The Battle of Hastings
Page 11
There was a third major difference between English and Norman warfare, but its significance is less vital so far as Hastings is concerned. The Normans built and used fortifications which we call castles, the English on the whole did not. There were fortifications in England, but their nature was different. From Alfred onwards there had developed a network of over thirty fortified strongholds, virtually towns – the burhs. Some of these were fortified with stone walls, as Towcester, while some towns already possessing walls had them repaired.54 But these were on a national basis, and were large enough to contain urban populations and offer shelter to those living in the neighbourhood. Nevertheless, it may be significant that our word for ‘castle’ derives from the word the English used for their own fortifications.55
There was at least one private fortification, found at Goltho in Lincolnshire, which suggests that the English were moving along the same sort of path as the Normans. It has been called ‘a pre-Conquest castle’, and its function like that of a castle was as a ‘defended residence’, though Goltho’s defences were not as massive as those of a typical castle, and at present it is a unique site. When it did become a castle in about 1080, it was a particularly small one, but was still more strongly defended than its English predecessor.56
The continentals brought to England under Edward the Confessor had, it is true, built a handful of such buildings, including Pentecost’s Castle and Robert’s Castle, so the English were not entirely unfamiliar with this kind of fortification. It is interesting to find Harold Godwinson making earthwork defences with a ditch around Hereford in 1055. Given time and without the Conquest, castles would almost certainly have developed in England, but the rate would have been slower.57
Equally truly there do not seem to have been so many castles in Normandy, nor were they built so early, as was once believed. Normandy was certainly not the base or centre of castle-building, and seems to have adopted the practice which grew up probably first in the Loire region. In England there were no more than half a dozen castles at the most before the Norman Conquest.
In Normandy, castles were at this time mostly what we might call citadels, fortifications built within towns. But there were some separate structures and a few at least were earthwork and timber (i.e. motte and bailey). There is mention of large ditches cut to defend both Arques and Domfront. When the Conqueror besieged Brionne for three years from 1047, he constructed earthwork fortifications on the banks of the River Risle; similarly at the siege of his uncle’s new castle at Arques, William built a mound for the protection of his own men, and again no less than four mounds at Domfront. At both Domfront and Alençon, previous dukes had permitted the erection or rebuilding of castles.58 There were pre-1066 towers at Ivry and Brionne, as well as ‘The Tower’ at Rouen. J. Yver believed that the length of some sieges meant that the castles concerned were probably constructed of stone.
Breton castles are shown in the Bayeux Tapestry’s account of the Conqueror’s campaign there probably in 1064: at Dol, Dinan and Rennes. The Tapestry also shows the castle of Bishop Odo, the Conqueror’s half-brother, at Bayeux; and at Beaurain where Harold was held prisoner; and probably William’s own fortification at Rouen. There is reference to the Conqueror building a new castle at St-James-de-Beuvron. The use of castles may seem less relevant to Hastings than the possession of archers and cavalry, but it is not entirely without significance, when one considers how William used Pevensey and constructed a castle at Hastings in the period immediately preceding the great battle, and indeed how the Conquest was carried through in the years after Hastings.59 Castles of course developed quickly in England after the Conquest partly because the Norman lords were ruling a hostile land and needed to protect themselves.
Notes
1. Carmen, eds Morton and Muntz, p. 29. This work has been the subject of much debate over its dating: R.H.C. Davis, ‘The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio’, EHR, xciii, 1978, pp. 241–61, proposing a later date than had previously been accepted; and historians taking sides over the issue since. In the present writer’s view Davis was probably correct to consider there was a problem, and the work may date from about 1100. It would still have interest as a source on armies of the eleventh century.
2. John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk, p. 480.
3. R.P. Abels, Lordship and Military Obligation in Anglo-Saxon England, London, 1988, is an excellent recent work which reinforces this modern trend in thinking about the composition of English forces. See e.g. p. 37: the army was ‘aristocratic in its basis’; also pp. 32, 160, 168, 175. The key work on housecarls is N. Hooper, ‘The housecarls in England in the eleventh century’, ANS, vii, 1985, pp. 161–76, which should be taken with the additional thoughts in N. Hooper, ‘Military developments in the reign of Cnut’ in A. Humble (ed.), The Reign of Cnut, London, 1994, pp. 89–100.
