Many of the facts from that momentous year have become mixed up and clouded over the centuries. For example, it is popularly held that King Harold was killed by an arrow in his eye, when in fact he was actually hacked to pieces rather like the knight in the Monty Python film. At least, it might have been something like that. The problem with the Battle of Hastings, and indeed all the events of 1066, is that there is very little reliable evidence about them.
The Unreliable Bayeux Tapestry
What little source material we do have comes from the Norman perspective. And it is material in a very literal sense: The Bayeux Tapestry. In an age of almost universal illiteracy, it probably made sense to tell the story of the conquest in pictures, but in the twenty-first century where comics are for children (or at least for people who still live with their mothers) it takes some believing that the best account we have of the birth of a nation is basically a strip cartoon sewn onto a giant towel. Really there can be no greater validation of the rise of the written word than that such a seminal event is covered by something that would be equally at home covering an enormous bed.
Actually, the real reliability issue with the tapestry is not so much its literal thread as its literary thread. As documents go, it is not by any means the least biassed, and indeed is a perfect illustration of the old adage ‘history is written by the winners’... or at least stitched by them. The Normans conquered England and took it upon themselves to record just how they managed it.
It was the new Williams I’s own half-brother, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, who commissioned the Tapestry. And you need not let the fact that Odo was a Bishop lull you into believing that makes him any more trustworthy. His scruples can be clearly discerned from his behaviour on the field at Hastings, when he obeyed the letter of canon law if not the spirit, beating his opponents to death with a hefty club in order to circumnavigate an inconvenient rule which forbade clergymen to spill blood. Not a man to worry too much about twisting the truth to suit his brother, the Bishop left a legacy which is vulnerable to critical analysis - and to punsters - who have variously described the Tapestry as ‘a great yarn’, ‘a tapestry of lies’, and ‘an embroidering of the facts.’
Harold Godwinsson and the Broken Oath
The main reason for all this wordplay is that the tale woven into the Tapestry is rather contentious, particularly regarding the role of Harold Godwinsson, later to briefly become King Harold. The Tapestry shows Harold visiting William in Normandy and admitting that the Duke had the better claim to the throne of England. But while it does seem that Harold went to the continent sometime around 1064, there is plenty of doubt as to what he might have been doing there, and the idea that he went in order to give up his claim to the throne is, it has to be said, preposterous.
Harold had been carefully cultivating his influence at the court of the incumbent monarch, Edward the Confessor, a little too long and a little too assiduously to make it likely that he would be a willing subject to an overseas pretender. The Tapestry however would lead us to believe that, when Harry met Billy, the most powerful magnate in England swore over the monarchy to a Bastard Norman: and not just casually swore either, Harold supposedly made an oath with his hands on Holy Relics. Oaths in the Eleventh Century were not lightly taken - and not likely broken - and an oath sworn on Holy Relics was regarded as especially serious.
Thus the images of Harold swearing the oath are a classic example of early propaganda. Not only do they seem to show that William was the rightful heir to Edward’s throne; but they serve to depict Harold as an unsavoury oath-breaker with all the morals of a Dalek.
But is this image of Harold gliding around the English countryside with a sink plunger strapped to his head, gargling the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of ‘exterminate’ a fair one? Probably not. Some sources have hypothesised that Harold did perhaps take an oath, but that he was coerced or conned into doing so. One speculative suggestion is that William forced his guest to swear on a box, before lifting the lid to reveal the relics hidden inside. If something like this did happen, it reflects worse on the Norman than on his counterpart, and certainly no oath sworn under duress would have stood up in court.
The Real Truth of 1066
Since the only evidence we have is an over-sized and biassed rug it is likely we will never know the real truth. The Tapestry, for all the unfair disparagement it has suffered here - up to and including the previous sentence - is a valuable source and an impressive work of art. The intricate panels supply an intriguing Norman interpretation of events that might otherwise have proven impossible to piece together at all.
But for all its charms, the Bayeux Tapestry remains demeaned by a flawed sense of perspective (in every sense) and a further problem also exists: it is incomplete. A concluding segment appears to have disappeared entirely - perhaps more than one. So, the final chapter of the story according to Odo is lost to posterity, and nobody really knows how the tale ends at all...
Sources
The Enigma of Hastings (London, 1974) Edwin Tetlow
