APPENDIX.

NOTE A. p. 3. The Authority of the Bayeux Tapestry.

It will be seen that, throughout this volume, I accept the witness of the Bayeux Tapestry as one of my highest authorities. I do not hesitate to say that I look on it as holding the first place among the authorities on the Norman side. That it is a contemporary work I entertain no doubt whatever, and I entertain just as little doubt as to its being a work fully entitled to our general confidence. I believe the Tapestry to have been made for Bishop Odo, and to have been most probably designed by him as an ornament for his newly rebuilt cathedral church of Bayeux. In coming to these conclusions I have been mainly guided by what seems to me the unanswerable internal evidence of the Tapestry itself. Of that internal evidence I shall presently state the more important points, but, as the age and antiquity of the Tapestry have been made the subjects of a good deal of controversy, I think it right to begin by giving a summary of the literature of that controversy.

The earliest notice of the Tapestry is to be found in a communication made by M. Lancelot in 1724 to the French Academy, which was printed in the sixth volume of their Memoirs, p. 739 (Paris, 1729), and which, in some sort, entitles him to the honour of being looked on as its discoverer. Among the papers of M. Foucault, who had been Intendant in Normandy, was found what Lancelot calls “un Monument de Guillaume le Conquerant.” This was no other than a copy of the earlier scenes of the Tapestry, as far down as the coming of William’s messengers to Guy. The real nature of 564the monument was quite unknown; that it might be tapestry was simply one conjecture out of many which Lancelot made before the truth was found out. And he not unnaturally connected his discovery with Caen rather than with Bayeux. But the description which he gave of that part of the Tapestry which he had then seen, and the historical disquisition which he added, showed a very creditable knowledge of the original writers both English and Norman. His conclusion was as follows;

“Plus j’ay examiné le monument qui a servi de sujet à ces remarques, et plus je me suis persuadé qu’il estoit du temps à peu près où s’est passé l’évenement qu’il represente; habits, armes, caractères de lettres, ornements, goût dans les figures representées, tout sent le siècle de Guillaume le Conquérant, ou celuy de ses enfants.” (p. 755.)

Lancelot then was the first to call attention to the Tapestry, but without knowing that it was tapestry or where it was to be seen. This discovery was owing to the diligence of Montfaucon, who first conjectured, and afterwards found his conjecture to be right, that the fragment published by Lancelot was a copy of part of a roll of tapestry which used to be exhibited on certain feast-days in Bayeux Cathedral. Montfaucon gave two accounts of it in his Monumens de la Monarchie Françoise, at vol. i. p. 371, and at the beginning of vol. ii. He decides (ii. 2), on the evidence of the style of the work, the form of the armour, &c., that the work is a contemporary one, and he accepts as probable, what he says was the common opinion at Bayeux, that it was wrought by Queen Matilda. He thought that the Tapestry was designed to go on to the coronation of William, and that its imperfect state was owing to the Queen’s death in 1083.

The first volume of Montfaucon was published in 1729, the second in 1730. In the latter year Lancelot communicated to the Academy a second paper, which appeared in the eighth volume of the Memoirs (Paris, 1733), p. 602. He had by that time found out another fact with regard to the monument. The Tapestry, known locally as “la Toilette du Duc Guillaume,” was thus mentioned in an inventory of the goods of the Church of Bayeux of the date of 1476;

“Item. Une tente tres longue et etroite de telle à broderie de ymages et eserpteaulx [escripteaulx] faisans representation du Conquest 565d’Angleterre, laquelle est tendue environ la nef de l’Eglise le jour et par les octaves des Reliques.”

A short notice of the Tapestry in Beziers’ History of Bayeux (Caen, 1773) is wholly founded on Lancelot and Montfaucon.

The first English mention of the Tapestry, as far as I can make out, is to be found in Stukeley’s Palæographia Britannica, ii. 2. An abridgement of Montfaucon’s account, by Smart Lethicullier, F.R.S. and F.S.A., is added as an Appendix to Ducarel’s Anglo-Norman Antiquities, No. I. But the earliest actual writers of English history who dealt with the age and authority of the Tapestry were two authors who hold such different places in the estimation of the scholar as Lord Lyttelton and David Hume. Lyttelton (Hist. Henry II. i. 353, ed. 1769) came to a conclusion unfavourable to the authority of the Tapestry; but he did not come to it without really reading and thinking about the matter. His main point of objection was the supposed discrepancy between the Tapestry and the narrative of William of Poitiers with regard to the details of the Breton war, an objection perfectly reasonable as far as it goes, and the grounds of which I shall examine elsewhere (see Note T). Assuming, I suppose, that the tradition which ascribed the work to a Matilda must have some groundwork, Lyttelton “judged” that it was made by the orders, not of William’s Queen Matilda, but of her granddaughter the Empress.

This “judgement,” it should be noticed, was simply Lyttelton’s own conjecture, thrown out on his own responsibility. It is curious to mark the fate of this conjecture in the hands of Hume. It is due to Hume to say that he seems to have had a clearer notion of the real value of the Tapestry than Lyttelton. Yet in 1762, when he published the first edition of his early history, he knew the Tapestry only as “a very curious and authentic monument lately discovered. It is a tapestry, preserved in the ducal palace at Roüen, and supposed to have been wrought by orders of Matilda, wife to the Emperor. At least it is of very great antiquity.” (i. 128.)

When this was written, the first discovery of the Tapestry, at least of the part of which Hume was speaking, was thirty-eight years old. Still it was in Hume’s eyes “lately discovered,” because he had most likely never before heard of it. The cathedral at Bayeux and the ducal palace at Rouen were all one to him, just as Milan and 566Pavia, Guelf and Ghibelin, were all one to him, when (p. 183) he turned Lanfranc into “a Milanese monk.” The tradition of Bayeux and the conjecture of Lyttelton are seemingly rolled together in the word “supposed,” and one might almost guess that Hume, while writing the reign of Eadward, had not yet learned to distinguish one Matilda from another; it clearly was quite indifferent to him which Emperor it was that either of them married.

But the beginning of any really serious and critical enquiry into the age and authority of the Tapestry was reserved for the present century. Attention began to be called to it during the time of the French Republic. Some curious letters on the subject are printed in Pluquet’s “Essai Historique sur la ville de Bayeux,” pp. 76–81. It appears that the Tapestry at one time narrowly escaped being cut into shreds to adorn a civic car. It afterwards actually underwent a fate almost as degrading. The elder Buonaparte, then “First Consul,” carried it off to Paris, and showed it at the Louvre, to stir up his subjects—“citizens” they are still called in the official letters—to another conquest of England! But this kind of folly had at least the advantage of fixing the thoughts of learned men on the Tapestry itself. The firstfruits of their studies appeared in 1812, in the form of a paper by the Abbé de la Rue, Professor at Caen and Canon of Bayeux, of which an English translation by Mr. Douce is printed in the Archæologia, vol. xvii. p. 85. M. de la Rue followed Lyttelton in attributing the Tapestry to the time and the orders of the Empress Matilda. Against the tradition which attributed it to the wife of the Conqueror he brings several arguments. It is nowhere mentioned in the will of Queen Matilda or in any other wills or charters of her age or that of her sons. If it had been placed in Bayeux Cathedral in Queen Matilda’s time, it must have perished in the fire by which that church was destroyed in 1106. Some relics were saved, but no one would have taken the trouble to save the Tapestry. Some points of non-agreement between the accounts in the Tapestry and the Roman de Rou show that Wace had never seen the Tapestry. But, as a Canon of Bayeux, he could not fail to have seen it, if it had been there in his time. The work again must be later than Queen Matilda’s time, because the border contains references to fables of Æsop, which were not known in the West till the time of the 567Crusades. It is shown moreover to be of English work, from the occurrence of the mysterious Ælfgyva. This name he takes to be an English way of describing the Duchess, afterwards Queen, Matilda. Wadard again, whose name he takes to be English, and the word “Ceastra” are brought as proofs of English workmanship. Another point on which he strongly insists is that the Normans are called Franci in the Tapestry, which he argues would not have been done by Norman artists. He concludes therefore that the Tapestry was made in England by order of the Empress, at some time between 1162, about which time Wace wrote, and 1167, the year of her own death.

This communication led to several other papers on the subject in the Archæologia, and to what was more valuable than all, to the publication of the beautiful and accurate representation of the Tapestry itself, made for the Society of Antiquaries by Stothard. At vol. xviii. p. 359 of the Archæologia is a letter written in 1816 by Mr. Hudson Gurney, who had seen the Tapestry for himself. He argues in favour of the antiquity attributed to the work by the local tradition. He insists on various points of costume, and on the evident attempt at preserving a likeness in the figures, especially in that of William. He concludes that it was made for Queen Matilda by English workwomen. The nineteenth volume of the Archæologia contains three papers on the Tapestry or on subjects connected with it. The first by Mr. Amyot, at p. 88, does not deal with the question of the age of the Tapestry itself, but only with the evidence which it gives as to the cause of Harold’s voyage to Normandy. The second, at p. 184, is a powerful argument by Stothard in favour of the antiquity of the Tapestry, but in which he does not commit himself to any connexion with Queen Matilda. Stothard was the first to see that the one proposition did not involve the other. He enlarges on the costume as belonging to the eleventh century and not to the twelfth, and on the utter improbability that any mediæval artist of a later age should attend to antiquarian accuracy in these matters. He remarks also on the obscure persons represented on the Norman side, Turold, Vital, and Wadard, as distinct proof that the Tapestry was a contemporary Norman work.

