If we dismiss confirmation of the Norman claim to the throne as a valid reason there remain three main possible reasons for Harold’s visit to Normandy: he arrived there purely by accident; he went there to arrange some form of alliance, possibly involving a marriage; he went there to negotiate the release of the hostages taken to Normandy by Robert of Jumieges in 1052. If Harold’s journey to Normandy was intentional, whether to free the hostages or arrange an alliance, it has been viewed as a grave error of judgement. He had by this action placed himself in the hands of Duke William, a ruthless ruler actively pursuing the English throne, who would not waste such an opportunity. However, if we accept that no promise of the succession was made in 1051, apart from the private pledge of Robert of Jumieges, then there was no reason for anyone outside William’s closest circle to know that he aimed at the English throne. This is especially the case when everyone in England in 1064 would have understood that Atheling Edgar held an unchallengable position as heir to the throne under all the necessary criteria.
It should also be emphasized that at this time a Norman invasion of England in support of such a claim must have seemed unlikely. In the previous hundred years the real threat to England had always come from the north, from whence Scandinavian kings always stood ready to invade England and seize the throne. Earl Tosti understood this and would seek aid from that quarter in 1066. In contrast, in the same period there had been no invasions at all from the Continent and the only previous threat from Normandy came from Scandinavian raiders using the duchy as a temporary base. True, Duke Robert had planned an invasion in 1033 or 1034 but this proved abortive and did not even come to the attention of the English chroniclers. The landings by Athelings Edward and Alfred in 1036, as we have seen, were little more than raids and may have originated outside Normandy itself. The natural assumption based on experience at the time was that Scandinavians invaded England, but Frenchmen did not.13
This latter point is sometimes forgotten because William’s invasion actually succeeded, but at the time itself his invasion plan was very novel and extremely risky. Normandy had no fleet to speak of and in 1066 one had to be constructed from scratch. A naval expedition was considered fraught with danger, as the Norman barons made clear by their initial reluctance to support one in 1066. Although the duchy was currently at its greatest extent, its resources were still small compared to those of England. All this must have made William’s ambition appear unrealistic and unusual. In 1064 the possibility of William becoming king of England probably remained little more than a dream for William himself, and therefore Harold probably had no inkling of it. This point must be kept in mind when considering Harold’s actions in Normandy.14
Whatever the reason for Harold’s journey across the Channel, and the wish to rescue his relatives from Norman captivity, recorded by Eadmer using sources close to the family, seems most likely, he undoubtedly went there. The evidence is clear on this point at least. The outline of events in the Norman sources can now be followed. Almost at once, he encountered bad luck and was blown by a storm onto the coast of Ponthieu, a small county neighbouring Normandy. Here he and his companions were seized and imprisoned at Beaurain by Count Guy, probably with the intention of demanding a heavy ransom for their release. Harold thus found himself in a difficult situation as a hostage himself. As a wealthy man, he would undoubtedly have been able to raise any ransom demanded by Count Guy for his release. However, before any negotiations got underway he was apparently freed by a friendly power.15
When William of Normandy heard the news of Harold’s capture, he probably saw an opportunity to further his long dormant, but not forgotten English claim and he seized it. He sent messengers to Count Guy and demanded Harold’s release under a mixture of threats and promises of rewards. Guy was in no position to resist such force as the duke could bring against him, and personally handed Harold over to William at Eu. William now held in his hands the greatest noble in England, second only to the king, and he intended to take full advantage of the situation. Initially he concealed his true intentions behind the guise of welcoming an illustrious guest in friendly terms. He therefore conducted Harold to his capital of Rouen with proper honour and there treated him with great hospitality.16
William then invited Harold to accompany him on a military expedition against the Bretons. This is the sequence of events which is shown in the Bayeux Tapestry and probably supported by William of Jumieges, who says that Harold was with William for ‘some time’ and swore fealty only before being sent back to England, and by Orderic Vitalis, who retains this sequence despite drawing on the material contained in William of Poitiers. The latter reverses this sequence by having Harold swear the oath before the Breton expedition which perhaps reflects his desire to focus on the matter of the succession to the English kingdom, supposedly the chief purpose of Harold’s visit. It seems more likely that the expedition came first and provided William with a chance to assess Harold closely, while further lulling the latter into a false sense of security. William perhaps also intended the Breton expedition to provide a demonstration of his military and political power in order to impress and perhaps to subdue Harold, before seeking to secure his agreement one way or another to his English claim.17