4. S. Pollington, The English Warrior from Earliest Times to 1066, Hockwold-cum-Wilton, 1996, p. 144: the Benty Grange helmet.
5. Pollington, English Warrior, p. 145: the Coppergate helmet.
6. William of Jumièges, ed. van Houts, ii, p. 24.
7. William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, p. 185.
8. William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, p. 169. The author, like many others, has been allowed to don a hauberk made by the historian of arms and armour, Ian Peirce.
9. Bayeux Tapestry, pl. 69; William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, p. 183.
10. Pollington, English Warrior, p. 136.
11. William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, p. 207.
12. Pollington, English Warrior, pp. 83, 97, 125, 244. The poem about Maldon is useful, but was probably written about thirty years after the event.
13. M. Strickland, paper to Battle Conference, to be published in ANS, xix. See N. Higham, The Kingdom of Northumbria, Stroud, 1993.
14. John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk, p. 486.
15. Pollington, English Warrior, p. 127.
16. Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. T. Arnold, RS no. 74, London, 1965, p. 200.
17. J. Bradbury, The Medieval Archer, Woodbridge, 1985, pp. 22–40.
18. Anna Comnena, The Alexiad, Harmondsworth, 1969, pp. 163–5, 416.
19. Bayeux Tapestry, pl. 40–4; Carmen, eds Morton and Muntz, p. 8.
20. Anna Comnena, pp. 56–7; R. Glover, ‘English warfare in 1066’, EHR, xvii, 1952, pp. 1–18, p. 14.
21. See Hooper, ‘Military developments’.
22. Abels, Lordship, pp. 115: ‘caballum in exercitu’; 110. John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk, pp. 389, 934: ‘equestri exercitu non modico’.
23. Abels, Lordship, p. 13.
24. Abels, Lordship, p. 45; A. Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest, Woodbridge, 1995, pp. 191–2.
25. Abels, Lordship, p. 146.
26. Carmen, eds Morton and Muntz, p. 17.
27. William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, p. 37.
28. Whitelock et al. (eds), Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, p. 142.
29. Bayeux Tapestry, pl. 36–9; William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, p. 151.
30. John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk, pp. 460–2.
31. Barlow (ed.), Vita, p. 20.
32. John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk, p. 530.
33. Pollington, English Warrior, p. 151.
34. John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk, p. 356; Pollington, English Warrior, pp. 236, 242; 244, ll. 267–71; ‘bogan waeron bysige’.
35. Bradbury, Medieval Archer, pp. 17–22; I. Gollancz (ed.), The Exeter Book, 2 vols, London, 1895, 1934, ii, p. 112, no. 23: ‘Agof is min noma’; Aldhelm, Prose Works, eds M. Lapidge and M. Herren, Cambridge, 1979, p. 163; Aldhelm, Opera, ed. R. Ehwald, MGH Auctorum Antiquissimorum, xv, Berlin, 1919, p. 230.
36. Snorri Sturlusson, King Harald’s Saga, eds M. Magnusson and H. Palsson, Harmondsworth, 1966, p. 152.
37. Pollington, English Warrior, p. 155; Whitelock et al. (eds), Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, p. 145.
38. Carmen, (eds) Monroe and Muntz, p. 25.
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39. Pollington, English Warrior, p. 152.
40. John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk, p. 481: ‘cum multo equitatu’.
41. John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk, p. 592: ‘equitatu’, ‘equestri … exercitu’; a saying quoted by Pollington, English Warrior, p. 188: ‘eorl sceal on eos boge’; Williams, Norman Conquest, pp. 196–7.
42. Pollington, English Warrior, pp. 236, 242, 244; Carmen, eds Morton and Muntz, p. 25; John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk, p. 487; William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, p. 187, he also has the English abandoning the use of horses at this point.
43. Whitelock et al. (eds), Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, p. 130; John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk, p. 576.