In the hands of Stothard the subject had for the first time fallen into hands really capable of dealing with it as it deserved. 568But Stothard is well followed up in a second paper by Mr. Amyot in p. 192 of the same volume, in which he disposes of most of the arguments of M. de la Rue against the antiquity of the Tapestry. He still however seems to think that, if it were a contemporary monument, it must have been the work of Queen Matilda, or wrought by her order. Mr. Amyot also points out that Wadard is not only, as Stothard had seen, a proper name, but that it is the name of a real man who appears in Domesday, and also that Wadard, Turold, and Vital were all tenants of Odo. Mr. Amyot very appositely observes that “Franci” was the only name which could properly express the whole of William’s mingled army, and that “Franci” and “Francigenæ” are the words constantly opposed to “Angli” in documents of the age of the Conqueror and much later.

In 1824 M. de la Rue republished at Caen his essay in the Archæologia, with an Appendix containing an attempt at a refutation of Stothard and Amyot. He was again briefly answered by another Norman antiquary, M. Pluquet, in his Essai Historique sur la ville de Bayeux (Caen, 1829). Pluquet was the first distinctly to assert that the work had nothing to do with either Matilda, but that it was made by order of Bishop Odo (p. 81). In 1840 Mr. Bolton Corney put forth a tract, in which he attempted to show that the Tapestry was made by the Chapter of Bayeux after the French Conquest of Normandy. He argues that, during the union of England and Normandy, the conquest of England, which William took such pains to disguise under the semblance of legal right, would not be thus ostentatiously set forth in Normandy. Some learned person, he holds, was employed to keep the costume right, a degree of antiquarian care for which it would be hard to find a parallel in the middle ages.

Thierry reprinted Lancelot’s account as a note at the end of his first volume (p. 353, ed. 1840), adding two notes of his own. In the first he accepts the Tapestry as a contemporary work, designed for the ornament of the church of Bayeux, and quotes M. de la Rue as attributing the work to the Empress Matilda. In the second he quotes him as attributing it neither to William’s Queen Matilda nor to Matilda the Empress, but to Eadgyth-Matilda, the wife of Henry the First. I do not know whether this was a confusion of Thierry’s, or whether De 569la Rue ever came to change his opinion. At any rate Thierry successively accepts these two distinct theories as highly probable, and sees in one or other of them the explanation of the alleged English words and forms which are found in several places of the Tapestry.

Dr. Lingard (Hist. of England, i. 547, ed. 1849) gives a note to the subject, for the substance of which he professes to be indebted to Mr. Bolton Corney. But he does not commit himself to the more grotesque parts of Mr. Corney’s theory. He altogether rejects the supposed connexion between the Tapestry and any of the Matildas. He holds that it was originally made as a decoration for the church of Bayeux, and that it was designed to commemorate the share which the men of Bayeux bore in the Conquest of England. This he infers from the prominence given to Odo, and from the appearance of his retainers, Turold, Vital, and Wadard. Rather than attribute the work to Matilda, he inclines to believe that the Tapestry originated in the personal vanity of some of these men, or of their descendants.

I suppose I am not expected to take any serious notice of some amusing remarks on the Tapestry made by Miss Agnes Strickland (Queens of England, i. 65, 66), who recommends “the lords of the creation” “to leave the question of the Bayeux Tapestry to the decision of the ladies, to whose province it belongs.” According to Miss Strickland, the Tapestry was “in part at least designed for Matilda by Turold, a dwarf artist.” Miss Strickland speaks of a Norman tradition to that effect, but perhaps even a “lord of the creation” may venture to ask where that Norman tradition is to be found.

I return into the every-day world in company with Dr. Collingwood Bruce, who read a paper on the Tapestry before the Archæological Institute at Chichester in 1853, which afterwards grew into a volume called “The Bayeux Tapestry Elucidated” (London, 1856). Dr. Bruce follows Stothard in the argument for the early date of the Tapestry, drawn from the correctness of the costume. He argues further on the same side from the manifest object of the Tapestry, namely to set forth the right of William to the English Crown. He cleaves in a somewhat unreasoning way to the tradition which attributes the work to the first Matilda, but he fully grasps the manifest connexion of the Tapestry with Bayeux and its church. 570He even goes so far as to attribute the two or three apparently English forms which appear in the legends of the Tapestry to the common use of the Teutonic language in the Bessin, which he supposes, without any authority that I know of, to have lasted as late as the reign of William. Dr. Bruce however thinks that the designer of the Tapestry, as distinguished from those who wrought it in the stitch-work, was an Italian.

Sir Francis Palgrave, in the posthumous part of his work (iii. 254), has an incidental reference to the Tapestry, in which he takes for granted that it is the work of Queen Matilda, without any hint that any question has ever been raised about the matter.

Lastly, Mr. Planché published a paper “On the Bayeux Tapestry” in the Journal of the British Archæological Association for June, 1867 (p. 134). Mr. Planché follows M. Pluquet, and gives a good summary of his arguments; he then goes minutely through the Tapestry, giving his views at each stage, to some of which I shall have to refer again. “The report,” he says, “mentioned by Montfaucon that it was the work of Queen Matilda and her handmaids, originated probably in the suggestion of some antiquary of the sixteenth or seventeenth century repeated till it assumed the consistency of a fact.”

I now go on to give my own reasons for accepting the early date of the Tapestry. The arguments of Stothard drawn from the accurate representation of the costume of the eleventh century seem to me unanswerable. Dr. Bruce adds a good instance of his own in a comparison of the Tapestry with a passage in the Roman de Rou. Wace (v. 12628) speaks of the horse of William Fitz-Osbern as “all covered with iron,” (see above, p. 455, and Taylor’s note, p. 162), whereas in the Tapestry “not a single horse is equipped in steel armour; and if we refer to the authors who lived at that period we shall find that not one of them mentions any defensive covering for the horse.”

Mr. Amyot’s arguments with regard to Wadard, Vital, and Turold seem to me distinctly to prove that the work was a contemporary one, and one made for Bishop Odo and the church of Bayeux. As Dr. Lingard says, it is quite inconceivable that these persons, who are of no importance in the general history, whose reputation must have been purely local, should have received such 571prominence in any but a purely local work. The only persons on the Norman side who appear by name in the representation of the landing and of the battle are the Duke and his two brothers, Count Eustace of Boulogne, and these three obscure retainers of Bishop Odo. We see them here in the Tapestry, and the industry of Mr. Amyot and Dr. Lingard has traced them out in Domesday, but no other mention survives of them. Ralph, the son of Turold, Vital, Wadard “homo episcopi,” all occur in Domesday, 1, 6, 7, 8, 8 a, 9, 10, 32, 77, 155 b, 238 b, 342 b, and in every case their land is held of Bishop Odo. It is plain that, in the mind of the designer of the Tapestry, the Bishop of Bayeux and his favourite followers came next after Duke William himself. This fact seems to me to be equally decisive in favour of its being a contemporary work and against its being a work of Matilda.

Here, I think, is abundant evidence both to establish the contemporary date, and to show the object of the work. It was plainly a gift from Odo to his own newly-built cathedral. But it is quite possible that the work was done in England. The evidence is certainly very slight. I believe it is wholly contained in the words “at Hastingaceastra” (pl. 11). I cannot think that “at” for “ad” proves anything, but the form “ceastra” goes a good way to prove that the work was English. The notion of Dr. Bruce and Mr. Planché that these forms are not English but Saxon of Bayeux, seems very fanciful. Besides, the form “ceaster” is one which is not Nether-Dutch in a wide sense, but distinctly and locally English. I know of no instance of its occurrence in the Bessin, or indeed anywhere out of England.

Most of the objections made to the early date of the Tapestry are well disposed of by M. Pluquet and Mr. Planché; but to one of their arguments I must demur. M. de la Rue (see above, p. 566) objected that the borders contain scenes from Æsop’s Fables, which he says were not known in the West till afterwards. Mr. Planché, oddly enough, quotes (p. 136) Freculf, Bishop of Lisieux, who, he tells us, “lived in the eleventh century,” as saying that Eadward caused the Fables of Æsop to be translated into English. He goes on with a reference to the false Ingulf, which I need not discuss. As for Freculf, who died somewhere about the year 853, if he said anything at all about our Eadward, he must have enjoyed a prophetic power rivalling that of the saint himself. But it is well known that 572Mary of France, the poetess of the thirteenth century, professes to have made her French version of the Fables from an English version made by an English King. Mary’s knowledge of English will be a point of some importance in the last stage of this work; at present I am concerned only with the words (ii. 401, ed. Roquefort. See Palgrave, iv. 225),

“Li rois Henris qui moult l’ama

Le translata puis en Engleiz.”

Other manuscripts however read Auvert, Auvres, &c., names which of course mean Ælfred. The whole matter is discussed by M. de la Rue in Roquefort’s Preface (ii. 34). If Ælfred be the right reading, there is no doubt of the early knowledge of the Fables in England. If Henry be the right reading, I certainly think that the King meant is Henry the First, whose probable English education I shall have to discuss hereafter. I think we may guess that, if Henry translated anything into English, it was early in life that he did it, and Henry was born about the time when the Tapestry must have been making.

For my own part I should reverse the argument. I have that confidence in the Tapestry that I accept the figures wrought in its border as proof that the Fables were known in Normandy and England in the eleventh century.

The external evidence then seems to be complete. The work must be a contemporary one; there is no evidence to connect it with Matilda; there is every evidence to connect it with Odo. It was probably, but I cannot say certainly, made in England. I now turn to that branch of the question which to me is yet more interesting, the internal evidence for looking on the Tapestry as I look on it, as a primary authority for the subject of the present volume, as in fact the highest authority on the Norman side.

