by Marc Morris
The last weeks of 1065, then, probably ran as follows. The king is clearly dying, and the greatest earl in the kingdom determines he will succeed him, having perhaps nurtured the hope of doing so for several years. He strikes a deal with his rivals in exchange for their support. The king dies, inevitably behind closed doors, and surrounded by only a handful of intimates, including the earl himself, his sister the queen and a partisan archbishop of Canterbury; afterwards it is given out that the old king, in his dying moments, nominated the earl as his successor. Before anyone can object – indeed, so fast that the dead king is barely in his grave – the new king is crowned, and is therefore deemed to be God’s anointed.
Not everyone was convinced. Clearly many people were surprised by Harold’s succession, not least because it required a far more legitimate candidate – Edgar Ætheling – be set aside. Half a century later, the historian William of Malmesbury wrote that Harold had seized the throne, having first exacted an oath of loyalty from the chief nobles. Malmesbury was hardly a hostile witness: in the same paragraph he praises Harold as a man of prudence and fortitude, and notes the English claim that the earl was granted the throne by Edward the Confessor. ‘But I think’, he adds, ‘that this claim rests more on goodwill than judgement, for it makes [the Confessor] pass on his inheritance to a man of whose influence he had always been suspicious.’16 More telling still is an account written in the 1090s for Baldwin, abbot of Bury St Edmunds, which described Harold’s hasty coronation as sacrilegious, and accused the earl of taking the throne ‘with cunning force’. Since Baldwin had formerly been Edward the Confessor’s physician, and was therefore very likely present at his death, this testimony ought to be accorded considerable weight. It is also possible that there was opposition in the north of England at the unexpected enthronement of the earl of Wessex. We know that soon after his coronation Harold travelled to York, a destination far beyond the usual ambit of English kings. Perhaps the occasion was his marriage to Ealdgyth, planned secretly in advance and now publicly celebrated. Alternatively, Harold may have had to go there in order to quell opposition to his rule. William of Malmesbury says as much, and has it that the people of Northumbria initially refused to accept Harold as their king. Unfortunately, elements of his story suggest that he may have confused these events with the northern rebellion of the previous year. Nevertheless, the likeliest reason for Harold’s trip to York was some sort of unrest. As the C version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ruefully observed, there was little quiet in England while Harold wore the crown.17
Sadly we have few good contemporary sources for the immediate reaction in Normandy to the news of Harold’s accession. The chronicler Wace, writing a century later, says that William was near Rouen, preparing to go hunting with his knights and squires, when a messenger arrived from England. The duke heard the message privately, and then returned to his hall in the city in anger, speaking to no one.18
Whatever the merits of this scene, we can surmise certain things. Edward the Confessor’s final illness had been quite long-drawn-out, and so William must have known in the closing weeks of 1065 that the English throne was about to fall vacant. This has led some historians to wonder why he did not cross the Channel earlier, perhaps in time for Christmas, in order to push his candidacy when the moment arrived. In reality, though, this was not an option. If William had come in anticipation, however large an escort he might have been allowed to bring, he would still have been a stranger in a strange land, ill-placed to resist any parties that opposed his accession, and, moreover, vulnerable to the sort of deadly intrigues that went on at the English court. The only realistic option for William was to do precisely as he did: remain in Normandy and await an invitation to come and be crowned, as had previously happened in the case of Harthacnut and Edward the Confessor. More to the point, he already had someone who was supposed to be representing his interests in England, namely Harold Godwineson. During his trip to Normandy, says William of Poitiers, Harold had promised William ‘that he would strive to the utmost with his counsel and with his wealth to ensure that the English monarchy should be pledged to him after Edward’s death’. The news that Harold had made himself king was thus regarded by William as a betrayal, a violation of the fealty and the other sacred oaths he had previously sworn. According to William of Jumièges, the duke’s immediate response was to send messengers to England urging Harold to renounce the throne and keep his pledges. Harold, unsurprisingly, chose to ignore these admonitions.19
