by Jim Bradbury
A printed copy was published in 1730 by Montfaucon, the drawings done by A. Benoît. The original was nearly lost during the French Revolution, when it had to be rescued from being used to cover a wagon. It was taken to Paris, and returned for exhibition at the Hôtel de Ville in Bayeux in 1812. It is known that repairs were done in 1842, which can be recognised from the use of different colours in the wool, and restoration marks on the linen. Modern examination has included such details as stitch marks which suggest how the original looked.
Then there are a number of sources to which we choose to give a secondary place, either because there is some question mark over their reliability and/or because they are late in time compared to the sources already mentioned. The most interesting of this group is the Carmen de Hastingae Proelio (The Song of the Battle of Hastings).7 This is a long poem about the battle. It is very detailed and many historians have considered it a prime source, and some still do. To a degree the jury is still out on the Carmen, though all would agree it has some value. The manuscript was rediscovered in 1826 by G.H. Pertz. There was no title on the manuscript, indeed its subject matter is really ‘The Norman Conquest’ rather than simply the battle. It was written by an educated person, with plenty of biblical and classical references. It has been thought that this was a work mentioned in the twelfth century by Orderic Vitalis, a poem about the Battle of Hastings by Guy, Bishop of Amiens. This being so, it would be an early source, earlier than William of Poitiers. But the surviving manuscripts, one main and one tributary, which come from Trier, have been dated to about AD 1100 from the handwriting. If written by Guy, then it was by a respected and important noble, who came to England with the Conqueror’s wife a couple of years after Hastings. The poem retains a mysterious dedication with initial and not names: ‘L … W … salutat’ – which could be either L greets W, or W greets L. Those who name Guy as the author fill in ‘Lanfrancum Wido salutat’ (Guy greets Lanfranc (Archbishop of Canterbury, 1070-89)).
But R.H.C. Davis made a serious attack on the attribution of the work to Bishop Guy. In an article, in English Historical Review, he suggested that too much of the poem is of a style and content that would fit with a later date. The present author found that argument convincing and still does; others have been less sure. Davis argued that the poem is not as hostile to Harold as Orderic had suggested Guy was. He thought that the Carmen borrowed from William of Poitiers, though others believe it is the other way round. The most convincing argument is that the Carmen introduces legendary and incredible material which could only be later. This includes the story of Taillefer, the giant who opens the conflict. He appears in none of the accredited early sources, and the tale has the touch of legend about it. Then there is the killing of Harold, by four men, identified as Duke William, Eustace of Boulogne, Hugh, the heir to Ponthieu, and Walter Giffard. The first, presumably William, cleaved through Harold’s breast, the second smote off his head, the third pierced his belly with a lance and the fourth cut off his thigh and carried away the leg. If this were true it is not credible that the main Norman sources would have ignored the fact that William actually participated in the killing of Harold. We can agree with Davis that this, and other examples he quotes, is ‘literary embellishment’. One possibility, though probably beyond proof, is that the Carmen is a work of about 1100 which is either based on the poem by Guy of Amiens or is an embellishment of it. This would leave it with importance, but the need for care must be stressed. It seems that as our knowledge stands at present it would be unwise to give the Carmen the credence that we give to William of Poitiers, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, or the Bayeux Tapestry.