I ground this belief on the way in which the story is told. It is told from the Norman point of view, but it is told with hardly any of the inventions, exaggerations, and insinuations of the other Norman authorities. In fact the material has a certain advantage. Stitch-work must tell its tale simply and straightforwardly; it cannot lose itself in the rhetoric of Eadward’s Biographer or in the invective of William of Poitiers. And the tale which the Tapestry tells us comes 573infinitely nearer to the genuine English story than it does even to the narrative of the Conqueror’s laureate. To the later romances, the tales for instance of Eadward’s French Biographer, it gives no countenance whatever. With regard to the great controversial points, those which I shall go through in detail in future notes, the Tapestry nearly always agrees with the authentic account. There is not a word or a stitch which at all countenances any of the calumnious tales which were afterwards current. In the Tapestry the bequest of Eadward to Harold, his orderly acceptance of the Crown, his ecclesiastical coronation, all appear as plainly as they do in the narrative of Florence. The only point of diversity is that the Tapestry seems to represent Stigand, and not Ealdred, as the consecrator. Now there was no absolute necessity for a partizan of William to deny the facts of the case. William’s claim rested rather on the invalidity of the bequest, the election, and the coronation, than on any denial that the ceremonies themselves had taken place. And accordingly, in the earlier Norman writers, most of the facts are admitted in a kind of way. It is not till long afterwards that we find the full developement of those strange fables which, in so many modern histories, have supplanted the truth. Had the Tapestry been a work of later date, it is hardly possible that it could have given the simple and accurate account of these matters which it does give. A work of the twelfth or thirteenth century would have brought in, as even honest Wace does in some degree, the notions of the twelfth or the thirteenth century. One cannot conceive an artist of the time of Henry the Second, still less an artist later than the French Conquest of Normandy, agreeing so remarkably with the authentic writings of the eleventh century. The truth was in those days almost wholly forgotten, and no one would have been likely to represent the story with any accuracy.

But though the Tapestry perverts the story less than any other Norman account, it is still essentially a Norman account. One main object of the work is plainly to set forth the right of William to the English Crown. This was of course the great object of William himself and of his contemporary partizans. But it was not an object which greatly occupied men’s minds in the days of Henry the Second or later. The writers of that time, as I shall presently show, are as bitter, perhaps more bitter, against Harold than the Norman writers of his own time; but their bitterness comes from a different 574source. Under the Angevin dynasty, descended, as it was, in a roundabout way from Old-English royalty, men were beginning to look on Harold and William as alike usurpers. We begin to hear of strict hereditary right and of the exclusion of the lawful heir. Henry the Second encouraged his panegyrists to set forth his lawful descent from ancient English Kings, without any reference whatever to his descent from the Norman invader. It was only in the female line that Henry was either Norman or English; in his real ancestry, in his real feelings and character, he was as little one as the other. It is most unlikely that any one should have wrought, in the days of Henry or for Henry’s mother, a work which throughout breathes the spirit of the earliest days of the Conquest.

In like manner, the representation of William’s landing and of the great battle could have come only from the hand of a contemporary. The mere fulness of detail, the evident delight with which the artist dwells on all the little incidents of the campaign, point it out as the work of one in whose memory they were all vividly retained. The notices of insignificant people, like Turold, Wadard, and Vital, while they point to the place for which the Tapestry was designed, point also to a time when these retainers of Bishop Odo were still living. In the days of the Empress Matilda their fame is not likely to have been great, even at Bayeux. So again every antiquarian detail is accurate; the nose-pieces, the lack of armour on the horses, the care taken to represent every man bearded, moustached, or close-shaven, according to his age and nation (see vol. ii. p. 27), all bespeak the work of a contemporary artist. The idea of Mr. Corney that the Chapter of Bayeux in the thirteenth century would specially order its artists to attend to such points is ludicrous beyond measure, and it had been disposed of beforehand in the masterly argument of Stothard. But the Tapestry is equally accurate in greater matters. The English army is an English army of the eleventh century and nothing else. The two classes of warriors, the here and the fyrd, the Housecarls in their coats of mail with their great axes, the peasantry armed almost anyhow, are nowhere more clearly marked. The utter absence of horses, except as a means, as in the days of Brihtnoth (see vol. i. pp. 299, 301), for reaching or leaving the field—the King himself fighting on foot—the ensign of the West-Saxon Dragon—all these are touches from a contemporary hand, which it is utterly inconceivable 575that any artist working a hundred or a hundred and fifty years later could have preserved. It is worth while to mark the remarkable contrast between the Battle of Senlac as represented in the Tapestry, and the Battle of Stamfordbridge as described by Snorro. The contemporary artist represented things as he saw them; the writer of the thirteenth century described things as he saw them also; but then they did not see the same things. The Bayeux Tapestry represents Harold’s army at Senlac as Harold’s army really was. The narrative in the Heimskringla describes Harold’s army at Stamfordbridge after the pattern of an army of the thirteenth century.

This precious monument is now well preserved and cared for. After its ridiculous journey to Paris, it came back safe to its Norman home, but it was kept for a while in a way which did not tend much to its preservation. It was wound round a sort of windlass, and was unwound and handled whenever anybody looked at it. It is now in a much better position. It is kept under glass in the public Library at Bayeux, where it is stretched out round the room at a convenient height, where it may be studied with the greatest ease. I have there examined it three times, once in 1861, and twice in 1867, and I may say that, fully to realize its value and importance, it should be seen. Stothard’s reduction is admirable in every way, and serves for every ordinary purpose of study, but I doubt whether any one thoroughly takes in what the Tapestry is till he has seen it with his own eyes. I had myself learned to value the Tapestry long before I saw it, but my examination of it certainly made my confidence in it far stronger and clearer. It is no small matter to spell over the details of the story in the picture itself, and the process reaches its height at the last stage. I think no one can see the end of the battle, the Housecarls every one lying dead in his harness, while the light-armed are taking to flight, some of them on the horses of the fallen, and not feel that he is in the presence of a work traced out by one who had himself seen the scenes which he thus handed down to later ages.

576

NOTE B. p. 14. Eadward’s Bequest of the Crown to Harold.

At this stage of my history, I need hardly say that every point has been matter of dispute from the time of the events themselves down to our own day. I give in the text the narrative which I believe to be the accurate one, adding references to the particular authorities on which I found it. In this and the following notes I purpose to examine minutely into the different statements made at the time and soon after. I purpose also to go a little more fully than usual into the statements of later writers. Mere copyists or compilers, writing some ages after the events, are in no sense authorities; they can add nothing to our knowledge of the events themselves. But, on a point of our history of such paramount importance, and one which has been so fiercely disputed, it does in a certain way add to our knowledge of history to see how the facts of those times looked in the eyes of men of various later ages.

I need not tell any reader of mine that I hold that King Harold was a King as lawful as any King—I might almost say more lawful than any other King—that ever reigned over England. No other King in our history ever reigned so distinctly by the national will. But there is no King, there is hardly any man, in our history who has been made the object of such ceaseless calumny from his own time to ours. The hostile faction triumphed, not only on the field of battle, but in the pages of pretended history, and, for eight hundred years, the name of Harold has been constantly branded with the appellations of “perjurer” and “usurper.” My object is to do what I can to undo this great wrong, to bring back the true history of a great man and of a great time, and to set forth Harold and his acts as they appeared to his countrymen in his own days. This I have endeavoured to do in my text. In this and the following notes I intend to go systematically through all the points in which the witness of contemporary English writers on these matters has been obscured and forgotten through notions drawn from less trustworthy sources.

Of the two great charges brought against Harold, those of usurpation and perjury, both can be traced up to his own time. Both come from the tongues and pens of contemporary Norman accusers. But, of the two, the charge of perjury was the one 577which was the more insisted on in the times nearest to his own. In Harold’s own day, and for some generations after, the charge which told most against him was the charge of breach of faith, aggravated by irreverence to the relics of the saints. In the eyes of Harold’s contemporary enemies, and in the eyes of the later writers who look on him from the same point of view, Harold is a faithless vassal, breaking his plighted faith to his liege lord. He is something even worse; he is one who did not shrink from breaking an oath of unusual solemnity, and who thereby drew on himself the wrath of a number of holy persons whose wonder-working relics he thus set at nought. But modern writers who take a view unfavourable to Harold have commonly dwelt less on the perjury and more on the usurpation. In their eyes Harold is a violator of constitutional order, who ascended the throne to the prejudice of the lawful heir. In the one view the injured party is the Norman Duke; in the other it is the English Ætheling. The two charges, though often mixed together, are in themselves quite distinct. The charge of usurpation affects the right to the Crown; the charge of perjury does not touch it. Let Harold’s perjury have been of the blackest kind, it could not give either William or Eadgar any right to the Crown which they would not have had if Harold had not sworn at all. If the Crown was hereditary, no engagement, no breach of any engagement, between William and Harold could bar the indefeasible rights of the natural heir. If the Crown could pass by bequest, no such engagement could bar the right of Eadward to bequeath it to whom he would. If the Crown was elective, no such engagement could bar the right of the electors to choose whom they would. Nowhere is the wonderful skill of William more clearly shown than in the way in which he made men forget these very obvious distinctions. I therefore put aside the question of perjury from the present question. I have elsewhere discussed Harold’s oath at length, both as it bears on the facts of the history and as it bears on the character of Harold (see p. 240 et seqq. and Appendix R). But the oath has nothing to do with the present subject. It bears only indirectly on the rightfulness of Harold’s accession; on the facts of his accession it does not bear at all.

