The Norman Conquest Read online

  The

  Norman Conquest

  THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS AND THE FALL OF ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND

  MARC MORRIS

  PEGASUS BOOKS

  NEW YORK LONDON

  To Peter:

  my prince

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  England Map

  Normandy Map

  England Family Tree

  Europe Family Tree

  A Note on Names

  Illustrations

  Introduction

  1 The Man Who Would Be King

  2 A Wave of Danes

  3 The Bastard

  4 Best Laid Plans

  5 Holy Warriors

  6 The Godwinesons

  7 Hostages to Fortune

  8 Northern Uproar

  9 The Gathering Storm

  10 The Thunderbolt

  11 Invasion

  12 The Spoils of Victory

  13 Insurrection

  14 Aftershocks

  15 Aliens and Natives

  16 Ravening Wolves

  17 The Edges of Empire

  18 Domesday

  19 Death and Judgement

  20 The Green Tree

  Abbreviations

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  Acknowledgements

  My thanks to all the academics and experts who patiently responded to emails or otherwise lent advice and support: Martin Allen, Jeremy Ashbee, Laura Ashe, David Bates, John Blair, David Carpenter, David Crouch, Richard Eales, Robin Fleming, Mark Hagger, Richard Huscroft, Charles Insley, Robert Liddiard, John Maddicott, Melanie Marshall, Richard Mortimer, Mark Philpott, Andrew Spencer, Matthew Strickland, Henry Summerson and Elizabeth Tyler. I am especially grateful to Stephen Baxter for taking the time to answer my questions about Domesday, and to John Gillingham, who very kindly read the entire book in draft and saved me from many errors. At Hutchinson, my thanks to Phil Brown, Caroline Gascoigne, Paulette Hearn and Tony Whittome, as well as to Cecilia Mackay for her painstaking picture research, David Milner for his conscientious copy-edit and Lynn Curtis for her careful proof-reading. Thanks as always to Julian Alexander, my agent at LAW, and to friends and family for their support. Most of all, thanks, love and gratitude to Catherine, Peter and William.

  A Note on Names

  Many of the characters in this book have names that can be spelt in a variety of different ways. Swein Estrithson, for example, appears elsewhere as Svein, Sven, Swegn and Swegen, with his surname spelt Estrithson or Estrithsson. There was, of course, no such thing as standard spelling in the eleventh century, so to some extent the modern historian can pick and choose. I have, however, tried to be consistent in my choices and have not attempted to alter them according to nationality: there seemed little sense in having a Gunhilda in England and a Gunnhildr in Denmark. For this reason, I’ve chosen to refer to the celebrated king of Norway as Harold Hardrada rather than the more commonplace Harald, so his first name is the same as that of his English opponent, Harold Godwineson. Contemporaries, after all, considered them to have the same name: the author of the Life of King Edward, writing very soon after 1066, calls them ‘namesake kings’.

  When it comes to toponymic surnames I have been rather less consistent. Most of the time I have used ‘of’, as in Roger of Montgomery and William of Jumièges, but occasionally I have felt bound by convention to stick with the French ‘de’. Try as I might, I could not happily write about William of Warenne in this book, any more than I could have referred to Simon of Montfort in its predecessor.

  Illustrations

  PLATES SECTION

  Edward the Confessor: detail from the Bayeaux Tapestry (Musée de la Tapisserie, Bayeux). Photo: The Bridgeman Art Library

  William of Jumièges presents his history to William the Conqueror (Bibliothèque municipale de Rouen, MSY. 14 (CGM 1174), fol. 116). Photo: Thierry Ascencio-Parvy

  The tower of All Saint’s Church, Earls Barton, Northamptonshire. Photo: © Laurence Burridge

  Arques-la-Bataille. Photo: ©Vincent Tournaire

  Jumièges Abbey. Photo: Robert Harding

  The Normans cross the Channel: detail from the Bayeux Tapestry (Musée de la Tapisserie, Bayeux). Photo: The Bridgeman Art Library.

  Skuldelev 3 (Viking Ship Museum, Roskilde, Denmark). Photo: Robert Harding.

