of 1803.
Finally, in March 1945, on the eve of peace in Europe, and following a successful showing in Paris, the Bayeux Tapestry was returned to Bayeux after an absence of almost four years – the longest known period that it has ever been absent from the town. The Tapestry was at last able to resume a more tranquil existence. The post-war years saw an enormous increase in tourism, and with the number of visitors increasing each year, it became evident in the 1970s that the building it then occupied in Bayeux was no longer adequate. A Bayeux seminary, built in 1653, was chosen as the tapestry’s new museum. In 1983 the conversion of the building – renamed as the Centre Guillaume le Conquérant – was completed and Bayeux’s great embroidery is now fittingly displayed there. Visitors of every nationality arrive each year in their thousands at the gates of this fine museum. Few know of the tapestry’s own eventful past. They come to admire this precious and unique survivor of the distant age of the eleventh century and to recall the deadly rivalry of Earl Harold of Wessex and Duke William of Normandy – a rivalry that shook their world, and still, in some ways, affects ours.
5 The Strange Journey of Harold Godwinson
The year is 1064 or early 1065 [scene 1]. The elderly king of England, seated on his finely made chair, is in a secret conference with two men. One of them is his brother-in-law, Earl Harold of Wessex; the other is unknown. The pale, full-bearded old king, known to history as Edward ‘the Confessor’, is a large, stooping figure in a long green robe. Now in his sixties, he has reigned over England for more than twenty years. The country is prosperous; its government, for the times, is sophisticated and efficient. The ability of the Anglo-Saxon monarchy to collect a nationwide tax is elsewhere unparalleled, and no doubt envied, in the other halls of European power. All, however, is not well. In twenty years of marriage Edward has failed to produce a single heir and this failure has inevitably caused an aura of uncertainty to hang over the delicate matter of the succession.
The low and muffled talk at that meeting would have proceeded against a very different background had Edward ever fathered a son; but his marriage with Edith, Earl Harold’s sister, had been completely barren.1 It was one of those political unions which kings are often constrained to make. In this case the political imperative in the 1040s had dictated an alliance with the powerful Godwin family, without whose support he would have found it difficult to rule England. We cannot know the true cause of Edward’s childlessness – the secrets of the royal bed remain discreetly curtained off to history – but it is certainly not difficult to identify strains which may have affected the conjugal life of the royal couple. Long before they were married, before Edward was even king, a terrible crime had taken place which had touched Edward deeply. In 1036 his younger brother Alfred had been kidnapped, tortured and murdered by a rival faction during a period of uncertainty that had followed the death of King Canute – when, as now, there had been no single indisputable heir to the throne. Edward long suspected that Queen Edith’s father, Earl Godwin, had been a party to the crime, but Godwin was the most powerful man in the nation and the case against him had never been proved. On Edward’s accession in 1042 he had had little choice but to work with Godwin, to accept Godwin’s oily hand of friendship and to harness his power as best he could for the governance of the country. He may even have married Earl Godwin’s daughter on an optimistic note. The marriage was, after all, a potent alliance of blue blood and raw power; but it was not an amorous success and Edward soon regretted it.
He had made one abortive attempt to break free of the bonds, both political and matrimonial, that bound him to the Godwin family. In 1051 he acted with unexpected resolve and contrived to send Godwin and his sons into exile, and his unloved queen to a nunnery. The following year the Godwins returned. They were armed, angry and amply supported. The king’s soldiers, fearing outright civil war, were reluctant to fight and Edward backed down. Godwin was restored to power; Edith returned to the royal household; and from that moment the king’s authority was fatally weakened. Against this political and familial background, it is not entirely surprising that no children were ever born to Edward and Edith. When Earl Godwin died in 1053, having collapsed at an Easter feast given in the king’s own hall, his mantle as England’s leading earl was inherited by the queen’s senior brother, Earl Harold of Wessex.
Now, as they meet in that secret huddled gathering that opens the story of the Bayeux Tapestry, more than ten years have passed, ten years since Harold first stepped into his father’s shoes. In those ten years he has consolidated his position as by far the most important nobleman in the nation. Neither before nor since has any one noble ever been quite so predominant. With his brothers Tostig, Gyrth and Leofwine also holding key earldoms, and his sister Edith as queen, Harold’s family appears, at least while it remains united, a more formidable entity than ever. Harold, then, is a man of stature, a sprightly, moustachioed figure in his forties, elegant of physique, noble in his bearing and enormously wealthy. To his friends he is handsome, open-hearted and clever. To his enemies he is beginning to be feared for his battle-hardened qualities as a war leader. Recently he has been campaigning on the king’s behalf in Wales where King Gruffydd had been a thorn in England’s side. Aided by Welsh rebels, Harold returned to England in triumph at the end of 1063, presenting the unfortunate Gruffydd’s head to King Edward in person.2 Earl Harold has proved himself a worthy successor to his father’s legacy and he has formed what, at the very least, seems to be a satisfactory working relationship with the king. From cool beginnings, the two men seem to have warmed to each other over the years.
The old king stoops forward as if speaking to Harold in a low voice; their forefingers touch. It is almost as if we are there, in this wispy opening scene, eavesdropping on history at one of its pivotal moments. Frustratingly, the inscription above tells us no more than that this is King Edward – EDWARD REX – and the woollen figures meet in enigmatic silence. We must also remember that the Bayeux Tapestry was made ten or so years later. Like all historical sources, it has its own perspective and the temptation must be resisted of assuming that the events were recorded as they happened, like a film on a camcorder. What remains certain is that this meeting took place and its outcome set in motion a chain of events that changed history.
At the time when Harold and Edward met there were several men who potentially had an interest in the English throne. Royal succession in Anglo-Saxon England did not solely depend on who had the closest blood kinship to the king, though this was undoubtedly a persuasive factor. The king retained discretion during his life to nominate an heir from among his eligible relatives; and it was also the custom that the heir should be approved by the Witan, a council of the great and powerful in the land.3 The question of inheritance was thus inherently fluid; and sometimes legal theory, such as it was, went entirely out of the window, and ‘might’ counted more than ‘right’, as when earlier in the century the country was conquered by the Danes under Swein Fork-Beard and was ruled, most famously, by his son King Canute (1016–35).
The Danish conquest had lasted little longer than Canute’s lifetime; but it had shown foreigners what was possible: England was vulnerable. Nowhere was Danish success more envied than in the kindred land of Norway. King Harald of Norway’s claim to the English throne was little more than a slender pretext based on an ambiguous treaty in the 1030s, but this mattered not to a man whose very raison d’être was war and the warrior’s way.4 The story of his life was already the stuff of saga.5 The nickname they gave him – ‘Hardrada’, the Hard Ruler – was an advertisement indeed, considering that it distinguished him as noteworthy even among the Vikings themselves. In his youth Harald had left Norway to fight as an axe-wielding mercenary in the Mediterranean lands for the army of the Byzantine empire. He quickly gained the reputation of being the most formidable warrior of his age. A coin was even minted in his honour. Then, one night in 1043, Harald of Norway hoodwinked the emperor and slipped out of Constantinople in a fleet of ships laden with an enormous treasure. He muscled his way back into Norway