As to the facts of Harold’s accession, the strictly English writers make three distinct assertions;

578First, That Harold was named as his successor by Eadward;

Secondly, That he was regularly elected King by the Witan;

Thirdly, That he was regularly consecrated King by Archbishop Ealdred.

These three assertions are made by the best English writers in a perfectly plain and unmistakeable way. They stand before us as assertions about which there can be no question, except the question whether they are true or false. All three are more or less directly traversed by Norman writers and by later writers who followed Norman traditions. But the contradiction is by no means so plain and unmistakeable as the assertion. The Norman writers seem afraid of looking the facts in the face. They shroud themselves in a cloud of vague and declamatory phrases. They use language which serves to put their own colour on the story, without venturing directly to deny the assertions made by the English writers. They admit some nomination, some election, some consecration; only they attach some vague epithet, they add some ambiguous qualification, insinuating rather than asserting that there was something invalid about each of the processes. I will now go through the statements on each side in detail.

I take as my text the narrative of Florence (1066), who puts forth our three propositions in the clearest and tersest shape. His account runs thus;

“Quo [Eadwardo] tumulato, Subregulus Haroldus, Godwini Ducis filius, quem Rex ante suam decessionem regni successorem elegerat, a totius Angliæ primatibus ad regale culmen electus, die eodem ab Aldredo Eboracensi Archiepiscopo in Regem est honorificè consecratus.”

This passage may be looked on as a formal manifesto on the English side. It is the most remarkable and the most important of several passages of Florence (see vol. ii. p. 607) in which he does more than merely record an event, in which he evidently has other statements before his eye, and chooses his words so as distinctly, though silently, to contradict them. Though no other version of the facts is spoken of, yet every word is evidently weighed with careful reference to other versions; every word, in short, disposes of some Norman calumny or other. Harold reigns according to the last will of Eadward; that last will therefore was 579not in favour of William or of any other candidate. To express Eadward’s action in the matter, a word is used (“elegerat”) which is evidently meant to express free and deliberate choice, and to exclude any tales about an unwilling nomination wrung from him in his last moments. Again, Harold reigns by the election of the chief men of all England; this excludes the stories about his seizing the Crown without election, or with the approbation of a few of his own partizans only. Lastly, Harold is crowned, on the day indeed of the burial of Eadward, but after the funeral rites are finished, and evidently in the same building, the new minster of Saint Peter. This excludes the tale of his seizing the moment when the people were intent on the burial of the late King in order to be crowned in some hasty and irregular way at Saint Paul’s or elsewhere. He is solemnly consecrated King; this excludes the stories about his not being crowned at all, about his being crowned without any religious ceremony, about his putting the Crown on his own head. He is consecrated by Ealdred, by an Archbishop to whose position there was no canonical objection; therefore not by Stigand, whom strict churchmen looked on as an usurper. Nothing can be more evident than that Florence knew all the hostile inventions and perversions, and that he framed his own narrative so as to contradict the greatest possible number of them. In the same spirit, he goes on, at this point, to give that splendid panegyric on Harold’s government which is clearly meant as an answer to Norman calumnies of another kind. No passage in any writer of any age was ever written with more scrupulous care; in none does every word deserve to be more attentively weighed.

Now for the time which we have now reached the authority of Florence is all but the highest possible. He was a contemporary, in so far as he must have been born before 1066, though he could hardly have been old enough to record the events of that year from personal knowledge. But he had every opportunity of hearing of them from eye-witnesses and actors. As a member of the church of Worcester, he had the special advantage of being able to hear the story from his own Bishop Saint Wulfstan, the chosen friend of King Harold. His testimony therefore, even if it stood alone, is of that kind which even very sceptical critics allow to be thoroughly trustworthy. His statement is clear, terse, and forcible, and evidently designed to set aside other statements which he thought 580untrustworthy. But this is not all. The testimony of Florence does not stand alone. It is confirmed by the absolutely contemporary Chroniclers. It is confirmed, as far as the form of his work allows, by the Biographer of Eadward. Now the Biographer was not only a contemporary, but if not himself an eye-witness, he had his information from eye-witnesses, and that, not years after, but at the very time. The testimony of Florence again is confirmed by a witness more unexceptionable than all, by the earliest and most trustworthy witness on the Norman side, by the contemporary Tapestry. By one or more of these authorities Florence is borne out in every statement but one. He affirms that Harold was consecrated by Ealdred. The Chroniclers are silent as to the consecrator; the Tapestry implies—it can hardly be said directly to affirm—that the consecrator was Stigand. On all other points every jot and tittle of his story is confirmed by authorities still higher than his own, and on this one point he is not contradicted by the highest of all. Here is evidence of an amount and of a kind which the historian is lucky when he can get.

Florence wrote with two at least of the Chronicles before him, those namely of Abingdon and Worcester. Their narratives he translated and harmonized, and, when he thought it needful, he expanded them. In this case he thought a large expansion needful, in order to contradict the misstatements of enemies. But these Chronicles themselves assert, though in a less pointed and controversial form, two at least of the facts which Florence himself asserts. The Peterborough Chronicle, which Florence most probably had not before him, is only less distinct and emphatic than Florence himself as to all three. The bequest, the election, the consecration, are all distinctly asserted by one or more of the three Chroniclers. The only assertion which rests wholly on the authority of Florence himself is the assertion that Ealdred was the consecrator.

The two Chronicles which Florence followed distinctly assert that Eadward named Harold as his successor. I have already quoted the poetical passage in full at vol. ii. p. 537 (see also above, p. 19). The words which now immediately concern us are those in which the bequest is distinctly asserted; Eadward “made fast the Kingdom to Harold the noble Earl.” Then in the prose entry which follows, both Chronicles assert Harold’s royal consecration; “Her wearð Harold Eorl eac to Cynge gehalgod.” These words would certainly not be used of any but the regular 581ecclesiastical ceremony. These two Chroniclers however do not distinctly speak of the election. We may perhaps say that it was quite in character with their general political views to insist more on the royal bequest than on the popular election. (See vol. ii. pp. 12, 13, 600.) But this was a point on which the democrat of Peterborough was not likely to hold his peace. His account of the reign of Harold is much shorter than those of either of the other two annalists, but his account of his accession is fuller and more emphatic. He is also, as usual, more careful than his brethren as to his dates. And his words have a sort of triumphant ring as if they were written down at the moment. The poem preserved by the Abingdon and Worcester Chroniclers shows the same feeling. It was doubtless composed soon after the death of Eadward, by a gleeman eager on behalf of the new King. But their prose entries, with their remark on the “little stillness” of Harold’s reign (see above, p. 47), could not have been made till all was over. The entry in the Peterborough Chronicle runs thus;

“On þissum geare man halgode þet mynster æt Westmynstre on Cyldamæsse dæg. And se Cyng Eadward forðferde on Twelfta mæsse æfen, and hine mann bebyrgede on Twelftan mæssedæg, innan þære niwa halgodre circean on Westmynstre. And Harold Eorl feng to Englalandes cynerice, swa swa se Cyng him geuðe, and eac men hine þærto gecuron, and wæs gebletsod to Cyng on Twelftan mæssedæg.”

Here we have bequest, election, and consecration as clearly expressed as by Florence himself. Earl Harold is blessed to King over the Kingdom of England, as the King had granted to him and—words written with delight by that patriotic pen—as men eke chose him thereto.

The further examination of the election and coronation I leave to future notes. I now go on with my more immediate subject, namely the bequest. On this point the words of the Biographer should be very carefully marked, and they should be no less carefully compared with the picture in the Tapestry. It is from these two sources that I have drawn the narrative in the text (p. 14). We cannot too often remember the Biographer’s peculiar position. He was a courtier, probably a foreigner, writing to Eadgyth under the reign of William. He could not be expected to trumpet forth the nomination and election of Harold with all the glee of the Peterborough 582Chronicler. On the election indeed he was not in any case likely to be eloquent; it is, as we have often seen, his invariable tendency to put the monarchical element forward on all occasions, just as the Peterborough writer always delights to dwell on the popular side of every public act. But to put even the bequest forward in any prominent way did not suit either his position or the scheme of his work. We have seen that he nowhere directly mentions the fact that either Harold or William ever reigned. William is never mentioned, never alluded to in any intelligible way. The only allusion to Harold’s reign is to be found in his mention of “Reges æquivoci” (p. 426) fighting near the Humber. One who writes in this sort of way could not be expected to insist at all strongly on Eadward’s nomination of Harold as his successor. A distinct and formal announcement that Harold was the choice of Eadward was to the Peterborough Chronicler a present fact which he delighted to record. To Florence it was a fact of national history which it was important to preserve in the face of contradictory fictions. To the Biographer it was a fact which it did not suit his scheme prominently to dwell on, while any prominent dwelling on it might not have been specially agreeable to his patroness. He therefore records the fact in a way, but he keeps it in the background; he mixes up the commendation of England to Harold with the commendation of Eadgyth, and he tries as it were to hide the Kingdom under the skirts of the Lady. Harold is, first of all, to be faithful and respectful to his sister; the Kingdom is given him as something quite secondary, perhaps as an incidental means of doing the more honour to Eadgyth. Yet the words after all really amount to a bequest. Eadward, in this narrative, enlarges on the merits of Eadgyth; he then stretches forth his hand to Harold, and says, “Hanc cum omni regno tutandam commendo.” The words alone might perhaps not strike a casual reader, but, when we read them by the light of the known facts and of the words of the contemporary Chroniclers, we at once see their meaning. The Biographer so chose his expressions as distinctly to imply a fact which it was not convenient for him directly to assert. He chose also a somewhat remarkable and a somewhat ambiguous word, “commendare.” As applied to Eadgyth and to Eadward’s Norman friends it would simply mean, “I entrust them to your protection;” but, as applied to a Kingdom, the word is a technical word, and carries a technical meaning. As a man, like the “commendati homines” of Domesday, 583commended himself to his lord, so the lord was often said to commend to his man the estate which he granted to him (see vol. i. p. 136). One can hardly doubt that the word was chosen on purpose. Eadward doubtless used, as I have ventured to make him in the text, some form of words, which the Biographer, even in slurring over the matter, expressed by the technical term “commendare,” and which the Chroniclers expressed by the words “geuðe”—most likely the actual word used, if Eadward spoke English—and “befæste þæt rice.” The case, under the circumstances, seems very plain, and what follows makes it plainer still. Eadward, having commended to Harold his wife and his Kingdom, goes on to make to him a series of requests (see p. 15) which imply that his own royal authority will, on his death, pass to Harold. They are requests which could be made only to a future King, or to one who was about to be clothed with the authority of a King. They would indeed be equally in place if addressed to a Regent. According to modern ideas, we should probably have expected the last wishes of Eadward to be that the young Eadgar should reign, but that Harold should govern. But such an arrangement was not in accordance with the customs of the time. A Regency seems never to have been thought of; not a word in any of our authorities leads us to believe that such a scheme entered the head of any man. The words then, if not addressed to a future Regent, must be addressed to a future King. In short, I have no doubt that the Biographer, the highest authority for Eadward’s personal acts, who had his information directly from persons who were present by Eadward’s death-bed (see p. 10, note 1), meant to imply that Eadward made a death-bed recommendation in favour of Harold. But I believe also that, partly through his own rhetorical turn, partly through the circumstances under which he wrote, he chose to wrap up his tale in a certain degree of obscurity of language.