Another difficult work to assess, though its author and date are known, is the Roman de Rou by Wace.8 This is undoubtedly a late work, as Wace was not born until about 1100. He was born in the Channel Islands, though the handwriting for his native island could be interpreted as either Jersey or Guernsey, we are not sure which. He at least tells us the source of his information: people he spoke to who had witnessed the events. He said, ‘I talk to rich men who have rents and money, it is for them that the book is made.’ He described himself as a ‘vaslet’ or varlet, which it is thought might mean that, like William of Poitiers, he had some knightly training in his youth. A recent article shows that he had a good knowledge of warfare, which gives his work value for our purposes. He was educated at Caen in Normandy, and in the French realm, later returning to Caen. He was patronised by Henry II, who gave him a prebend at Bayeux cathedral. He held this post for nineteen years, so it is nearly certain that he was familiar with the Tapestry. He was a prolific writer, and his works included verse romances, one called the Roman de Brut and another the Roman de Rou. Rou is a version of the name Rollo or Rolf, the Viking leader who became the first ruler of the new Normandy, so the work was a kind of verse history of the dukes. He probably wrote it in the second half of the twelfth century, and died in 1184. The problem with the Roman de Rou, apart from its latish date, is that it is a romance. Wace was a literary writer, he was looking for effect, he liked a good story and was not always fussy about accuracy or borrowing from one situation to enliven another. He is the sort of medieval author who is most difficult for historians to use: too useful and too lively to ignore, but too risky to trust. The use of Wace in this book is to allow passages about which there is no serious concern, but to have great caution with any lines which have the feel of legend or invention about them. As said before, history is not an exact science.
Finally, we need to consider a group of twelfth-century historians who covered the history of the battle. By this time, the Norman Conquest was well established, and its significant consequences were apparent. This coloured views of events, and William’s position is usually seen as the correct one: the winner is always right in history, as some would say. We do not have time or space to look at all the later sources which deal with Hastings, so this is simply a selection of those which seem the most useful or important. It should be said that, because of their dating, they must generally be given second place behind the earlier sources when trying to assess their relative significance. But often they will confirm what appears in the earlier sources; usually, of course, they are based on one or more of them, and sometimes on sources which are lost – and this will give an added value.
William of Malmesbury was a major twelfth-century English historian. His De Gestis Regum Anglorum (Deeds of the Kings of the English) includes material on the period of the Conquest.9 William was a Benedictine monk, but he was unusual in that he explains to us something of his methods, telling us that he travelled about in search of documents. He was also able to read Old English as well as French and Latin. He wrote a vast number of works, and was a stylish and lively historian. He was probably born in the last decade of the eleventh century, and is thought to be of mixed Norman and English parentage. He says he collected historical information at his own expense, which suggests that his family was fairly wealthy. He became librarian at Malmesbury, and perhaps precentor. William is selected because he was an outstanding writer rather than because he gives especially important information.
Orderic Vitalis, like William of Malmesbury, was a product of the Conquest, son of a Norman priest and an English mother. He was born at Atcham near Shrewsbury in 1075. His father may have been in the household of Robert of Montgomery. Orderic received some local education and was then sent as a boy of ten to train to be a monk in the Norman house of St-Evroult. There he stayed for the rest of his life, until 1141 or 1142. An early work consisted of his additions to the chronicle of William of Jumièges. He then spent some thirty years working on his great opus, the Ecclesiastical History, which was a long and rambling work, whose intention and structure changed with the years. As a result, it is full of the sort of titbits which make history fun, tales of people he knew or heard about, the occasional scandal.10 Orderic comes across in his writing as a likeable man who enjoyed life, and his work has a human touch which some medieval chronicles lack. We have Orde
ric’s work in his own beautifully neat script. His English background gives his work interest from its attitude. He is the only one to give us the name for the battle location as Senlac, and he has some criticisms of the Conqueror’s actions.
A third English historian of note is Henry of Huntingdon.11 He was Archdeacon in Huntingdon, a secular cleric rather than a monk, a father of children as well as the son of a priest, a man of the world. He was well travelled and visited Bec in Normandy, and Rome. He had a historian’s, almost a journalist’s nose for information, and wrote ‘there is nothing in this world more exciting than accurately to investigate and trace out the course of worldly affairs’. He tells us that he used ‘compilations of the chronicles preserved in ancient libraries’. His Historia Anglorum is a great wide-ranging history of the English. His outlook has a strong East Anglian slant. He was born in about 1080, began writing in about 1133 and, after adding new work to his original effort, brought it down to 1154. It was a popular work of its day with many known copies. One of his virtues was that he could read Old English, and used the documents to which he had access. Henry’s work is now available in one of the first-rate Oxford editions, with Latin alongside an English translation.