The expedition took the form of a mobile cavalry raid into neighbouring Breton territory intended to undermine the authority of Duke Conan II by supporting a rebellion against his authority by one of his vassals, Rhiwallon of Dol. This would effectively enhance William’s authority by weakening that of Conan, his neighbour and potential rival. William accompanied by Harold crossed the Breton border at the estuary of the river Couesnon. It was here that Harold apparently rescued two men from the quicksands in a remarkable feat of strength depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry. Thereafter, the Normans raised Conan’s siege of Rhiwallon’s castle at Dol by threatening to cut off both his supplies and his retreat. As a result, Conan was forced to fall back towards his own city of Rennes. William, who was well aware of the risks of pursuing the Bretons into their own territory, wisely refused to be drawn after them. Subsequently, he found his army running short of supplies due to a Breton scorched earth policy and so returned home to Normandy. The Tapestry suggests that William went on to raid Rennes and to capture the castle of Dinant from Conan, but none of this is supported by William of Poitiers and it therefore probably never occurred. Indeed, following William’s withdrawal Conan joined forces with Count Geoffrey of Anjou and by approaching the Norman border threatened to retaliate by raiding William’s own territory. Duke William therefore turned about and re-entered Breton territory. The opposing armies faced each other, maintaining a cautious distance as neither was prepared to accept the risk of battle. Thereafter, the campaign seems to have fizzled out as each side used up its supplies and then withdrew to its own lands.18
This short and inconclusive campaign must nevertheless have been both fascinating and instructive for these two great men, Duke William and Earl Harold. They must have spent a great deal of the time observing each other and attempting to gauge relative strengths and weaknesses. Both were great warriors and shrewd politicians. William learned about Harold’s personal courage and the formidable obstacle he could present to his plans to secure the English throne. He came to appreciate the need to try to neutralize him or weaken his authority in some measure. In turn, Harold learned a great deal about William’s military skills and methods of warfare, including his use of the mobility of cavalry and the employment of castles as strongholds, and about how he subdued and undermined his local rivals in France. He was yet to discover William’s true intentions, the extent of his ruthlessness, and the scope of his ambitions.
It was when the two men returned to Normandy that William finally revealed his aspirations concerning the English throne and insisted on Harold’s pledge to support him. In return, he may have promised to uphold and extend Harold’s position in England and perhaps offered him his daughter, Adeliza, in marriage. Harold must have been taken by surprise by this re
velation, but equally must soon have appreciated the danger of his position, faced as he was with William’s determination for an answer. He was currently William’s guest, but if he failed to agree to his demands he can have been in no doubt that he would soon become his prisoner. Harold’s own brother and nephew already languished in Norman imprisonment and King Edward’s nephew, Count Walter, had died there very recently. This gives a special irony to William of Poitiers’ story of William’s ‘rescue’ of Harold from the captivity of Count Guy – a case of out of the frying pan into the fire. Faced with this unattractive prospect, Harold had little alternative but to accept William’s terms, which involved the swearing of an oath to work towards his succession to the throne of England. The oath was the corner-stone of medieval judicial procedure and social relations throughout northern Europe and represented in a sense an ordeal before God whose efficacy would be shown by subsequent events. This decision could not have been taken lightly by Harold since the binding nature of oaths on holy relics was clearly recognized in England at this time. The Laws of Cnut set out severe penalties including mutilation or payment of a wergild fine, for the swearing of a false oath on relics. Thereafter, the oathbreakers word could not be accepted unless he atoned very deeply for his offence before God. One wonders if this oath was one of those sins that Harold confessed to Bishop Wulfstan, and whether the holy man absolved him from keeping it.19
There has been considerable discussion about the details of the oath but the actual terms sworn by Harold are in a sense academic. The Tapestry is as usual enigmatic, providing no details of the oath sworn. William of Jumieges’ account refers only to an oath of fealty to William as claimant to the throne. In contrast, the much more elaborate account of William of Poitiers seems to attempt to cover all eventualities. This may merely reflect the fact that William tried to extract the maximum possible concessions from the captive Harold. On the other hand, in common with other aspects of his account, it seems more likely that William of Poitiers is here seeking to reinforce his master’s case by adding elaborate details, some of which seem rather unconvincing. In particular, the mention of Dover and other castles being handed over to William is rather dubious as the only castles known to exist in England at that time were those constructed by the Frenchmen in Herefordshire. As so often, the account of William of Jumieges is probably to be preferred. Similarly, the exact location of where the oath was taken, whether Bonneville-sur-Toques, Rouen or Bayeux, is almost immaterial, and mention of the latter two sites may perhaps only represent attempts to enhance their prestige by association with this famous event. Thus Orderic Vitalis places the oath at Rouen, with which he himself had connections, while the Tapestry places it at Bayeux in deference to its patron, Bishop Odo. Bonneville-sur-Toques, as stated by William of Poitiers, seems most likely as it has no significance otherwise and is therefore unlikely to have been identified as the location for such an important event unless that event actually took place there. In any case, the form of the oath and the place where it was sworn are unimportant. What mattered to Duke William was that Harold had sworn to uphold his claim to the English throne before witnesses referred to as ‘certain most notable men of utter integrity’.20