With the Biographer before us, we better understand the Tapestry. Each explains the other; the two agree in the smallest points of detail. The Biographer describes four persons as being in immediate attendance on the King, and he gives us their names. They are the Lady Eadgyth, Archbishop Stigand, Earl Harold, and Robert the Staller. These four exactly answer to the four in the Tapestry. Of the two laymen no one can doubt that the one who is personally attending on the King is the court-officer, the Staller Robert. The other, who stands by the bed-side opposite to the 584Archbishop, is of course the Earl of the West-Saxons. To him, and to no one else, the King is stretching forth his hand. The action thus wrought in the stitch-work is actually recorded in the Life (see p. 14). And from the Life we know with what object Eadward then stretched forth his hand to Harold. It was not “simply to hid him farewell;” still less was it “to bid him to respect his oath to William” (see Planché, Journal of British Archæological Association, June 1867, p. 146). It was to commend to him his wife and his Kingdom; it was to make his last requests to the future King on behalf of his personal friends.

Such is the plain result of a comparison between the Tapestry and the Life. I do not think that any one who minutely makes the comparison will attach much importance to the sceptical remarks of Mr. Planché in the article to which I have just referred. But those who, with Mr. Planché, do not take in the difference between contemporary and secondary authorities, may, instead of the Life, use the account in Æthelred of Rievaux (X Scriptt. 400), who (or rather his guide Osbert) clearly copied from the Life.

Another smaller point may be noticed, namely the arrangement of the scenes in the Tapestry. It has been remarked by Mr. Planché and others that, at this point, the order of time is forsaken; the burial of Eadward is placed before his deathbed and death. On this Dr. Bruce (p. 75) says, very truly; “The seeming inconsistency is very easily explained. A new subject is now entered upon, and that subject is the right of succession. One important element in it is the grant of the King.” The designer of the Tapestry puts in close and pointed neighbourhood the last speech of Eadward, the death of Eadward, the offering of the Crown to Harold, the actual coronation. In this sort of picture-writing it would have disturbed the thread of the story if the burial of Eadward had been put in its right place, between the offering of the Crown and the coronation. The meaning of the order which is followed is plainly this; “Eadward left the Crown to Harold; he died; the Crown, in pursuance of his wishes, was offered to Harold; Harold was formally crowned.” It is hard to find any other explanation for the otherwise strange displacement of the funeral.

Explaining then, as we most fairly may, one contemporary witness by another, explaining the Tapestry by the Life and the Life by the Chronicles, we get a most distinct agreement of our 585best authorities in favour of the position that Eadward’s dying recommendation was made in favour of Harold. Some may perhaps be surprised to find the fact so distinctly set forth in the Norman Tapestry. But we shall soon see that all the earliest and best Norman writers fully admit the fact of the recommendation. What they do is to try to explain away its force as they best may. Stitch-work had so far the advantage over pen and ink that it was well nigh obliged to confine itself to facts, or at least to choose between facts and positive lies. The needle was a bad instrument for surmises and insinuations, and it is only once or twice in the story that it attempts them.

I now go on to the chain of later writers who repeat the contemporary English statement. They of course add nothing to its direct authority; still it is important and interesting to trace the existence of the two opposite traditions, side by side. Simeon of Durham (X Scriptt. 193), Ralph of Diss (479), Roger of Howden (i. 108, ed. W. Stubbs), Thomas Stubbs (X Scriptt. 1702), and the Ely historian (ii. 43, 44), all copy the words of Florence with regard to Harold’s accession, and most of them go on to copy his panegyric on Harold’s government. The account given by Peter of Langtoft is worth notice. He makes (i. 374 of the new ed., i. 53 of Robert of Brunne’s English version published by Hearne) Eadward settle the Crown on William in the days of the first Harold, immediately after the murder of Ælfred (see vol. ii. p. 302). Afterwards (i. 390, i. 61) he changed his mind, he forgot his promise to William, and settled the Crown on the Ætheling Eadward. So now on his death-bed, he again forgets both William and, I suppose, also forgets Eadward’s son Eadgar. He now makes a settlement in favour of Harold, nobody reminding him of the Duke’s claim (i. 398);

“Countes et barouns devaunt ly appelayt,

A Harald fiz Godewyn sun regne devisayt,

Le duk de Normendye ublyez avayt,

Du covenaunt k’il ly fist nul ly mentyvayt.”

His English translator was a little puzzled at this, and thus sets forth his difficulty (i. 65);

“Þe barons before him kald, and said unto þam alle,

‘Tille Harald, Godwyn sonne, þe regne wille best falle.’

Me mervailes of my boke, I trowe, he wrote not right

þat he forgate Wiliam of forward þat him hight.”

586He then goes on to moralize out of Eadward’s speech (see above, p. 11), which is not given in Peter of Langtoft. Ralph Higden (284), after his manner, copies Florence, but copies other accounts as well.

To go back a good many generations, Eadmer (5) states the fact of the bequest in his own words; “In brevi post hæc obiit Edwardus. Juxta quod ille ante mortem statuerat, in regnum ei successit Haraldus.” He is followed by Walter of Hemingburgh (i. 8) in nearly the same words. Bromton (957) gives a most strange and confused account, made up from all manner of quarters, but in which the words of Eadmer are still imbedded. He says that some of the English wished to elect Eadgar; “Sed quia puer erat, et tanto oneri minùs idoneus, Haraldus Comes, filius supradicti Godwini, viribus et genere fretus, contra sacramentum quod Willielmo Duci Normanniæ præstiterat, regni diadema sinistro omine illico invasit, et sic perjurus Sancto Edwardo successit, juxta quod idem Edwardus, ut quidam aiunt, ante mortem suam statuerat.” He goes on to say that this bequest of Eadward was made “non obstante” two earlier bequests to William; he then mentions the alternative statements that Harold crowned himself and that he was crowned by Ealdred, and ends with Florence’s panegyric in a shortened form.

The writer whom we call Bromton was thus, it is plain, fairly puzzled among contradictory accounts. The compiler of the Waverley Annals found himself in yet greater straits. The early part of his history is formed by the process of translating the Peterborough Chronicle, and sticking in bits, partly from other writers, especially from Henry of Huntingdon, partly out of his own head. This process is indeed the same as that by which the early parts of most Annals are put together. But the odd thing is that this annalist should have chosen as his chief authorities two writers who, at this point, are so specially hard to reconcile as the Peterborough Chronicler and Henry of Huntingdon. This indeed puts him in difficulties. He translates the important sentence in the Chronicle fairly enough, but in the midst of it he sticks in an epithet of abuse from Henry of Huntingdon. This process gives us the following statement (188 ed. Luard). Eadward is buried; “Eodem die Consul Haraldus, Consul perjurus, sicut Rex ei concesserat, et etiam populi electione, [swa swa se Cyng hit him geuðe, and eac men hine þærto gecuron] sacratus est in Regem.” Somehow 587or other this did not seem satisfactory; so he states William’s three causes of offence out of Henry of Huntingdon (see p. 282), and then returns to give another account of Harold’s accession; “Mortuo itaque Edwardo, ut supra diximus, Rege Anglorum pacifico, Haraldus, perjurus filius Godwini potentissimi Consulis, invasit regnum Anglorum et diadema in perjurio; qui regnavit uno anno, et non pleno, quia propriâ injustitiâ regnum, quod injustè surripuit, Deo nolente, perdidit.” Here is a characteristic contrast between the clear statement of facts translated from the contemporary writer and the vague reviling and moralizing which seems to have been a necessary offering to the orthodoxy of the compiler’s own time.

