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Overview
If ever there was a year of destiny for the British Isles, 1066 must have a strong claim. King Harold faced invasion not just from William and the Normans across the English Channel, but from King Harald Hardrada of Norway.
Before he fought the Normans at Hastings in October, he had fought at York and neighboring Stamford Bridge in September. It was a year of dramatic changes of fortune, heroic marches, assaults by land and sea. This concise history, with maps included, tells the full story.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781783460021 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Pen & Sword Books Limited |
| Publication date: | 02/20/2019 |
| Series: | Battleground Britain |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 176 |
| Sales rank: | 362,975 |
| File size: | 6 MB |
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Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
1066 – THE BIG THREE
On 24 April 1066 a comet appeared among the stars. It was Halley's Comet, on one of its regular seventy-five year visits to earth. It remained in the skies for at least a week, shining far more brightly than the feeble display made by the comet on its most recent return, in 1985. Contemporaries described it as a 'hairy star'. In 1066, the meaning of the comet was pondered and debated all over the world, from England to China. Such rare apparitions were regarded as a sign of heavenly wrath, promising some calamity, as Shakespeare reminded us in Julius Caesar:
When beggars die there are no comets seen:
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes. In retrospect, people understood what it had meant. William of Poitiers, our main source for the Battle of Hastings, commented that the comet, 'terror of all kings', which had gleamed so brightly when Harold was newly crowned, was the presage of his defeat and death. On the Bayeux Tapestry, the stylised comet, looking like some strange alien airship, hovers over the palace where King Harold sits uneasily on his throne. Beneath him, in the margin, appears the ghostly outline of ships' hulls, harbingers of the Norman invasion. No words of explanation were offered by the Tapestry's seamstresses, and perhaps none were needed. Harold's calamity was shared by the whole land of England. It was as a result of divine tokens like this the English assumed that God was punishing them for their sins. William of Normandy was merely His instrument.
It is partly this cosmic dimension that makes the year 1066 such a riveting story. In the manner of a classical tragedy, it presents the land being torn apart by one man's error. As a consequence of the breaking of Harold's oath to Duke William, the nation shares in the king's downfall. Of course, this is the story told by the victors, the Normans. Addressing the dead King Harold, William of Poitiers tells him;
'you met such success as you deserved, and then, again as you deserved, you met your death, bathed in your own heart's blood ... The cataclysm you caused has dragged you down in its wake. You shine no more beneath the crown you so wrongfully usurped'.
Harold was the last Anglo-Saxon king of England. He reigned for less than a year, from his coronation on 6 January 1066 until his death on the field at Hastings. Although the chronicler John of Worcester claims that Harold 'immediately began to abolish unjust laws and to make good ones', most of his unquiet reign was in fact spent preparing for war and conducting war by land and sea. The poignant single word 'PAX' on the silver pennies of King Harold was only an aspiration. Harold is of course remembered now mainly as the loser of the Battle of Hastings. Until then, however, he had been notably successful in war, having overcome the Welsh in two lightning campaigns, and defeated the last great Viking invasion in a single battle at Stamford Bridge just three weeks before Hastings. Moreover, he was a statesman of experience, having been a great earl for a quarter of a century, first of East Anglia, then of Wessex, and eventually acting as a kind of underking (subregulus) as the aging king, Edward the Confessor, became increasingly preoccupied with prayer and hunting.
The story of 1066 is the epic of three men: King Harold and his two great enemies, William, Duke of Normandy and his namesake, Harald Hardrada, Harald the Ruthless, King of Norway. It happened because Edward the Confessor died without issue. All three men claimed the throne, Harold with the support of the English nobility, William and Harald by virtue of promises made to them by former kings. Harold's 'war on two fronts' was weakened by divisions at home. His sister was the late king's widow, the dowager Queen Edith, while he and his brothers, the sons of Godwin, were lords of much of England. But their dominance was disputed by a rival family, the sons of Leofric, Edwin and Morcar, who by 1066 ruled the north, having thrown out Harold's brother Tostig the previous year. Despite an arranged marriage between Harold and their sister Aldgyth, tensions between the Houses of Godwin and Leofric were one more factor that determined the way things went in 1066.