  Normans burning a house: detail from the Bayeux Tapestry. (Musée de la Tapisserie, Bayeux). Photo: The Bridgeman Art Library.

  The White Tower, Tower of London. Photo: Historic Royal Palaces

  Colchester Castle. Photo: Shutterstock

  Old Sarum. Photo: © English Heritage Photo Library

  Durham Cathedral (Collection du Musée historique de Lausanne). Photo: © Claude Huber

  TEXT ILLUSTRATIONS

  p. 114. Harold swears his oath to William: detail from the Bayeux Tapestry (Musée de la Tapisserie, Bayeux). Photo: The Bridgeman Art Library

  p. 119. Harold returns to Edward the Confessor: detail from the Bayeux Tapestry (Musée de la Tapisserie, Bayeux). Photo: The Bridgeman Art Library

  p. 134. Edward on his deathbed: detail from the Bayeux Tapestry (Musée de la Tapisserie, Bayeux). Photo: The Bridgeman Art Library

  p. 139. The coronation of Harold: detail from the Bayeux Tapestry (Musée de la Tapisserie, Bayeux). Photo: The Bridgeman Art Library

  p. 147. Halley’s Comet: detail from the Bayeux Tapestry (Musée de la Tapisserie, Bayeux). Photo: The Bridgeman Art Library

  p. 184. The death of Harold: detail from the Bayeux Tapestry (Musée de la Tapisserie, Bayeux). Photo: The Bridgeman Art Library

  p. 185. An unarmed man is decapitated: detail from the Bayeux Tapestry (Musée de la Tapisserie, Bayeux). Photo: The Bridgeman Art Library

  p. 185. A son of Zedekiah is decapitated (Los Comentarios al Apocalípsis de San Juan de Beato de Liébana, fol. 194v, Santa Cruz Library, Biblioteca Universitaria, Valladolid, spain).

  All images of the Bayeux Tapestry are reproduced with special authorisation of the city of Bayeux.

  Introduction

  There have been many attempts to tell the story of the Norman Conquest during the past millennium, but none of them as successful as the contemporary version that told it in pictures.

  We are talking, of course, about the Bayeux Tapestry, perhaps the most famous and familiar of all medieval sources, at least in England, where we are introduced to it as schoolchildren, and where we encounter it everywhere as adults: in books and on bookmarks, postcards and calendars, cushions and tea towels, key rings, mouse-mats and mugs. It is pastiched in films and on television; it is parodied in newspapers and magazines. No other document in English history enjoys anything like as much commercial exploitation, exposure and affection.1

  The Tapestry is a frieze or cartoon, only fifty centimetres wide but nearly seventy metres long, that depicts the key events leading up to and including the Norman invasion of England in 1066. Properly speaking it is not a tapestry at all, because tapestries are woven; technically it is an embroidery, since its designs are sewn on to its plain linen background. Made very soon after the Conquest, it has been kept since the late fifteenth century (and probably a lot longer) in the Norman city of Bayeux, where it can still be seen today.

  And there they are: the Normans! Hurling themselves fearlessly into battle, looting the homes of their enemies, building castles, burning castles, feasting, fighting, arguing, killing and conquering. Clad in mail shirts, carrying kite-shaped shields, they brandish swords, but more often spears, and wear their distinctive pointed helmets with fixed, flat nasals. Everywhere we look we see horses – more than 200 in total – being trotted, galloped and charged. We also see ships (forty-one of them) being built, boarded
and sailed across the Channel. There is Duke William of Normandy, later to be known as William the Conqueror, his face clean-shaven and his hair cropped close up the back, after the fashion favoured by his fellow Norman knights. There is his famous half-brother, Odo of Bayeux, riding into the thick of the fray even though he was a bishop.

  And there, too, are their opponents, the English. Similarly brave and warlike, they are at the same time visibly different. Sporting longer hair and even longer moustaches, they also ride horses but not into battle, where instead they stand to fight, wielding fearsome, long-handled axes. There is Harold Godwineson, soon to be King Harold, riding with his hawk and hounds, sitting crowned and enthroned, commanding the English army at Hastings and – as everybody remembers – being felled by an arrow that strikes him in the eye.

