Battle of Hastings, The (6 page)

The most convincing argument against William’s visit in 1051, however, is William’s own situation in Normandy. He had succeeded his father as Duke of Normandy
in 1035 at the age of seven, on the death of Duke Robert who was returning from pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and had had a troubled minority, mainly through the resentment of legitimate adult kinsmen
who objected to the succession of a bastard child, partly through the ambition of those who aspired to dominance of the duchy through the guardianship of the child duke. Several of those originally
appointed his guardians met violent or suspicious deaths, and there was more than one attempt on his own life. During his minority, all order and prosperity in the duchy disintegrated. The idea
that William was in any way responsible for Edward’s return to the English throne, as his chroniclers claimed, can hardly be borne out by the situation in which the thirteen-year-old duke
found himself in 1041. In 1046 he was confronted by a rebellion raised by his cousin, Guy of Brionne, a grandson of Duke Richard II, who was strongly supported by many of the Norman nobility.
William was forced to flee and to ask for the help of his overlord, King Henry of France, under whose leadership he confronted and defeated the rebels at the battle of Val-ès-Dune in 1047.
It was his effective coming of age. Guy took refuge in his castle of Brionne, and it took William about three years to eject and banish him. In the meantime, King Henry demanded his
quid pro
quo
in the form of William’s help against another turbulent vassal, Geoffrey Martel, Count of Anjou. William provided the help, but found himself, in consequence, with another dangerous
enemy to the south of him in the form of Martel, who lost little time in challenging him. He was joined in this by King Henry who had clearly decided that William was, after all, even more
dangerous than Martel. From 1050 onwards, William was under constant
threat from both. If his biographer, D. C. Douglas, is correct, in 1051 he was occupied with the sieges of
Alençon and Domfront on his frontier, and also with marrying the Count of Flanders’ daughter, Matilda, a matter of much delicate negotiation since they were declared by the Church to
be within the prohibited degrees of affinity. His dealings with the defenders of Alençon and Domfront were less delicate; the former defied him by beating pelts over the battlements in
allusion to his birth as the bastard of a tanner’s daughter. William retaliated by chopping off their hands and feet when the castle eventually capitulated. The sieges of Alençon and
Domfront are placed by Douglas in the autumn and winter of 1051, precisely the time at which the visit to England would have taken place.
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William
must also have been aware that he was likely in the near future to face another family rebellion closer to home from his uncle, the Count of Arques; the rebellion eventually broke out in 1052 or
1053, supported by the King of France and by a powerful coalition of neighbouring princes. It has been suggested that William’s English ambitions and the possibility of a shift in the balance
of power in France if he won the English throne had alarmed other northern French rulers. The Count of Arques’ rebellion was crushed and Arques himself exiled for life. From that date,
however, until Martel and the king both died in 1060, William was under constant attack from both of them. The idea that in the midst of these threats to his rule, actual or threatened, William
would have contemplated leaving his duchy undefended for long enough to pay a visit to his cousin in England, even with the possibility that he might receive the promise of a throne in the course
of it, is quite simply incredible. There was no Channel tunnel in the mid-eleventh century; if William had come to England in late 1051, he ran the risk of being trapped there by contrary winds for
as long as he was prevented
in 1066 from launching his invasion fleet. He could not be sure of getting home in a hurry if Martel or the French king, both constantly on the
lookout for an opportunity to attack, broke his borders. In 1051 Edward, though by contemporary standards an elderly man, was in good health. He hunted regularly and led an active life. There was
no imminent likelihood of his death. William, constantly in the battlefield, was much more at risk. Never a man to act without careful consideration, he would have been insane to risk his bird in
the hand (Normandy) for the possibility of a bird in the bush (England) at this particular juncture. Promises, after all, like piecrusts, are made to be broken. Edward can hardly have been pleased
by William’s marriage to the daughter of a man whom he regarded as an enemy and hostile to England; and his action in sending into Hungary so shortly afterwards to urge the return of Edward
the Exile indicates clearly that, whether or not he had made any promises to William in the past, he was prepared to break them in the interests of a peaceful succession that would be acceptable to
his councillors.

There is another way in which a promise to William might have been conveyed. In 1051 Robert of Jumièges succeeded Eadsige as Archbishop of Canterbury and set off for Rome to collect his
pallium from the Pope. The pallium, a narrow band of white lamb’s wool, was bestowed on metropolitans and primates by the Holy See and was the symbol of the power delegated to them by the
Pope. (In the Middle Ages, popes made a handsome income from the fees they charged recipients for it.) It has been suggested that Robert travelled south via Normandy, perhaps with a verbal message
from Edward to William, and according to William of Jumièges this was what happened. It is even possible that he might have ventriloquized one, in a spirit of wishful thinking. However, it
is relevant to note that there is absolutely
no evidence whatsoever on the English side of any party supporting a Norman successor, although the question of the succession
must have been becoming more urgent every year. The first indication of any action in the matter is the move to repatriate Edward the Exile.