We will now turn to the writers on the other side. William of Poitiers, in his actual narrative of Harold’s accession (p. 121 Giles), evades the subject of Eadward’s bequest; we get only the vague talk about “occupavit” and the like. But in two later passages he distinctly shows that he knew that a bequest of Eadward was asserted by Harold and his advocates. In his account of the messages sent between William and Harold before the battle (129), he makes Harold admit an earlier bequest in favour of William, but he describes him as going on to argue that this earlier bequest was cancelled by a later bequest in favour of himself. The passage is a remarkable one;

“Meminit quidem [Heraldus] quod Rex Edwardus te [Willelmum] Anglici regni hæredem fore pridem decreverit, et quod ipse in Normanniâ de hâc successione securitatem tibi firmaverit. Novit autem jure suum esse regnum idem, ejusdem Regis, domini sui, dono in extremis illius sibi concessum. Etenim ab eo tempore, quo beatus Augustinus in hanc venit regionem, communem gentis hujus fuisse consuetudinem, donationem quam in ultimo fine suo quis fecerit, eam ratam haberi.”

The historical value of these accounts of messages and answers I shall discuss in another note (see Appendix GG). The value of the passage for my present purpose is twofold. It shows that the Normans were thoroughly aware of the fact of Eadward’s recommendation of Harold. It shows also that the fact was one which they found it hard to get over. For, in the answer which William is made to give to Harold’s words just quoted, though he has much to say in the way of setting forth his own claim, he has 588nothing to say in answer to Harold’s fact or to the legal argument founded on it.

The other passage is to be found in the wild invective which William of Poitiers (139) pours forth over the grave of Harold; “Arguunt extrema tua quam rectè sublimatus fueris Edwardi dono in ipsius fine.” This is a perfectly incidental witness. It seems to imply some such story as those which I shall presently quote from Orderic and Wace.

William of Jumièges (vii. 31) slurs over the facts both of the bequest and of the election. They are lost in the usual vague talk about “regnum invasit.” William of Malmesbury, in one of those remarkable passages in which he compares two statements together (ii. 228), allows that the English version of the story asserted a bequest in favour of Harold. Harold, he tells us in the usual style, “extortâ a principibus fide, arripuit diadema.” He then adds, “quamvis Angli dicant a Rege concessum.” He then argues à priori against the English statement from the imaginary ill-will of Eadward towards Harold; “Quod tamen magis benevolentiâ quam judicio allegari existimo, ut illi hæreditatem transfunderet suam cujus semper suspectam habuerat potentiam.” The expression “benevolentiâ” is of importance, as showing that, in William of Malmesbury’s time, English affection still clave to Harold’s memory, in opposition to all Norman calumnies. Indeed William himself, in that spirit of fairness which often pierces through all his prejudices, goes on to say; “quamvis, ut non celetur veritas, pro personâ quam gerebat, regnum prudentiâ et fortitudine gubernaret si legitimè suscepisset.”

As usual, the further we get from the time the more our informants know about the matter, the more new particulars they have to tell us. There is nothing in any of our three Williams to imply any death-bed nomination of the Norman Duke or to shut out a death-bed nomination of the English Earl. The latter is allowed to be at least the English version of the facts. There is nothing in any of the three to imply that the succession of William was so much as discussed by the bed-side of Eadward. The case is the reverse of the case with regard to the oath of Harold and the earlier promise to William. There the Norman writers assert a fact which the English writers do not venture to deny. Here the English writers assert a fact which the contemporary Norman writers do not venture to deny. But, as we get further away 589from the time, we come, first to ingenious explanations of the fact, and lastly to express denials of it.

Thus Orderic (492 B) admits the fact of the bequest to Harold, but he has a highly elaborate way of accounting for it. He connects it with the story of Harold’s oath and of his engagement to marry William’s daughter. Harold comes back to Eadward and tells him that William has made over to him his right to the Kingdom of England as the dowry of his daughter. Eadward wonders at such an arrangement, but he believes the story, and decrees the succession accordingly. The words are as follows;

“Regem Eduardum, qui morbo ingravescente jam morti proximus erat, circumvenit [Heraldus], eique transfretationis suæ et profectionis in Normanniam ac legationis seriem rettulit. Deinde fraudulentis assertionibus adjecit quod Willelmus Normanniæ sibi filiam suam in conjugium dederit, et totius Anglici regni jus, utpote genero suo, concessit. Quod audiens ægrotus princeps miratus est, tamen credidit, et concessit quod vafer tyrannus commentatus est.”

It must be this story of Orderic which formed the groundwork of the strange tale which we find in the French Life of Eadward. The subject is mentioned twice. Eadward, in the early days of the Christmas Gemót, before his final illness begins (3615–3634), calls Harold, and asks him what he means to do about the Kingdom (“Du regne queus tis purpos?”). It must be remembered that this immediately follows the legend (see vol. ii. p. 513) according to which Eadward’s days were already numbered. Harold says that the Crown belongs to William, that he has sworn to William’s succession, that he has no intention of interfering with it or of setting up any claim of his own, unless William should give him the Crown along with his daughter.

“Unc ne me vint en curage

D’aver vostre heritage;

Li ducs Willame de Normendie,

Ki droit i a e en mei se fie

L’avra, si cum il vus plest.

Juré l’ai, e il seur en est;

Cuvenant e leuté tendrai,

Vers vus ne trespasserai;

Au regne n’ai ne cleim ne dreit,

Si of sa fille nel me otreit.”

Harold then swears, and the other chief men swear with him. It will be seen that, in this account, the usual story of the oath is taken for granted, though it is nowhere directly told in the French Life. And Eadward’s promise to William seems also to be taken for granted; at any rate William is said to have a right, and it is not 590said in what that right consists. But there is no mention of any death-bed bequest to William, Harold, or anybody else.

The subject is introduced again later in the story (3895–3922), when Eadward is on his death-bed. It is Harold who volunteers a second mention of the matter. He says of his own free will that he has sworn not to disturb the succession to the Crown. The words put into his mouth are in some respects clearer and in some respects darker than the former passage. The succession belongs to William, both by Eadward’s earlier grant (“Granté l’avez au duc Willame”), and also by right of blood. But the right of blood is strangely enough (see Mr. Luard’s Preface, p. xix.) made to belong to William’s daughter rather than to William himself. This cannot refer to the descent of William’s children from Ælfred (see p. 81, and vol. ii. p. 304), because the right is distinctly said to come through Emma. The title of Queen, given to William’s daughter, whether given to her as William’s daughter or as Harold’s possible wife, is also very strange. The words are,

“Droit a par Emme ta mère

La reine ki sa fille ere.”

Still, if William does not make over the Crown to his daughter, the right belongs to William himself, and that right Harold will in no way disturb. Still he seems to imply that he has a fair hope that William will give him his daughter, and that he may reign in her right.

“Si a sa fille ne le dune,

Droiz est k’il eit la curune;

Kar jo si vus dire le os,

De espuser la ai en purpos;

A la pucele afiancé,

E au duc sui alliancé.”

(vv. 3907–3912.)

To this King Eadward answers not a word, but Archbishop Stigand takes up his parable in a somewhat unexpected way. He warns Harold that, if he does not keep to this covenant, neither he, to whose office it belongs to perform the rite—it is expressly called a sacrament—nor any other Prelate of the Kingdom will ever give him the royal unction, nor will any “man of our commons”—the expression is a very singular one—put the Crown on his head.

“Pur moi le di, a ki apent

A fere ceu seint sacrement,

N’ert prélat en la regiun

Ki fus face la enuncciun;

N’ert humme de nostre commune,

Ki vus mette en chef curune.”

591According to this view, Harold had a fair chance of a Crown matrimonial, and his chief fault lay in not marrying William’s daughter. This leads us into questions which I shall consider in later notes.

Wace (Roman de Rou, 10872–10970) fully admits the fact of a bequest, though perhaps an unwilling one, or rather he makes Eadward leave it to the nation to decide between William and Harold. In his account Eadward is at the point of death, and is very anxious that William should succeed him.

“Mult li fust vel se il péust,

Ke Guillealme sun regne éust.”

Harold gets together his kinsfolk and friends and whomsoever he thought good, and they go into the chamber of the sick man. An Englishman, whose name is not given, but who speaks by Harold’s instructions (“Si com Herout out comandé”), makes a long speech, setting forth the merits of Eadward’s government, and also how he has no son or daughter or other natural heir.

“Vielz hoem es jà, pose as vescu,

E si n’as nul enfant éu;

Filz u fille ne nul altre eir,

Ki por tei poisse remaneir,

Ki nos gart è ki nos maintienge,

E par lignage Rei devienge.”

(vv. 10899–10904.)

But a King they must have; there can be no peace in the land without one, and they have no way of getting a King but through him.

“Kar jà sanz Rei paiz n’averon,

Ne Rei n’aron se par tei non.”

(vv. 10909–10910.)

He prays Eadward then, while he still lives, to give them a King, who will be able to work peace and justice in the land. The speaker gradually comes nearer to the point. Eadward’s best friends are there; they have come together to ask a prayer of him, a prayer which, if he fails to grant, holy as his life has been, he will never see the face of God. There is something comforting in these words, something which one fancies that Wace must have learned from English tradition. They are words worthy of Savonarola by the death-bed of Lorenzo. It is pleasant to hear, by the bed-side of Eadward, the doctrine that to obey is better than sacrifice, that a man’s first business is to do his duty in that state of life to which it has pleased God to call him, and that no amount of ceremonial 592piety will avail a King who does not make the welfare of his Kingdom his first thought.

“Bien es, bien as fet, bien feras,

Deus as servi è Deus auras.

Ci est li mielx de tes païs,

Tut li mielx de tes amis;

Trestuit te sunt venu preïer,

E tu lor deiz bien otreïr,

Ço poise nos ke jà t’en vas,

Se por ço non ke Deus auras.”