44. T. Cain. seminar paper at Institute of Historical Research, 1997, makes several interesting points about the early English use of cavalry at least in the north, as illustrated on northern carvings, though the evidence is rather of riding than fighting on horseback. I am grateful to Tom for passing me a copy of this paper more recently, entitled ‘A hoary old question reconsidered: a case for Anglo-Saxon cavalry’.
45. Bayeux Tapestry, pl. 67; Abels, Lordship, p. 26; one notes that ‘boys’ (pueri) also appear in English households.
46. William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, p. 109.
47. William of Jumièges, ed. van Houts, p. 120: ‘impetus’ and ‘concursu’ suggest charges, but is only cavalry by inference.
48. Wace, ed. Holden, ii, pp. 39–41, ll. 4091–156.
49. John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk, p. 576: ‘contra morem in equis pugnare’.
50. William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, p. 199.
51. William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, p. 13.
52. William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, pp. 25, 81–3.
53. William of Jumièges, ed. van Houts, p. 104; Giffard may be the ‘Gilfardus’ in Carmen, eds Morton and Muntz, p. 34, l. 539.
54. John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk, p. 376, on Towcester, and Colchester which was repaired by Edward the Elder, who ‘restored the wall’.
55. John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk, e.g. about 885, p. 318, calls the fortification built against Rochester in the siege, therefore at least performing the function of a siege castle, a ‘castellum’; and p. 341 seems to distinguish smaller fortifications as ‘castella’ from towns.
56. Abels, Lordship, p. 92; G. Beresford, ‘Goltho Manor, Lincolnshire: the buildings and their surrounding defences c.850–1150’, ANS, iv, 1981, pp. 13–36, pp. 18, 31, 34.
57. Whitelock et al. (eds), Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 1052, p. 125; 1055, p. 131.
58. William of Jumièges, ed. van Houts, pp. 102, 122, 124; William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, pp. 19, 37, 43, 55.
59. J. Yver, ‘Les châteux forts en Normandie jusqu’au milieu du XIIe siècle’, Bulletin de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie, liii, 1955–6, pp. 28–115, pp. 47, 49; William of Jumièges, ed. van Houts, p. 208; William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville, p. 106.
FIVE
THE YEAR 1066
By 1065 Edward the Confessor was ageing: ‘with locks of snowy white he blooms’, but he was still seemingly in good health.1 The question of the succession was as open as ever. Probably more as a political counter than from any great favour for one or the other, Edward had at various times given hope of the succession to William, duke of Normandy, and Harold Godwinson, earl of Wessex. One can make this interpretation since both were able apparently with confidence to believe they were Edward’s choice, and yet the old king had never made any formal or public declaration of his intentions.
If he favoured anyone it was probably for a time his relative Edward the Exile, son of Edmund Ironside and grandson of Aethelred II, whom he had sought out in Hungary and invited to England. That Edward the Exile was brought to England after the Confessor’s promise to William seems fairly convincing proof that if the king ever had favoured the succession going to William, he had changed his mind by the late 1050s. It is true that William was his first cousin once removed, which marauded as a claim after the Conquest, but in truth gave faint right. Even fainter was Harold’s claim, as the king’s brother-in-law, no right by heredity at all. Neither William nor Harold, nor for that matter Harold Hardrada in Norway, had any close claim to the English throne by descent, so that Edward the Exile seemed the most likely choice to continue the line of old Wessex kings. His only real rival, in terms of relationship, was Ralph, earl of Hereford, who was Edward the Confessor’s nephew. Ralph’s parents were Edward’s sister Godifu and the count of Mantes. He too had been shown favour by the Confessor, who had brought him to England after his accession, and made him an earl. But Earl Ralph died in 1057.
The relatives of Edward the Confessor.