From an early stage, therefore, it must have been clear that if William was going to obtain the English throne, he would have to mount an invasion of England – ‘to claim his inheritance through force of arms’, as William of Poitiers put it. Needless to say, this was an incredibly risky proposition, quite unlike the cautious kind of warfare that he had practised to such advantage during the previous two decades. Its only real parallel – in terms of risk rather than scale – is the battle he chose to fight at the start of his career, at Val-ès-Dunes, when threatened with extinction by his domestic enemies. From this we can reasonably conclude that Norman writers who emphasize the justice of William’s cause – in particular his chaplain, William of Poitiers – accurately reflected the attitude of the duke himself. By choosing to embark upon a strategy of direct confrontation, William was effectively submitting that cause – along with his reputation, his life and the lives of thousands of fellow Normans – to the judgement of God.20
The duke’s conviction in the righteousness of his cause is also reflected in his appeal to the pope. Very soon after learning of Harold’s accession, he dispatched an embassy to Rome to put his case before Alexander II. Sadly, no text of this case survives, but there is no doubt that it was written down and circulated widely at the time, for it seems to inform several of the Norman accounts of 1066 (that of William of Poitiers in particular). Edward’s promise and Harold’s perjury were evidently the main planks of its argument, though it is likely that the Normans also alleged laxity against the English Church, epitomized by Archbishop Stigand. The pope clearly felt that the case was well founded (it may also have helped that he was a former pupil of Lanfranc), for he quickly decided that force would be legitimate. As a token of his decision, he sent William’s ambassadors back from Rome bearing a banner that the duke could carry into battle.21
The support of the pope was all well and good, but what of support in Normandy itself? Another of William’s initial moves in 1066 was evidently to summon a select meeting of the duchy’s leading men: his half-brothers Robert and Odo and his friends William fitz Osbern and Roger of Montgomery are among the familiar names mentioned by Wace and William of Poitiers. According to Wace, these men, the duke’s most intimate counsellors, gave him their full backing, but advised calling a second, wider assembly, in order to make his case to the rest of the Norman magnates. Again, although late, this is perfectly credible testimony: several other authors refer more vaguely to William taking consultation. William of Malmesbury, writing in the early twelfth century, says he summoned a council of magnates to the town of Lillebonne, ‘in order to ascertain the view of individuals on the project’. Malmesbury also says that this was done after the duke had received the papal banner, which, if correct, would suggest that this wider council took place in the early spring.22
Patchy as our sources are, they suggest that at this meeting there was rather less enthusiasm for the projected invasion. ‘Many of the greater men argued speciously that the enterprise was too arduous and far beyond the resources of Normandy’, says William of Poitiers; the doubters pointed out the strength of Harold’s position, observing that ‘both in wealth and numbers of soldiers his kingdom was greatly superior to their own land’. Much of the Normans’ anxiety seems to have hinged on the difficulties of crossing the Channel. ‘Sire, we fear the sea’, they say in Wace’s account, while, according to William of Poitiers, the main concern was English naval superiority: Harold ‘had numerous ships in his fleet, and skilled sailors, hardened in many
dangers and sea-battles’.23
On this matter it is easy to sympathize with the naysayers. Although there is no way of making an accurate comparison between the naval resources of England and Normandy, the impression that England was the superior power is entirely borne out by the sources. As we’ve seen, the military history of the Confessor’s reign can be told largely in terms of ships. In the 1040s Edward had repeatedly commanded fleets for defence against Viking attack, and instituted a naval blockade of Flanders at the instance of the German emperor. The Godwines had forced their return in 1052 thanks to their ability to recruit a large fleet in exile, and Harold’s victory in Wales in 1063 had been won in part because he was able to draw on naval support. By contrast, the history of Normandy in this period is about war waged across land borders; the only fleets we hear about are the ones raised by Edward and Alfred in the 1030s and, as some Normans might well have pointed out in the spring of 1066, none of these had resulted in success.24