William calculated that he had now achieved a moral ascendancy over Harold which could be useful later, both to undermine Harold’s position and to justify his own. William retained Harold’s brother, Wulfnoth, as a hostage in an attempt to guarantee Harold’s adherence to his pledge but probably realized that this would not be enough. William could, of course, have kept Harold as his prisoner, so removing an obstacle from his path to the throne. He did not do so probably because the results of such an action were unpredictable and might even bring about a weakening of William’s prospects by allowing others to rise to power in Harold’s place. It was far better to release him burdened with an oath which he was unlikely to fulfil, and which turned Harold into an oathbreaker. The potential of perjury was perhaps sufficient for William’s purposes so that in 1066 he could exploit this to undermine Harold’s position and bolster his own. Thus when the more basic attraction of loot proved insufficient to secure the support of all his vassals for his plans in 1066, William could play on their duty to secure his rights against a perjured vassal.21
Finally Harold was released to return home with elaborate gifts and accompanied by his nephew, Hakon, one of the hostages taken to Normandy in 1052. Duke William continued to hold Harold’s brother, Wulfnoth. If the freedom of these hostages was Harold’s original reason for his journey to Normandy, he had failed. In addition, he was now burdened with an oath to aid William’s claim to the English throne. The medieval mind viewed Harold’s swearing of this oath as a disaster from which his career took an inevitable downward path. This was an argument typical of the period, when disaster and downfall were seen as God’s punishment for sin. It was based on the deep-rooted belief that God was responsible for all that happened in the world, and that everything that occurred represented the rewards of virtue or punishment for sin rather than the results of chance or human action. Thus Harold’s fall in 1066 clearly produced a need to identify the sin for which this was punishment, and this was conveniently found in his breach of this oath.22
In this episode Harold had fallen into William’s trap but it was a concealed trap that neither he nor anyone in England could have anticipated. The promise of the succession to William had after all probably been invented by Robert of Jumieges himself, and was thus unknown beyond William’s immediate circle. Harold had extricated himself from this trap, in the only way possible, by swearing the oath. As the oath had been extracted under duress, it could be repudiated and he could atone before God for breaching it. Nevertheless, it may have caused him some disquiet and when the author of the Vita Eadwardi speaks of Harold’s ‘generosity with oaths’ it may possibly be in relation to this occasion. It is likely that Harold was angered by the outcome of his Norman trip. He was angry with himself for being caught out by William and at the arrogant presumption of the Norman duke. William of Poitiers indeed refers in a speech which he places in the mouth of Harold to William’s ‘arrogant temerity’ in invading England in 1066, and this is perhaps also an appropriate reaction to William’s actions in 1064. After all, William had not only raised an unwarranted claim to the English throne, but had also coerced Harold, his guest and comrade in arms, into promising to support him. He had then offered to reward Harold for this support with his own lands and titles. Duke William had made an implacable enemy. The audacity and arrogance of William’s claim is not always apparent today because we know that it did succeed. However, at the time, William’s own vassals viewed his plans as ‘hazardous and far beyond the resources of Normandy’.23
Although an apparently disastrous expedition, Harold may have gained something from it. He was finally fully aware of William’s ambitions and the determination that lay behind them. As a result, he could be fully prepared to repel William’s invasion, which he knew would come. In 1066 the Chronicle indicates Harold’s foreknowledge of William’s plans, although this could possibly be as a result of Norman messengers sent to England in that year rather than his earlier visit. He had also been given a demonstration of the Norman methods of warfare, which would allow him to consider countermeasures. It was from this point that Harold must have begun to consider what would happen if King Edward died while Atheling Edgar was still too young to succeed him in all royal capacities, but particularly in military leadership. How would England fare against William with a boy king who had no experience as a war leader? In such circumstances, Harold as Earl of Wessex and lieutenant to the king could play a considerable advisory role but it would be much better to have an experienced military campaigner in full control. This may have been the initial germ of the idea which resulted in Harold’s succession to the throne in 1066, but at this stage there is no direct evidence for this.24
On his return to England Harold probably discussed William’s designs on the throne with Edward and with
his family. The Tapestry shows Harold reporting to Edward on his return. Otherwise, these matters may not have been discussed more widely at this time. We do not know this, but the lack of any reference to the Norman visit or William’s claim in contemporary English sources is suggestive. This may have been to conceal Harold’s discomfiture, but more likely it was intended to prevent any undue alarm in England over this new threat. Some sources hint at concern on King Edward’s part and this may have resulted from this situation. Indeed, it may have contributed to his deathbed resolution to entrust his kingdom to Harold and to advise others to support Harold’s succession.25
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