Its great men dominate our view of this distant time. We would love to know more about humbler men, for instance Scalpi, Harold's faithful housecarl, or Amund, who was Tostig's, of Hardrada's lieutenants, Stykar and Orri, and Robert de Beaumont, who did so well at Hastings, fighting for Duke William. Unfortunately they are little more than names. The politics of 1066, as they are presented to us, are the personal contest of two men, Harold and William (with Harald Hardrada opportunistically making trouble from the sidelines). Both were successful rulers in their prime of life, and, despite the passage of nine and a half centuries, something of their presence and personal charisma can still be felt. Let us therefore take a closer look at 'the Big Three' of 1066.
Earl Harold and his brothers
Despite his short reign, we know Harold Godwinson better than any Saxon king since Alfred, thanks to the contemporary tract called the Vita Ædwardi Regis (The Life of King Edward). The document, commissioned probably in 1065 by Harold's sister, Queen Edith, was intended to form a eulogy of her family. Its author was a foreign clerk, perhaps from Saint-Omer in what was then Flanders. As it survives, the document is incomplete, but it contains a shrewd and interesting character study of Harold and his younger brother Tostig (the original Vita may also have contained a now lost portrait of a third brother, Gyrth), told from a sympathetic but disinterested perspective. Both brothers were serious and responsible men. Though brave, they were not foolhardy, and were capable of disguising their intentions by craft. Harold had the sunnier temperament: he was mild in temper, at ease with himself and others, and could bear contradiction without losing his temper. He was experienced and successful in war, and shrewd in diplomacy. He ruled his great earldom with patience and mercy, showing kindness to all men of good will, but a stern face to evil-doers. Harold was also considered to be something of a statesman, one who had studied the practices of the princes of France and drawn from them knowledge of the management of any business. The portrait is of a good-humoured, intelligent and honourable man, certainly no fool, though perhaps a little too easy-going for his own good. In the next century, the chronicler Orderic Vitalis pays tribute in similar vein to Harold's 'stature and elegance, for his bodily strength, for his quick-wittedness and verbal facility, his sense of humour and his honest bearing'. Harold was a cultivated man; he owned a noted library of books on falconry and so even may have been literate - if so, a most unusual accomplishment for a layman at the time. The author of the Vita sums up the difference between Harold and Tostig thus: 'Harold, aiming at happiness, acted prudently; Tostig, aiming at success, acted vigorously'. Tostig, adds the eulogist, was faithful to his wife and never swore, implying that Harold wasn't, and did.
Tostig was a more steely, puritanical character, secretive, and disinclined to share his plans with others. He 'was stern to lawbreakers, and sometimes over-zealous in attacking evil'. He kept his word and never changed his purpose; he was clearly a bad man to cross. Perhaps at the Queen's bidding, the author does his best for Tostig, even at the expense of Harold. For example, Tostig's mission to Rome in 1061 is dealt with at length, whilst an earlier mission of Harold's is dismissed in a few words. The author's main point is that so long as the two brothers remained in amity, England was governed well. It was their quarrel that brought ruin to the land.
After 1066, the Normans, of course, took a more censorious view of Harold. He was an oath-breaker and a man of loose morals, 'a man soiled by luxury, a cruel homicide, proud of his wealth and plunder, an enemy of justice and goodness'. Where Harold was rash, William was prudent, inspired only by thirst for justice. While it suited no one's purpose to denigrate Harold's military prowess, William of Poitiers describes him as Hector to Duke William's Achilles, that is, as a loser who won such measure of success as he merited, and then met a deserved death. But even William of Poitiers pays tribute to Harold's wisdom, courage and strength of will. His badness, it seems, lay mainly in opposing Duke William.