  When you see the Tapestry in all its extensive, multicoloured glory, you can appreciate in an instant why it is so important. This is not only an account of the Norman invasion of 1066; it is a window on to the world of the eleventh century. No other source takes us so immediately and so vividly back to that lost time. The scenes of battle are justly famous, and can tell us much about arms, armour and military tactics. But look elsewhere and you discover a wealth of arresting detail about many other aspects of eleventh-century life: ships and shipbuilding, civilian dress for both men and women, architecture and agriculture. It is thanks to the Tapestry that we have some of the earliest images of Romanesque churches and earth-and-timber castles. Quite incidentally, in one of its border scenes, it includes the first portrayal in European art of a plough being drawn by a horse.2

  Precise information about the Tapestry’s creation is entirely lacking, but it is as good as certain that it was made within a decade or so of the events it depicts, and that its place of manufacture was Canterbury (many of its scenes and motifs are based on illustrations in surviving Canterbury manuscripts). We can be almost as certain – despite a host of other far less convincing candidates having been proposed over the years – that its patron was the aforementioned Bishop Odo, who is self-importantly portrayed throughout as being the driving force behind the planning and execution of the invasion. Odo’s patronage, of course, would explain how the Tapestry came to reside in Bayeux, his episcopal city, and also fits well with its creation in Canterbury, since he was made earl of Kent immediately after the Conquest.3

  By any law of averages, the Tapestry ought not to exist. We know that such elaborate wall-hangings, while hardly commonplace in the eleventh century, were popular enough with the elite that could afford them, because we have descriptions in contemporary documents. What we don’t have are other surviving examples: all that comes down to us in other cases are a few sorry-looking scraps. That the Tapestry is still with us almost 1,000 years after it was sewn is astonishing, especially when one considers its later history. It first appears in the written record four centuries after its creation, in 1476, when it is described in an inventory of the treasury at Bayeux Cathedral, from which we learn that the clergy were in the habit of hanging it around the nave every year during the first week of July (an annual airing that would have aided its conservation). Its survival through those four medieval centuries, escaping the major hazards of war, fire and flood, as well as the more mundane menaces of rodents, insects and damp, is wondrous enough; that it successfully avoided destruction during the modern era is nothing short of miraculous. When the cathedral’s treasury was looted during the French Revolution, the Tapestry came within a hair’s breadth of being cut up and used to cover military wagons. Carted to Paris for exhibition by Napoleon, it was eventually returned to Bayeux, where for several years during the early nineteenth century it was indifferently stored in the town hall on a giant spindle, so that curious visitors could unroll it (and occasionally cut bits off). During the Second World War it had yet more adventures: taken again to Paris by the Nazis, it narrowly escaped being sent to Berlin, and somehow managed to emerge unscathed from the flames and the bombs. The Tapestry’s post-medieval history is a book in itself— one which, happily, has already been written.4

  And yet, wonderful as it is in its own right, the Tapestry is not without its limitations as a historical source. In the first place, despite its remarkable condition, it is sadly incomplete, breaking off abruptly after the death of King Harold. Secondly, as we have already noted, some of its scenes are drawn not from observation but copied from illustrations in older manuscripts, which obviously greatly reduces their value if we are concerned about recovering historical reality. Thirdly, despite the fact it seems to have been made for a Norman patron, the Tapestry is curiously (and probably deliberately) noncommittal in its portrayal of events; although most of its scenes have captions, these too are for the most part wilfully obscure or ambiguous. Take, for example, the question of when it begins: most historians believe that the story starts in 1064, but the fact that they cannot say for certain is indicative of the wider problem. Lastly, the story that the Tapestry tells is inevitably selective and in places demonstrably inaccurate; some events are left out and others are deliberately distorted. No other source, for example, suggests that Harold swore his famous oath to William at Bayeux, or that it was Odo who heroically turned the tide for the Normans during the Battle of Hastings. The Tapestry, it bears repeating, is really an embroidery.5

