplated. His reign has been
described by the historian of Europe, H. A. L. Fisher:
With imperious courage Hildebrand conceived of the world as a single Christian polity governed by an
omnipotent and infallible Pope, a Pope bound by
no laws, by whom an offending prince might be driven from his throne, cut off from the sacraments of the church, and severed from the allegiance of his subjects. Believing that the time had now
come to reconstruct the militia of the Catholic church, he preached the doctrine of a celibate clergy under the undivided control of the Vicar of Christ. At one and the same time he was
prepared in the interests of an autonomous clerical profession to break up the family life of the German clergy and to sap the power of the German king. His claims were
exorbitant.
lxxiv
What Fisher does not mention is the third plank of the papal policy under Nicholas II, the link with the Normans of southern Italy. The infiltration of the southern states, then
a multiracial if turbulent mix of Greeks, Saracens and the indigenous inhabitants, had been started about 1000 by bands of younger sons of Norman families, hungry for land and wealth. They operated
at first as mercenaries, selling their swords to whichever ruler in the wartorn district paid best. The arrival in the 1030s of several younger sons of the minor Norman baron Tancred de Hauteville,
changed the situation; from then on, the Normans fought for themselves. By 1066 the de Hautevilles dominated southern Italy and Sicily, and their leader, Robert Guiscard, had in 1059 been invested
by the Vatican with the titles of Duke of Apulia and Calabria and King of Sicily, in return for oaths of fealty and promises of assistance to the Holy See. The methods by which he attained this
eminence are perhaps best indicated by Dante, who compares a sight in the eighth circle of hell in which countless shades lie horribly wounded with a battlefield on which Robert Guiscard had
fought. The alliance
between Hildebrand and the Italian Normans in the papal battles against other enemies, which may be compared to the policy of casting out devils through
the prince of devils (or indeed to Æthelred’s policy of hiring one lot of Vikings to cast out another), was to rebound upon Gregory VII in due course; in 1066 it still held good, to the
extent that Norman priorities mattered to the Vatican and could, when necessary, be enforced.
This was not only because Guiscard and his cohorts were in effect the protectors of the papacy. As part of the ecclesiastical reform movement, the campaign against the heathen that very shortly
afterwards was to lead to the first Crusade was already gathering strength and enthusiasm. Norman mercenaries who fought the Saracens in Spain did so as soldiers of Christ. In Italy, the Norman
campaigns against the Muslims in Sicily were conducted with papal blessing to ‘win back to the worship of the true God a land given over to infidelity’, according to William of
Malmesbury. The first Crusade was not to be preached until 1095, but the spirit that caused thousands of knights all over Europe to enlist in it was already widely disseminated. The prospect,
therefore, of a venture that combined the virtue of a religious mission to bring down a perjurer and usurper and to bring spiritual health to the Church in England with the promise of land and
booty was irresistible.