We would like to know what Harold and his brothers looked like and how they bore themselves. While it is useless looking for realistic portraits in the coins and manuscripts of the period, the Vita insists that all the Godwins were handsome, graceful men, pleasant to behold. Young Englishmen were famous for being as 'handsome as angels', 'as beautiful as girls'. Re-enactments that show the English with long hair, pig-tails and the rest have got it wrong. Fashionable men wore their hair relatively short, in a pudding-basin style, with shaven chins but long moustaches. William of Malmesbury adds that arms were adorned with gold bracelets, and their skin with 'punctured designs' (i.e. tattoos). Harold's silver penny piece shows the king with a short beard, but this may have been symbolic rather than a portrait. As for the appearance of Harold's brothers, all we know is that Harold was taller than Tostig. Later stories that Harold was unusually tall are unfounded. On the Tapestry, Gyrth is given a long moustache, but the younger Leofwine is cleanshaven, perhaps in allusion to his years (though even Leofwine was past thirty in 1066). Gyrth, it seems, was close to Tostig, Leofwine to Harold. As far as we know, both younger brothers were still bachelors. From scattered hints, fiction writers have tended to portray Gyrth as sober and responsible, Leofwine as amorous and light-spirited. Unlike Tostig, they were loyal and dependable, served the king throughout the campaigns of 1066, and died with him at Hastings. Until Tostig's disaffection, the Godwins meshed well as a family, ruling most of England as a family partnership. What might have happened if any of the mature Godwin brothers had survived 1066 is one of the endlessly debated 'what-ifs' of history.
Harold's military reputation
Harold had earned a considerable reputation as his country's leading general before 1066; indeed it was probably this above all else that propelled him to the throne. The Vita saw him as a second Judas Maccabaeus; he was 'virum fortem et bellicosum', a strong and warlike commander. His main war experience was against the Welsh. This was essentially a guerilla war against an elusive enemy who could retreat into the mountains, and emerge to sack a town when the Saxons were looking the other way (Tony Robinson has even suggested that eleventh century Wales was 'our' Afghanistan). In 1055, the Welsh king Gruffydd (pronounced 'Griffith') ap Llywelyn joined forces with the rebellious English earl Aelfgar and attacked Hereford. They defeated the local earl, Ralf, and laid waste the town. Harold led a relief army and fortified Hereford with a deep ditch and gates. Peace was made after Aelfgar was restored to his earldom. But by 1062, the Welsh raids had resumed, and more decisive action was now taken. First Harold nearly captured Gruffydd in a lightning raid on Rhuddlan in north Wales. Then, the following May, Tostig and Harold invaded Wales in a pincer movement, the former attacking the north while Harold's fleet moved along the coast of south Wales, ravaging the countryside and preventing Gruffydd's escape. Finally, the Welsh got rid of Gruffydd themselves, and surrendered his head, along with the gilded prow of his ship, to Harold. Harold took from Gruffydd's successors oaths, confirmed by hostages, that they would be faithful vassals of the king of England. 'After this,' wrote Geoffrey Gaimar, 'no one paid any heed to the Welsh.' It was the great triumph of the age, and contemporaries gave credit to Harold's skill in using picked, lightly-clad mobile units to ravage Wales and defeat any opposition he encountered. While the campaigns proved that Harold was no soft touch, he did show magnanimity to a defeated enemy. Not for 900 years, in the days of Agricola, had Wales been 'so insolently invaded, [and] so easily cowed by force of arms' (Barlow 1970). However, Harold's greatest achievement was not his victory against Gruffydd but the fact that, under the fourteen years of his power, England was more often at peace than at war. And also that, when war came with a vengeance in 1066, it was well prepared.
Earl Harold's claim to the throne
It was the unique circumstances of 1066 that created Harold's opportunity for kingship. Though he was the greatest man in England save only the king, and had, in effect, served as the king's deputy for fourteen years, Harold was a commoner. But King Edward the Confessor died childless in January 1066, and his only close English relative, Edgar Atheling, was still a child. The English faced a choice between Harold, the Duke of Normandy and anarchy. As Professor Alfred Smythe put it in a television programme on King Harold, 'if you were in your right mind it had to be Harold!' There were no voices for Duke William, and the claim of Edgar Atheling was sidelined in the interests of state security. The dying king commended the queen, his servants and all the kingdom to Harold's protection. In the Vita he stops short of naming Harold as his heir, but all three Anglo-Saxon chronicles are adamant that he did. The next day Harold was confirmed as King of England by the witan, the Saxon 'parliament'. The English knew Harold's ability and virtues. They believed that only he could unite the English against foreign invasion. Whether Harold connived at the kingship by lobbying or even abusing his paramount position at court, or whether he simply accepted it as his duty, can only be guessed. At any rate, he was the nation's choice. Unfortunately, as the eleventh century saw it, he was not God's choice.