  We are able to expose such distortions in the Tapestry’s story because, fortunately, we have other sources to help us work out what happened: documentary ones such as chronicles, charters and letters, as well as non-documentary ones in the form of art, architecture and archaeology. Scholars who study the Early Middle Ages (the half-millennium, say, before 1066) will tell you that collectively these sources constitute an immensely rich corpus – and this is true, at least in comparison with other regions of Europe in the eleventh century, and with earlier centuries in England. But then scholars who work in these fields can usually get all their primary source material on a single shelf and still have room for ornaments. To scholars who cut their teeth studying later medieval centuries (or to this one at least) the sources for the Norman Conquest can sometimes seem woefully impoverished.

  As an example— one I’ve used in tones of increasing despair while writing this book— consider the evidence base for eleventh-century English kings compared with their thirteenth-century successors. My previous book was about Edward I, who ruled England from 1272 to 1307, a period of thirty-five years. Thanks to a massive number of surviving government documents from that time— literally thousands of closely written parchment rolls— we can say where Edward was for almost every day of his reign: his itinerary, compiled and published in the 1970s, runs to three large volumes of print. Now compare and contrast the itinerary of William the Conqueror, king of England from 1066 to 1087: expressed in terms of precise dates and places, it runs to a grand total of three printed pages. Most of the time, we simply have no idea where William was; sometimes we cannot even say for certain whether he was in England or Normandy at any given point. This is because, apart from the Domesday Book (the other miraculous survival in this story), government archive from the Conqueror’s reign is nonexistent. Where we have official documents it is because they have been kept or copied by other institutions— chiefly by monasteries that received charters from the king commemorating and confirming grants of land or other privileges. Naturally, at a distance of over 900 years, the survival rate for such documents is not good. And even where such documents have survived, they are rarely dated more precisely than the particular year they were issued, and often not dated at all. The upshot is that, in the case of William the Conqueror – one of the most famous figures in English history, and obviously a major character in this book— we are barely able to say where he was from one year to the next.6

  Fortunately, given this dearth of administrative documents, we also have chronicles – again, mostly thanks to the diligence of monks. These contemporary histories can help put considerable amounts of flesh on what would otherwise be very bare bones
, providing us with facts, dates, anecdotes and opinions. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, our most important source for the history of England during this period, has much to say about events before and after the Conquest, and without it our understanding would be infinitely poorer. At the same time, the Chronicle can on occasion remain infuriatingly tightlipped. Its entry for the year 1084, for instance, reproduced in full, reads: ‘In this year passed away Wulfwold, abbot of Chertsey, on 19 April.’ For other years— crucial years— it has no entries at all.7

  Another major problem with contemporary accounts is their bias. All of the writers in this period are churchmen, and as such are prone to interpreting the turn of events as the unfolding of God’s will. More insuperably, some of these accounts are extremely partisan. The story of the Conquest is full of dramatic reversals of fortune and often quite despicable deeds; in several instances, the key players in the drama sought to justify their actions by commissioning what are essentially propaganda pieces. Some of our most important sources, including the Bayeux Tapestry, fall into this category and have to be handled with extreme caution.

  Because of the shortcomings of the source material, it is often difficult, and sometimes impossible, to say exactly what happened— which, of course, makes it tough if you are trying to construct a narrative history. For this reason, many books about the Conquest concentrate on a discussion of the sources themselves, examining them from every angle, and explaining how different historians have arrived at different interpretations. Some of these books are excellent, but others are a bewildering mix of analysis and opinion, some strictly contemporary, some slightly later, some drawn from earlier scholarship and some the author’s own, the overall effect of which is to leave the reader confused and exhausted, unsure about who or what to believe. The alternative approach is to tell the story in an entirely straightforward fashion, banishing all debate and controversy to the back of the book. Such was the method of Edward Augustus Freeman, who wrote a giant history of the Norman Conquest in the late nineteenth century. As he explained in a letter to a friend, serious academic discussion was strictly for the appendices: ‘I have to make my text a narrative which I hope may be intelligible to girls and curates.’8