Moreover, mounting a naval attack on England was not simply a matter of feasibility; there was, in addition, the question of obligation. According to Wace, those Normans who said that they feared the sea had also added ‘we are not bound to serve beyond it’. Why should the Normans follow their duke on such a patently hazardous adventure? We know that in general terms William’s subjects accepted that they owed him military service. The clearest statement of this fact comes in a document drawn up shortly after the Conquest (the so-called Penitential Ordinance) which refers at one point to those who fought because such service was owed.25 Presumably these obligations in many instances had existed well before 1066, and explain in part how William was able to raise armies in the earlier part of his career. The frustrating thing is we don’t know on what basis military service was rendered. Historians used to argue that the Normans had a precociously developed feudal system, wherein many if not all major landowners recognized their obligation to serve the duke with a fixed number of knights. The problem is that there is virtually no evidence at all for the existence of such quotas prior to 1066.26
The first time, in fact, that we get a clear indication of formal obligations being discussed is in 1066 itself, during the build-up to the invasion of England. Wace speaks of individual negotiations between William and each of his vassals, during which he begged them to render double what they normally owed and reassured them that this extraordinary service would not be drawn into a precedent. ‘Each said what he would do and how many ships he would bring. And the duke had it all recorded at once, namely the ships and knights, and the barons agreed to it.’27
This would all seem pretty thin – Wace was writing a century later – were it not for the fact that William’s written record, or at least a redaction of it, has survived. It amounts to a short paragraph of Latin, copied in an early twelfth-century hand, and it fills only a single page of a much larger manuscript. Historians call it the Ship List, because it is simply a list of fourteen names and the number of ships that each agreed to provide for William in 1066. For a long time it was regarded as inauthentic on the grounds that such precise statements of military service are otherwise unknown at such an early date. Nowadays scholars are inclined to regard it as a genuine resume of the arrangements made that year, drawn up very soon after the Conquest. In other words, it bears witness to a key moment not only in the preparation for William’s expedition but also in the development of the duke’s relationship with his vassals. The extraordinary demands of 1066 itself seem to have set the Normans on the road to the more exacting form of feudalism for which they are famous.28
Precisely how William won over the more sceptical of his subjects is unknown. Wace has it that they were tricked into offering additional service by William fitz Osbern, who led the negotiations on the duke’s behalf. No doubt much was made of the injury to the duke’s right, the justice of his cause, and the permission he had obtained from the pope: if Malmesbury is correct about the timing of the assembly, William would have been able to display the papal banner and assure his audience that God was most definitely on their side. Certainly one of the inducements that was put forward to the Normans was the enormous material rewards that would come to them should the plan succeed. According to William of Poitiers, the duke pointed out that Harold could offer his men nothing in victory, whereas he, William, was promising those who followed him a share of the spoils. This may explain why, in the end, the Normans agreed to having the terms of their service written down, for the greater the service rendered, the greater the eventual reward.29
It was one thing to pledge large amounts of service, another to deliver it. The figures listed on the Ship List must have been minimum requirements, but even so their scale impresses. William fitz Osbern and Roger of Montgomery, the duke’s intimate advisers since the start of his career, both appear on the list, pledged to provide sixty ships apiece; William’s half-brothers, Odo and Robert, were respectively required to find 100 and 120. How these men, great as they were, proposed to procure these personal armadas is, like so much else, a mystery. The Bayeux Tapestry gives the impression that the entire Norman fleet was constructed from scratch. ‘Here Duke William ordered ships to be built’, it says, and immediately we see men with axes hacking down trees and shipwrights turning the timber into boats. Given the very large numbers required, and the very limited time available, we do not have to believe that every vessel was obtained in this way. The duke and his magnates must have had some ships of their own already to hand, and others could have been purchased or requisitioned, either in Normandy itself, or from places further afield, such as Flanders. Nevertheless, in the spring of 1066 there must have been much frenzied activity in the forests and shipyards of Normandy as men struggled to meet the demands of the duke’s great project that was now underway.30
News of these preparations must have travelled quickly across the Channel – William of Poitiers tells us that Harold had sent spies to Normandy, and in any case activity on such a scale could hardly have been kept secret. By Easter, at which point the new English king returned south from his mysterious trip to York, fears of foreign invasion must already have been mounting.