Finally, because it has a special significance, we must consider the value of the Chronicle of Battle Abbey.12 This too is now in an excellent modern Oxford edition. The chronicle is undoubtedly late in date, after 1155, but it was written in the abbey built on the site of the battle - so it tells us – its very name depending upon the event. It was written by a monk with a great interest in the law. The trouble is that his modern editor has caught him out. He used documents forged in the abbey to make a case, and there is little doubt that some of his claims are false. The difficulty is to know if others are true. He was certainly trying to boost the importance of his abbey. The chronicle consists of two separate texts, of which the first is an account of the Norman Conquest, and both mention the abbey’s foundation. The main value of the chronicle is its local knowledge. It gives detail not known elsewhere: the name of Hedgland on Telham Hill, and the story of the Malfosse. The modern editor of the chronicle has shown the problems over this location, and we shall look at them in the following chapter. The even more basic problem is that if this chronicler is unreliable, can we trust his story of the abbey’s foundation on the spot where Harold was killed? This also we shall return to. The uncertainty over the Carmen is added to by the fact that there are incidents which only appear, other than in the Carmen, in Wace and the Battle chronicle. We seem to be looking at three sources which are all beginning to enlarge on original facts with dubious tales.
There are numerous other sources, but we must call a halt. We conclude that William of Poitiers is our primary source of information, that he is followed by several valuable early works in William of Jumièges, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and the Bayeux Tapestry. All the other sources, to some extent, depend upon these early versions. The only other account which may be early and original is the Carmen, but our decision is to relegate this to the second division of sources. Here it joins forces with later and less trustworthy accounts, depending either upon hearsay, third-hand material or invention. The difficulty is that these include some of the most detailed works and some of the most lively, Wace and the Carmen; and some by the best historical writers, William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon and Orderic Vitalis. We must pick our way between their accounts. In the end, our objective is the truth. We cannot be certain we find it, but we must be certain that our attempt is honest. Such is the historian’s task, every historian’s task, from professorial academic to humble student.
Notes
1. A useful general guide is A. Gransden, Historical Writing in England c. 550 to c. 1307, London, 1974.
2. William of Poitiers, ed. Foreville. Translations of part of the work with the battle may be found in D.C. Douglas and G.W. Greenaway (eds), English Historical Documents, ii, 1042–1189, 2nd edn, London, 1981; and Brown (ed.), The Norman Conquest, London, 1984 – both of these have a good selection of sources of the Conquest.
3. William of Jumièges, ed. van Houts.
4. Whitelock et al. (eds), Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The ‘Collaborative Edition’ (eds D. Dumville and S. Keynes) is at present incomplete, but will become the foremost academic edition of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle with the text in Old English. Of the volumes published to date, vol. vi (ed. G.P. Cubbins) of the D manuscript is the most valuable for events of the Conquest.
5. John of Worcester, eds Darlington and McGurk.
6. See Bayeux Tapestry which has excellent colour photos. See also F.M. Stenton (ed.), The Bayeux Tapestry, 2nd edn, London, 1965; Thorpe (ed.), The Bayeux Tapestry, which also has a translation of part of William of Poitiers. N.P. Brooks and H.E. Walker, ‘The authority and interpretation of the Bayeux Tapestry’, ANS, iii, 1980, pp. 1–21.
7. Carmen, eds Morton and Muntz; Davis, ‘Carmen’, pp. 241–61.
8. Wace, ed. Holden; Wace, ed. Taylor; Bennett, ‘Wace and warfare’.
9. William of Malmesbury, De Gestis Regum Anglorum, ed. W. Stubbs, RS no. 90, 2 vols, London, 1887–9; William of Malmesbury, ed. Giles.
10. Orderic Vitalis, ed. Chibnall; M. Chibnall, The World of Orderic Vitalis, Oxford, 1984.
11. Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. D. Greenway, Oxford, 1996; Henry of Huntingdon, ed. Arnold; Henry of Huntingdon, Chronicle, ed. T. Forester, London, 1853; N.F. Partner, Serious Entertainments, Chicago, 1977.