Harald Hardrada and the Norwegian claim
In his obituary of Harald Hardrada, Snorri Sturluson considered that the dead Viking hero surpassed all other men in shrewdness and resource, whether in making instant decisions or long-term plans. He was lucky, as well as brave. He was a generous benefactor to those he liked, and gave gold to poets. Indeed he himself was something of a poet. On the other hand, continues Snorri, God help his enemies. 'The king's guilty men,' wrote one Viking bard; 'pay a heavy penalty. The punishment they receive is earned by their misdeeds: each man gets his due desert. Harald dispenses justice.' His nickname 'Hardrada' means 'hard' or 'ruthless' council. He was an incessant adventurer who delighted in war. He slew his enemies, and dragged their women to his ships in chains. One who had known him said it was appropriate he was killed in another king's land. Physically, Harald Hardrada lived up to his glamorous image. He was exceptionally tall, some said five ells, that is, seven feet six inches. No doubt this was an exaggeration, though King Harold of England allowed him a generous seven feet of Yorkshire earth for his grave. He was a handsome man, of distinguished bearing, with fair hair, a fine beard and long moustaches. He had long, well-shaped hands and feet, and one of his eyebrows was slightly higher than the other, giving him, we might imagine, a 'Roger Moore' look. In 1066 he was aged about fifty.
The Norse king was a living legend. He had been exiled at the tender age of fifteen after the overthrow of his half-brother King Olaf the Saint, and became a freelance warrior with a private army for hire. Enriched by years of successful plundering in Russia and the Mediterranean, he returned to his native land in 1047, and after seven years of civil war, established himself there as king. Harald's claim to the English throne was not very convincing, and largely opportunistic. He seems to have built up support for his candidacy in anti- Godwin parts, notably Mercia and Wales. There is a story that he had been promised the throne by King Harthacnut, but had waived the claim during the lifetime of Harthacnut's successor, Edward the Confessor. Whether he planned to conquer the whole of England in 1066, or just as much of it as he could get his hands on, is uncertain. However, many in England, especially in the north, had strong social ties with Norway and Denmark, and might have preferred the King of Norway to a son of Godwin, especially when they had only just got rid of another of Godwin's boys, Harold's hated brother, Tostig. And Harald Hardrada also drew support from other parts of the British Isles, such as Dublin, Orkney and Viking parts of Scotland. He was, so to speak, the fringe candidate.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "1066: The Battles of York, Stamford Bridge & Hastings"
by .
Copyright © 2004 Peter Marren.
Excerpted by permission of Pen and Sword Books Ltd.
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Table of Contents
Title Page,
Dedication,
Copyright Page,
INTRODUCTION,
Chapter 1 - 1066 – THE BIG THREE,
Chapter 2 - 1066 – A GUIDE TO THE SOURCES,
Chapter 3 - ARMS AND ARMOUR,
Chapter 4 - 1066: MILITARY ORGANISATION,
Chapter 5 - YORK AND STAMFORD BRIDGE,
Chapter 6 - HASTINGS: PREPARATIONS,
Chapter 7 - HASTINGS: THE ARMIES,
Chapter 8 - HASTINGS: THE MORNING,
Chapter 9 - HASTINGS: THE AFTERNOON,
Chapter 10 - AFTERMATH AND VERDICT,
Chapter 11 - THE BATTLEFIELDS,
The Vikings - CELTIC, NORMAN, SAXON & VIKING RE-ENACTMENT,
REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING,
Acknowledgements,
The Author,
INDEX,
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