(vv. 10919–10926.)

The prayer thus solemnly urged is that Eadward will agree to the unanimous wish of the nation and give them Harold for their King. As the speaker uttered the name of Harold, every Englishman in the room cried aloud that he had well spoken, and that, without Harold to her King, the land could have no peace.

“Ci tuit te viegnent hui requerre

Ke Heraut seit Rei de la terre;

Ne te savom mielx cunseillier,

Ne tu ne poz mielx espleitier.

Dez ke cil out Heraut nomé,

Par la chambre ont Engleiz crié

Ke bien parlout è bien diseit,

E li Reis creire le debveit:

Sire, dient-il, se tu nel’ faiz,

Jà en noz vies n’aron paiz.”

(vv. 10927–10936.)

The King hesitates; he sits up in his bed, and reminds the English lords that he had promised his Crown to the Duke of the Normans, and that some of themselves had sworn to that settlement. Harold then himself steps forward; he seems to use the same argument which is put into his mouth by William of Poitiers (see p. 587), namely the force of the last will and testament to revoke all former wills.

“Donc dist Heraut, ki fu en piez;

‘Ki ke vos, sire, fet aiez,

Otréiez mei ke jo Rei seie,

E ke vostre terre seit meie;

Jo ne quier ne maiz vostre dreit,

Jà mar plus por mei en fereit.’”

(vv. 10945–10950.)

The King then says that Harold shall have the Crown (“Heraut, dist li Reis, tu l’auras”); but he knows that he will die for it. He knows the Duke and his Barons and all the folk that will come at his bidding; God alone can guard Harold against them. Harold is ready to run the risk; he fears neither Norman nor anybody else. Eadward then turns himself, and says—whether of his free will or no the poet will not warrant—that the English may choose either Harold or William as they will.

“Dunc se turna li Reis, si dist,

Ne sai se par boen cuer le fist:

Ore facent Engleis Duc u Rei,

Herault u altre, jo l’otrei.”

(vv. 10961–10964.)

593Such a licence was the same as a nomination of Harold. The poet calls it making Harold his heir, and he seems to excuse the act on the ground that the land must have some King, and that William was not at hand. Eadward therefore let his Barons have their own will.

“Issi a fet Heraut sun eir

Quant Willame ne pout aveir.

Rei à regne aveir estuet,

Regne sanz Rei estre ne puet.

A sez Barunz a graanté

K’il en facent lor volenté.”

(vv. 10965–10970.)

This account does, as most of his accounts do, high honour to the honest and enquiring spirit of Master Wace. When he wrote, calumny was a hundred years old yet he is throughout far less influenced by it than party writers at the time, who had better means than he of learning the exact truth. Here is no reviling of Harold, no gross misrepresentation of facts. In opposition to the talk of William of Poitiers, and even to that of Orderic, Wace clearly understands and honestly sets forth how thoroughly Harold had the heart of England on his side. The story is well conceived and well told, and it is quite possible that it may rest to some extent on trustworthy tradition. Yet a certain amount of misconception runs through Wace’s story. He implies throughout that Eadward’s own wishes were still in favour of William, and he adds the common Norman misstatement, that the settlement in favour of William was confirmed by the Witan or, at any rate, by some of the chief Earls.

One or two smaller points may be noticed. The speaker in Wace mentions Eadward’s lack of children as a misfortune to himself and his country, not at all as the unavoidable result of a religious vow. Again, both he and the writer of the French Life evidently look on female succession as a possibility. Eadward, says the speaker, has neither son nor daughter, as if a daughter could possibly have succeeded. The French Biographer treats it as not unlikely that William will deal with England as Philip the Second did with the Low Countries, that he will make the whole Kingdom over to his daughter and her husband. He indeed almost seems, though his language is very strange and dark, to recognize some right by blood in William’s daughter which did not exist in William himself. This notion of passing crowns by the spindle-side was strange to Englishmen, and even to Normans, in the eleventh century. The nearest approach to it is William’s own 594half-claim, not exactly as heir, but as next of kin through Emma. But, at the courts of the Henries, no doctrine could be more orthodox and acceptable. Henry the First actually did something very like what is here spoken of as likely to be done by his father. He endeavoured to settle, though not indeed in his lifetime, his whole dominion on his daughter. When both Wace and the French Biographer wrote, the descendants of that daughter, by male descent mere Counts of Anjou—more truly (see p. 181) mere Counts of the Gatinois—but scions through her both of Rolf and of Ælfred, reigned over England, reigned over or claimed Normandy, as their inheritance by female succession. The Angevin Kings had no dislike to be complimented on their descent from the old royal stock of England. Æthelred of Rievaux (Gen. Regg. X Scriptt. 350), tracing by the spindle-side only, addresses Henry the Second as the son of Matilda, the daughter of Matilda, the daughter of Margaret, the daughter of Eadmund, and so on—Normans and Angevins being kept out of sight—to Ælfred, Cerdic, Woden, and Adam. The vision of Eadward, as explained by Æthelred and others (see above, p. 12), implies the unlawfulness of the rule of Harold and both Williams, and gives Henry the First only a Crown matrimonial, which he hands on to the grandson of Eadgyth-Matilda. On all this Æthelred, an English flatterer of Henry the Second, would naturally dwell. The French Biographer, writing to Henry the Third, would find the same general doctrine acceptable. Still the conception of William, as the founder of the existing dynasty, held too firm a possession of men’s minds for his pretensions to be openly denied. The direct assertion of the rights of Eadgar belongs to a later stage still, to which we shall come presently. As for Wace, he was a Norman born, and was not likely to dwell by choice on any of these points. As a subject of Henry the Second, he was bound to admit female succession both for England and for Normandy, but he had no special temptation to enlarge on it.

A still more wonderful view of the Crown matrimonial is to be found in Gervase of Tilbury (Otia Imperialia, ii. 20, ap. Leibnitz, Scriptt. Rer. Brunsw. i. 945); but I reserve the passage for later quotation, as it is altogether the most amazing account on record of the whole matter between William and Harold.

From honest Wace it is unpleasant to turn to the author of the 595Brevis Relatio (Giles, 4). In his version Harold, during Eadward’s illness, asks him for a grant of the Crown. The King, mindful of his promise to William, refuses it. This however he mentions only as a report.

“Dicunt autem quidam tunc quod Heraldus, quasi oblitus sacramentorum quæ Willelmo Comiti in Normanniâ fecerat, antequam Rex Edwardus obiret, ad eum pervenit, eumque rogavit ut ei coronam regni Angliæ concederet. Quo audito, Rex Edwardus, non immemor quod Willelmo Comiti Normannorum, cognato suo, regnum Angliæ jamdudum concessisse, respondit Heraldo nullo modo hoc se posse facere, quia Willelmum Comitem Normannorum idem hæredem fecerat.”

Lastly, the Hyde writer (p. 290) goes one step further, and makes Eadward bequeath the Crown to William by his last will; “Regnum moriens Willelmo Comiti consobrino suo reliquit.”

Among the Northern writers the only one who has anything to say about the bequest is Snorro. It could hardly be looked for in Saxo (203), who makes Harold murder Eadward. Adam of Bremen (iii. 51) has only Norman-sounding talk about “sceptrum invasit.” Harold’s one Norwegian admirer, whom I shall have to quote again, the Biographer of Olaf Tryggwesson, speaks of his election by the people, but has nothing to say about any bequest by the King. But Snorro knew more about the matter than almost anybody else. His account (Laing, iii. 77; Johnstone, 192) is short, but remarkable. It must be remembered that it is connected with Snorro’s notion about Harold being the youngest son of Godwine and the personal favourite of Eadward, and with his notion that Tostig was still in England and seeking the Kingdom by fair means. Just before Eadward’s last moments, Harold and a few other men are by him. Harold leans over the King; then he turns to his companions, and calls them to witness that the King has given him the Kingdom of England (“Þá laut Haralldr ysir Konung oc mællti; ‘því skírskota ec undir alla ydor, at Konungrinn gaf mer nu Konungdóminn, oc allt ríki í Englandi’”). The same day a meeting is held to choose a King; Harold appears with his witnesses and claims the Crown by virtue of Eadward’s dying bequest. The issue is that he is chosen King (“Þann sama dag var þar höfdingia-stefna, var þá rætt um Konungs-tekio, let þá 596Haralldr bera fram vitni sín þau, er Játvardr Konungr gaf hönom ríkit á deyianda degi; lauk sva þeirri stefno, at Haralldr var til Konungs tekinn”). It will be seen that, though there is some colouring here, there is no gross misrepresentation of fact. Snorro writes in the interest of Tostig, not in the interest of William. Of a bequest to William, of an oath of homage from Harold to William, he knows nothing. With him (Laing, iii. 94; Johnstone, 216) William’s claim is derived wholly from his kindred to Eadward, his wrath being embittered by Harold’s breach of his promise to marry his daughter.