The final claimant to the throne was, of course, Harold Godwinson. It is fairly clear that William had set his sights on the English crown quite early in his career; it is less certain when
Harold realized that he could be a contender, possibly not until after the death of Edward the Exile, since he appears to have supported and indeed negotiated for his return to England. He may not
even have thought of it then. He might well have thought that he could re-enact the part played by the hero of the Old English epic poem
Beowulf
who, after the death of his lord, King
Hygelac, acted as guardian to Hygelac’s youthful son Heardred until he came of age. As guardian to Edgar during his minority, his own position would be assured and he would be well placed to
defend the kingdom and, indeed, the interests of the Godwin family. At some time, however, the idea of his own succession must have occurred to him and to others. In terms of blood lineage, he had,
of course, no possible claim, and never pretended to any. None the less, even in these terms, his claim was better than William’s. William was the great-nephew of a woman who had married a
reigning king; Harold was the brother of a woman who had married a reigning king. Neither of them had a drop of English royal blood. It has been suggested that Harold might have made a claim
through his Danish blood, because his mother was a kinswoman of Cnut; but this claim would depend on the rather doubtful proposition that Edward had succeeded to the English throne as half-brother
of Harthacnut who had brought him back from exile, not as son of Æthelred. Even if this were to be allowed,
his cousin, Sweyn Estrithson, had a far more direct claim
through the Danish line. Apart from blood lineage, Harold had the advantage of having been born in wedlock. The conditions for kingship had been set out at an ecclesiastical synod held in England
in the presence of papal legates in 786, and specified that ‘Kings are to be lawfully chosen by the priests and elders of the people, and are not to be those begotten in adultery or
incest’. These conditions had not always been observed in the past; there had, for example, been considerable doubt over the legality of Edward the Elder’s marriage to his first wife,
Ecgwynn, and thus over the legitimacy of Athelstan, but when such doubts were ignored, it was usually for good reasons.

Harold’s chief claim, however, was not of blood or legitimacy; it was that he was ‘lawfully chosen’. In a situation in which the only remaining member of the West Saxon blood
line was a boy, and the kingdom faced the likelihood of invasion as in the days of Alfred and his immediate successors, the elders of the people looked for a candidate who had both the
administrative ability and the military experience to defend the country. In 1066 the elders of the people, personified by the Witan, faced with the prospect of invasion on two fronts, had urgent
need to find such a candidate. Harold qualified on both counts. He had to all intents and purposes ruled England efficiently as
subregulus
or under-king for many years (after the death of
Gruffydd following Harold’s Welsh campaign, the Welsh swore fealty and obedience jointly to Edward and Harold); and he was beyond question the most experienced and able military commander in
the country. He also appears to have been genuinely popular. The Waltham chronicler (admittedly probably as biased in one direction as William of Poitiers was in the other, but writing after the
conquest when Harold had already been defeated and praise of him was
not encouraged) records that he was elected king by unanimous consent ‘for there was no one in the
land more knowledgeable, more vigorous in arms, wiser in the laws of the land or more highly regarded for his prowess of every kind.’
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The
more unbiased Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (C and D) recorded his election in terms that are not those in which one describes a usurper, though these, like the Waltham Chronicle, must have been written
after Hastings:

In the context of the times, and in a situation where the royal line had failed, his succession in England was no more irregular than that of Hugh Capet to the throne of France
on the collapse of the Carolingian monarchy some years earlier. Hugh Capet was crowned on the recommendation of Archbishop Adalbéron:

Harold was already virtual King of England, to much the same extent that Hugh Capet had been virtual King of France in 987. William, who received news regularly from England,
would have
been aware for some time that Harold was likely to pose an obstacle to his ambition. The question of how to circumvent that obstacle must have exercised him
greatly. He could hardly have hoped for the accident that delivered Harold into his hands.

The short story of the accident (which is only recorded in the Norman sources, though its essence has not been seriously challenged) was that Harold crossed the Channel, probably but not
certainly in 1064, for an unknown reason. It has been suggested
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that the trip took place in late 1065, immediately after the exile of Tostig, on the
grounds that William of Poitiers says that at this stage the king was very near death. Setting aside William of Poitiers’ doubtful veracity, Harold would have been extremely unlikely either
to go on a pleasure trip or to make a diplomatic visit to Normandy to promise the crown to William when there had just been a major insurrection in England, as in 1065, and the king was very near
death, especially if, as is assumed, he had designs on the crown himself by this time. The most reliable evidence indicates that Edward’s final illness began as a result of the exile of
Tostig in 1065; after that, Harold would have been as mad to leave England as William would have been to leave Normandy in 1051, even if there had, in practical terms, been time to fit such a visit
in between Tostig’s exile at the beginning of November 1065 and the king’s death on 5 January 1066. 1064, when he vanishes temporarily from the English chronicles altogether, is a much
more likely date.

At all events, by storm or miscalculation, he was cast up on the coast of Ponthieu. The inhabitants of Ponthieu were well known as wreckers; this is confirmed even by William of Poitiers. There
were many stories that lights were frequently shown at dangerous points of the coast to mislead sailors, since ships that were wrecked in their territory were legal prey and the sailors could be
imprisoned or
tortured for vast sums in ransom. Whether by storm or misleading lights, Harold’s ship foundered, and he and his companions were captured; he might have
been able to extricate himself by payment of a ransom if one of his captors had not recognized him and betrayed him to the Count of Ponthieu, who immediately realized that in him he had a prize far
out of the common and incarcerated him and his men in a dungeon. Someone (possibly one of Harold’s men, he is depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry as moustached, the infallible sign of an
Englishman) went to the neighbouring duchy of Normandy and told the duke, who was the Count of Ponthieu’s overlord, what had happened. William immediately ordered Guy of Ponthieu to hand
Harold and his men over to him. He was rewarded by William with cash and land. Harold remained in Normandy for some time, was treated with honour by the duke, campaigned with him in Brittany
(where, with great heroism, he rescued two of William’s soldiers from the quicksands), and left again for England after swearing an oath on the bones of the saints that he would support
William’s claim to the English throne after Edward’s death. This, at least, is the version of the Norman chroniclers and of the Bayeux Tapestry.