12. E. Searle (ed.), The Chronicle of Battle Abbey, Oxford, 1980.
SEVEN
THE BATTLE
When William jumped on to the beach at Pevensey, he stumbled forwards. Some were ready to see this as a bad omen. William of Malmesbury’s version of the incident was that: ‘as he disembarked he slipped down, but turned the accident to his advantage; a soldier who stood near calling out to him, “You hold England, my lord, its future king.”’1 Wace, whatever his faults, knew something of the sea, and described or perhaps rather imagined the landing, seeing the Norman invaders
Sally forth and unload the ships,
Cast the anchors and haul the ropes,
Bear out shields and saddles,
Lead out the warhorses and palfreys.
The archers disembarked,
The first to set foot on land.2
The landing had been easier than any invader could have expected. Harold is generally seen as a good commander, and one knows of the problems he faced keeping his force in the field, and having to deal with Hardrada. Even so, the complete lack of any opposition to William speaks of some neglect. It suggests that Harold was not as well informed as William, and believed that William would not come so late in the year.
But William must have felt very satisfied with the success of the crossing. The first major obstacle had been overcome. The period that now followed was for him a game of nerves. The two leaders pursued very clear policies in the short campaign. Harold soon decided to act as quickly as possible, and made all his efforts in that direction. William chose not to push inland against a major town, perhaps London, as most invaders would. He decided instead to wait, which was a bold and risky choice. He did his best to bring Harold to him by making as big a nuisance of himself as he could on the coast. But how long could this game have continued had Harold not accepted the bait?
The Conqueror did his best to protect his position, another good reason for staying near his base. He had chosen his landing place well. Pevensey and Hastings offered harbour for his fleet. He must also have gained information on the fortresses of the region. His demand for Harold’s promise to gain, fortify and hand over to him the stronghold at Dover as part of the oath, demonstrates William’s thinking. He must already then have been considering the possibility of bringing a force to England, and thought in terms of the most powerful naturally defended site on the southern coast, one still important because it marks the shortest passage across the Channel.
We have no way of knowing why William did n
ot land at Dover; possibly it did not offer such good beaching facilities as Pevensey, possibly Harold might expect him there after the 1064 demands. One positive reason for landing in Sussex was that the shire was Godwin territory. Godwin’s first appearance in history was in Sussex, and the family still held considerable lands in the county. It was from Bosham that Harold set out in 1064; he also had manors in the Hastings region of East Sussex.3 William’s intention of bringing Harold to him was enhanced by the fact that it was Harold’s own family possessions that were suffering most from the Norman invaders.
At any rate, Pevensey offered a good defensive position and a ready-made fortress. The coastline was somewhat different in the eleventh century, offering better conditions for embarkation. But one thing that was much the same was Pevensey ‘Castle’. Pevensey had been noted by the Romans as a good site, easily defended from the land direction because access was narrow and difficult. They had built one of their Saxon Shore forts on the site. Unlike earlier Roman forts, it was irregular, roughly oval, filling the good land over the marshy ground around. Those well-constructed walls still stood in 1066, and still stand now, albeit having been repaired from time to time. William built a smaller defence within the walls, though the whole space offered a good temporary protection for the invading army. The later Norman stone castle was constructed within one sector of the walls: a castle within the Roman walls, using those walls as a bailey. It is generally thought that William’s temporary castle had been on this same site.
Before long, however, William moved along the coast and made use of an even more powerful naturally defended site on the cliffs at Hastings. Some historians have queried this, suggesting there was no road to follow, but the chroniclers make it clear that this was his first move and that it was by land. Here he built another castle. The Tapestry beautifully illustrates the construction of the motte: a noble supervising, men carrying tools, two of them fighting, others picking and shovelling to make the earthworks. The castle is portrayed as a motte with a wooden keep on top, just as the Breton castles shown earlier were depicted.4