I think then that there is no fact in history better attested than the fact of Eadward’s dying recommendation in favour of Harold. The best informed contemporary writers assert it. The most careful and judicious compilers of later days, from Florence and Simeon onwards, accept their statement. The hostile contemporary writers never distinctly deny the fact. They either slur the matter over, or wrap it up in vague and declamatory words, or else admit the fact, while they explain and colour it after their own fashion. The fact then I hold to be undoubted. Whatever constitutional influence a King of the English had in the appointment of his successor, that influence was exercised on behalf of Harold. But we must beware of attaching any undue importance to Eadward’s nomination. It was of real constitutional value, but it was not everything. It was, after all, a mere recommendation to the Witan, and Harold’s real title to the Crown was that the Witan accepted that recommendation. Writers who, either at the time or afterwards, did not fully understand the English Constitution, were apt to lay too much stress on the bequest to either candidate. Men who wrote either in times or in countries where the idea of elective kingship was not familiar, did not take in how completely the kingship of England was simply the highest office in the land, an office which the people gave and which the people could take away. To them a kingdom seemed like a private estate, which, in ordinary cases, would pass according to the laws of succession, and which, in case of the failure of heirs, the owner could bequeath or even sell. These notions of succeeding to kingdoms and of bequeathing and selling kingdoms like private estates gradually took root, and many of the dynastic wars of the 597later middle age arose out of bequests or purchases of this kind. How foreign they were to the ideas of Englishmen in the eleventh century I need not again set forth. The main value of the proofs which I have collected is as an argumentum ad hominem against William and the supporters of his claims. Against them the argument is perfect. Whatever right William might have by virtue of an earlier bequest was taken away by the later bequest in favour of Harold. Eadward then made Harold his successor as far as he could constitutionally make any one his successor; but this nomination was only a very small part of Harold’s right. The far more important examination of the evidence on the great question of Harold’s election by the Witan of all England will form the subject of my next note.

NOTE C. p. 21. The Election of Harold.

The passage of Florence which I took as my text in my last note will serve as my text in the present note also. Harold was, according to that passage, “a totius Angliæ primatibus ad regale culmen electus.” According to the Peterborough Chronicle he took the Kingdom, not only as the King granted it to him, but as men chose him thereto (“swa swa se Cyng hit him geuðe, and eac men hine þærto gecuron”). That this means a regular election by the Witan there can be no reasonable doubt. The Peterborough Chronicler, writing at the moment, without any thought of possible controversies, used the vague word “men.” Expressions of the like sort are not uncommon to express the action of a Gemót. Florence, writing when calumny was rife, and wishing to answer all misstatements of every kind, uses the most emphatic words that he could find. Harold was chosen “a totius Angliæ primatibus.” He was chosen then, and did not simply seize the Crown by force or fraud. He was chosen, not by some small or packed assembly, but by the chief men of the land. And he was chosen, not by this or that shire or Earldom, but by the chief men of the whole land. However small might be the number of Northumbrians actually present in the Assembly, Northumberland was constitutionally bound by their vote, no less than Wessex and East-Anglia. All this is implied in the weighty and carefully chosen words of 598Florence. Harold was elected by the only power which had a right to dispose of the Crown, by that Great Council of the Nation, which made and repealed laws, which laid on and took off taxes, which declared war and made peace, which elected and deposed Earls, Bishops, and Kings. Such is the undoubted meaning of the words of the two highest of all the authorities which mention the matter. That the Abingdon and Worcester Chroniclers, while they assert the bequest and the coronation, are silent about the election, is in no way wonderful. They do not at any time take that pleasure in putting forth the popular side of our Constitution which was clearly felt by Florence, and by the Peterborough writer still more keenly. The Peterborough Chronicler wrote at the moment in the fulness of his heart; Florence wrote as a grave and judicial harmonizer many years later. Both tell the same story.

These two authorities are to my mind quite enough to establish the fact of Harold’s legal and regular election; still I will go on, as before, to trace out such subsidiary evidence as we have in its favour, before we see what is said on the other side.

The Biographer, who formed so important a part of our evidence for establishing the bequest of Eadward, now fails us altogether. As I have before said, he does not directly record any event after Eadward’s death.

The Tapestry (pl. 7) contains a scene, of which I have made much use in the text (p. 22), in which the Crown is offered to Harold by two persons. This scene is highly important. It is of itself an answer to all the vague Norman talk about Harold seizing the Crown by fraud or force—all the declamation about “invasit,” “arripuit,” and the like. The Crown is offered to him very quietly, and he is evidently represented as still doubting whether to take it or no. The scene too is put (see p. 584) in a position which is evidently meant to connect it with Eadward’s death-bed bequest. But in this scene in the Tapestry, though there is nothing to exclude, there is nothing to assert any formal election. The Crown is evidently brought from the chamber of the dead King, and the story would run just as well if it were brought simply in obedience to his dying orders, without reference to the choice of any one else. One can easily understand that, without the least intention to falsify the story, the designers of the Tapestry, just like the Abingdon and Worcester Chroniclers, might not feel 599specially called upon to dwell on the actual election, a scene, one may add, which it would be by no means easy to represent in worsted work. But, interpreting one authority by another, we are fully justified in taking the scene in the Tapestry to be the result of the election spoken of by the Peterborough Chronicler and by Florence. The Crown was offered to Harold; that fact is represented in the Tapestry. Our other authorities enable us to add that it was offered to Harold in pursuance of a vote of the Witan.

The election of Harold being thus admitted, the question follows, Was that election absolutely unanimous? Were any votes given, any speeches made, any feelers thrown out, on behalf of William, Eadgar, or any other possible candidate? It is quite possible that such was the case, but the contemporary writers who mention the election do not go minutely enough into details to prove anything either way. Something like a candidature on the part both of William and of Eadgar is implied by several later writers, but not in terms which make us feel very positive about it. In any case Harold must have had a triumphant majority.

It is not so easy to put together a catena of later writers in favour of Harold’s election as it is to do so in favour of Eadward’s recommendation on his behalf. Two or three hundred years after the time, the idea of bequest was more familiar than the idea of election. We have indeed the string of writers, beginning with Simeon, who copy the whole passage from Florence in full. But we have no independent witnesses to the tradition of the election answering to Eadmer and Walter of Hemingburgh, who assert the bequest in words of their own, not borrowed from Florence (p. 586). The entry in the Waverley Annals I have already quoted (ib.). There the first entry, translated from the Peterborough Chronicle, asserts the election in the strongest terms, but it is immediately qualified by the strange Normannizing passage which follows. We should remember also that such an expression as that of Eadmer, who simply says that Harold “succeeded according to Eadward’s will,” though it does not assert the election, yet in no way excludes it. And the use of a word like “successit” is of itself important, in the teeth of words like “invasit” and “arripuit,” which we shall presently come to.

It was, as we might have expected, in Harold’s own College at Waltham that the tradition of the popular election of its great 600Founder lasted longest. There, down into the thirteenth century, it was still a thing to be remembered and gloried in. And, what we might have been less prepared for, it comes out very strongly in at least one Scandinavian writer.

Of the two Waltham books, the De Inventione (c. 20) asserts the election in the strongest terms;

“Post obitum itaque sanctissimi Regis, Comes Haroldus unanimi omnium consensu in Regem eligitur, quia non erat eo prudentior in terrâ, armis strenuus magis, legum terræ sagacior, in omni genere probitatis cultior, ita ut huic electioni non possent contradicere, qui eum summo odio persequuti fuissent usque ad tempora illa, quoniam tanto operi adeò insignem in omnibus non genuerit Anglia.”

I do not quite understand the last part of the passage, which is perhaps purposely obscure. It may mean that Eadwine and Morkere consented to the election; when we remember what the writer had said about “Normanni et Gallici” in c. 14 (see vol. ii. p. 39), we may perhaps rather think that the allusion is to the Norman favourites. At any rate an unanimous election is asserted as strongly as words can put it.

The romantic biographer of Harold may be fairly quoted on such a matter as this, because he carries on the local tradition which we find in the writer De Inventione. He twice mentions the accession of his hero. The first time it is spoken of merely in general terms (Chron. Ang. Norm. ii. 167); “Ubique fere terrarum celebri sermone vulgatum est quemadmodùm, Edwardo sanctissimo ad cœleste translato, in regno terreno successerit Haroldus.” The second passage (ii. 187, 188) is very remarkable, whether anybody chooses to believe the story or not. The writer asserts an unanimous election of Harold, and that under very singular circumstances. He records Harold’s oath, and argues at great length that it was an oath which ought not to be kept. He then says that, as soon as Harold came back from Normandy, he laid the case before the Witan, who declared the oath not binding, and with one consent elected him King. This would almost seem to be during Eadward’s lifetime; at least the heading of the Chapter (manifestly corrupt) contains these words, “Domino favente et faveto [sic] convivente Edwardo ipsum regnâsse affirmant.” This I do not profess to explain, unless the writer supposed some settlement in 601Harold’s favour to have been made during Eadward’s life-time (cf. vol. ii. p. 421 et seqq.). The actual passage in the text runs as follows;

“Haroldus ... suis demum redditus, quid pertulerit, quid egerit, cunctis palam exponit. Exponentem ut audit, universitas in irâ excandescit, initam mediante sacramento pactionem improbat, ne observeretur vehementer reclamat. ‘Absit,’ inquiunt, ‘absit ut serviamus Normannis. Absit ut fastûs Normannici jugo barbarico nobilitatis Anglicæ urbana libertas nullatenùs substernatur.’ Quid multa?

Conclamant omnes, sedet hæc sententia cunctis.

Posthabitoque juramenti, quod nullum esse credebatur, periculo, Haroldus demum unanimi omnium consensu sublimatur in Regem.”

I do not rely on this as history, though possibly the statement is not to be cast aside without thought. The main value of the passage is to show how strong and enduring the local tradition was. This account, asserting Harold’s popular election in the strongest terms, is not very many years older than the French Life of Eadward.

Later still, we have Peter of Langtoft (i. 398) distinctly asserting both the fact and the lawfulness of Harold’s election;

“Après la mort Eduuarde, Harald est elu

Ray par la commune, la coroune ad resceu;

En drayture et ley leaus est-il tenu.”

Again Robert of Brunne (i. 66) is puzzled, and adds a comment of his own;