It was, therefore, unfortunate that his return to Westminster coincided with a rare celestial phenomenon. ‘Throughout all England’, says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ‘a portent such as men had never seen before was seen in the heavens.’ Every night during the last week of April, an extraordinary star was seen blazing across the sky. Some people, says the Chronicle, called it ‘the long-haired star’, while others called it a comet. It was, in fact, the most famous comet of all; the one which, six and a half centuries later, the astronomer Edmond Halley calculated came round every seventy-six years. But to men and women living through the uncertain events of 1066, it seemed wholly unprecedented, and as such was regarded as a terrible omen. ‘Many people’, said William of Jumièges, ‘said that it portended a change in some kingdom.’ On the Bayeux Tapestry, an anxious crowd of Englishmen point to the comet in wonder, while in the next scene King Harold is told what is evidently disturbing news. Beneath his feet, in the Tapestry’s border, a ghostly fleet is already at sea.31
And indeed, no sooner had the comet disappeared than news came that southern England was being attacked by a hostile fleet – but not a Norman one. The attacker was Harold’s estranged brother, Tostig, last seen being driven into exile as a result of the previous year’s rebellion. Precisely what he had been up to in the meantime is an insoluble mystery. A thirteenth-century Icelandic writer called Snorri Sturluson (of whom more later) maintains that the exiled earl travelled to Denmark and tried to persuade its king, Swein Estrithson, to help him conquer England. Orderic Vitalis, writing considerably closer to events, has it that Tostig visited Normandy and had actually returned to England as an agent of Duke William. Both these authors, however, make major factual errors in telling their stories, which should caution us against giving them too much credence.32 All we can say for certain is what the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Lif
e of King Edward tell us: that when Tostig left England in 1065 he sailed to Flanders, where he was received by his brother-in-law, Count Baldwin. Most probably it was from Flanders that he launched his assault.33
According to the Chronicle, Tostig and his troops landed first on the Isle of Wight, which they plundered for money and provisions, and then sailed eastwards along the coast, raiding as they went, until they reached the port of Sandwich. Their wider objective is unclear. Possibly, in view of his rancorous split with Harold, Tostig was hoping to unseat his brother and replace him as king. More plausible, perhaps, is the notion that the younger Godwine was simply aiming to recover the estates and position he had lost the previous autumn, much as his father had done in similar circumstances fourteen years earlier, using almost identical tactics.
Whatever Tostig’s hopes might have been, they were ultimately dashed. Harold set out for Sandwich at once to confront his brother, and Tostig, hearing this news, put to sea again, taking with him the town’s shipmen. ‘Some went willingly, others unwillingly’, says the Chronicle, suggesting that enthusiasm for the exile’s cause, in the south at least, was at best mixed. Nor did his fortunes improve as he sailed north. Having reached the River Humber he raided southwards into Lincolnshire, ‘slaying many good men’ and perhaps intentionally trying to provoke his arch rivals, Eadwine and Morcar. If so he was not kept waiting long, for the two earls soon appeared leading land levies. Whether or not any actual fighting subsequently took place is unclear; the Chronicle says simply that the Mercian brothers drove Tostig out. Clearly one of the decisive factors that counted against him was the desertion of the press-ganged shipmen of Sandwich, and the extent of this haemorrhage is captured by the D Chronicler, who noted that the earl had sailed into the Humber with sixty ships, but left with only twelve. No doubt to his immense frustration, Tostig had found that support for his several rivals – Harold, Eadwine and Morcar – was far stronger than anticipated. From the Humber he sailed the remnant of his fleet further north and sought refuge with his sometime adversary, King Malcolm of Scotland.34