Edward the Exile had three children including a son, Edgar the Aetheling, who had come to England with him. But, as we have seen, Edward the Exile died on arriving in England, also in 1057, and with him probably died any clear intentions of the Confessor for the future of his throne. With the deaths of his two closest relatives, Edward probably accepted Harold Godwinson as the powerful claimant nearest to the throne, but it is unlikely that he felt any great enthusiasm that his crown should go to a commoner who was the son of his old rival, Earl Godwin. There were some who, now that the father was dead, did favour Edgar the Aetheling for the throne, perhaps initially this even included members of the Godwin family and Harold himself.2
But Edward the Confessor, no doubt contemplating difficult times ahead and the tender years of his relative, does not seem to have given Edgar the Aetheling his support. Many others were concerned that Edgar was simply too young to cope with the problems which loomed for the successor; he was only about five when his father died. Even by 1066 he was only fifteen, had not received an earldom or been given estates of great value, and so had no significant following. Edgar’s claims remained important, and would be raised again, but he played only a small part in the events of 1066. Only the strongest man was likely to succeed in the circumstances.
On Christmas Eve 1065 Edward the Confessor was seriously ill, perhaps having suffered a stroke. His piety overcame his weakness, ‘the holy man disguised his sickness’, and he was still able to come to table in his robes on Christmas Day, though he had no appetite, and go on to attend a Christian service.3 The effort proved too much for him, and on the following day he had to stay in bed. He was not well enough on 28 December to get to another event which he must have greatly desired to attend, the consecration of the great new church at Westminster. Queen Edith had to stand in for him.
After Christmas, the Confessor gradually sank into a coma. However, after two days he recovered consciousness sufficiently to retail a rather garbled vision which he had experienced. He told of a dream about two monks he had once known in Normandy, both long dead. They gave him a message from God, criticising the heads of the Church in England, and promising that the kingdom within a year would go to the hands of an enemy: ‘devils shall come through all this land with fire and sword and the havoc of war’. This certainly smacks of a tale told with hindsight. There followed a strange forecast relating to a green tree cut in half.4 This was probably no more intelligible to his hearers than it is to us. His wife went on compassionately warming the old man’s feet in her lap.
This may have given rise to the suggestion that Edward’s mind was disordered. Those at the bedside whispered together about the king’s words. They included Harold Godwinson, Robert fitz Wimarc and Archbishop Stigand. The latter, no doubt irritated by the visionary reference to failings among those at the head of the English Church, suggested that ‘the king was broken with disease and knew not what he said’.
But the deathbed wishes seem utterly sane and sensible. As those close to him wept at his condition, he made his last requests. He praised Queen Edith, who was there beside him, for the zealous solicitude of her service: ‘she has served me devotedly, and has always stood close by my side like a beloved daughter’. He asked Ha
rold to give protection to Edith: ‘do not take away any honour that I have granted her’, suggesting that he was aware of the bad feeling which had grown up between brother and sister over their brother’s fall.5
The king also asked Harold to protect foreigners in England. This implies that he feared the hostility of Harold and others to his continental friends and courtiers. It is also clear that on his deathbed he saw Harold as his likely successor, who might be able to carry out his last wishes. It is impossible to know Harold’s mind, but one interpretation that would fit most of the details we are given by the sources is that Harold in 1064 still had not seen himself as becoming king. He and his family had apparently been happy to favour Edward the Exile until his death. It seems likely that Harold went to Normandy freely, and there is no evidence that he was forced into making oaths to William. He was not the duke’s prisoner, as is often said. He went with the duke on campaign and was knighted by him. In other words, it seems possible that it was only after 1064 that Harold began to consider taking the throne.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states that Edward had ‘entrusted the realm’, had ‘granted’ the kingdom to Harold, while the Vita records that he commended ‘all the kingdom to his protection’. Even the French chronicler William of Poitiers spoke of Harold ‘raised to the throne by Edward’s grant on his deathbed’. Wace, with his usual vivid embroidering, has Harold demanding ‘Consent now that I shall be king’, to which Edward replies, ‘Thou shalt have it, but I know full well that it will cost thee thy life’. The deathbed scene is vividly portrayed on the Bayeux Tapestry, with the unshaven archbishop in attendance on the dying king. Wace has the Confessor going on to mutter: let the English decide to make Harold or William king as they please. But there seems little doubt that at the end Edward was prepared to name Harold as his successor.6