The Norman Conquest (23 page)

The day after his death the Confessor’s body was carried the short distance between his palace in Westminster and the adjacent abbey, there to be laid to rest. It was 6 January 1066. Later that same day, Harold Godwineson was crowned as his successor.

9

The Gathering Storm

H
ow and why did Harold Godwineson come to succeed Edward the Confessor? What of the candidacy of Edgar Ætheling, son of Edward the Exile, whose claim by birth was manifestly superior? Had Harold long intended to wear his brother-in-law’s crown, or did he accept it only at the last minute, in deference to the king’s dying wishes? Was his accession a legitimate act or a usurpation? Was he spurred by ambition or rather a sense of duty? As ever, this pivotal moment in the history of the Norman Conquest raises many questions for which there can be no definitive answers.

Part of the difficulty, of course, is that in eleventh-century England there was no hard-and-fast set of rules governing the succession. At the start of the century the trend may have been in the direction of a hereditary principle, but that particular apple cart had been upset by the return of the Vikings, who had characteristically re-emphasized the importance of violence and opportunism. Cnut’s grip on England, observed William of Poitiers, ‘owed only to conquest by his father and himself and nothing else’.
¹

So what else was there? In the succession debate that followed Cnut’s death we can discern three key factors. First, although there was no strict line of precedence, a close blood link with the previous king was still highly desirable – hence the unsubtle attempt to smear Harold Harefoot by suggesting that he was not really a son of Cnut at all but a low-born changeling. Second, it was also evidently considered beneficial for a prospective king to have been in some way designated as such by his predecessor. Thus the
Encomium Emmae Reginae
insists that Cnut had given Harthacnut everything under his
control ‘while he was still living’, and maintains that Harthacnut had in turn invited Edward the Confessor to come to England in 1041 in order to hold the kingdom with him.
²

The most important factor, however, in deciding who should be king was clearly election – not in the wide sense in which we use the term today, but in the sense of obtaining the approval of the majority of the kingdom’s leading men. Harold Harefoot had plainly succeeded in 1035 because he was backed by just such a majority; Harthacnut, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle makes clear, had accepted the crown in 1040 at the invitation of a body of magnates. And Edward the Confessor, although he could claim descent from the ancient royal line and perhaps designation by his predecessor as well, ultimately owed his throne to the collective will of the English aristocracy, and in particular Earl Godwine.
³

How, then, did Godwine’s eldest surviving son manage to obtain the throne in January 1066? Clearly, in hereditary terms Harold’s case was extremely weak. The earl was related to Edward the Confessor, but only by virtue of his sister’s marriage. His claim therefore had to rest heavily on nomination by his predecessor and election by the magnates – which, according to some sources, is precisely what happened. ‘Earl Harold’, says the E version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ‘succeeded to the kingdom of England just as the king had granted it to him, and also men chose him for it.’ Similarly, John of Worcester, writing several decades later, says that Harold, ‘whom the king had chosen before his demise as successor to the kingdom, was elected by all the principal men of England to the dignity of the kingship’.
⁴

But both John of Worcester and the E Chronicle are written with a strong pro-Godwine bias; other sources are not nearly so sure about the legitimacy of Harold’s elevation. Was he, for instance, really nominated by his predecessor? As it happens we have a very full account of the Confessor’s last hours in the
Life of King Edward
. The old king, we are told, had been in bed for days, slipping in and out of consciousness and rarely saying anything intelligible. Of the small number of people who were with him, the author of the
Life
names just four: ‘the queen, who was sitting on the floor warming his feet in her lap; her brother, Earl Harold; Robert, the steward of the palace, and Archbishop Stigand’.
⁵

We can picture this scene more fully because it appears on the Bayeux Tapestry (which, moving seamlessly from Harold’s return from Normandy, resumes its story at this point). Having shown us
the Confessor’s corpse being carried for burial in Westminster Abbey, it returns, as if in flashback, to the king’s deathbed. The scene is so similar to that described in the
Life
that one source (probably the Tapestry) must have been inspired by the other. We see Edward, lying in bed, surrounded by four figures. A servant (perhaps Robert the Steward) props him up, while a weeping woman (presumably Queen Edith) sits at his feet. On the far side of the bed stands a tonsured cleric, whom we take to be Archbishop Stigand, while on the near side a fourth figure, who must be Harold, kneels and touches the king’s outstretched hand with his own. ‘Here King Edward, in bed, speaks to his faithful servants’, says the caption.

As usual the Tapestry gives us no idea what is actually being said, but the
Life of King Edward
purports to give us the Confessor’s last words. ‘May God be gracious to this my wife’, he says to Edith, ‘for the zealous solicitude of her service. For certainly she has served me devotedly, and has always stood by my side like a beloved daughter.’ Edward then turns to address Harold (‘stretching out his hand’, says the
Life
, just as depicted on the Tapestry): ‘I commend this woman and all the kingdom to your protection’, he continues. ‘Serve and honour her with faithful obedience as your lady and sister, which she is, and do not despoil her, as long as she lives, of any due honour got from me.’
⁶

The heavy emphasis on Edith’s welfare is hardly surprising, given that the
Life
was written at her behest. What
is
surprising is how casually the subject of the kingdom is introduced. Edward seems to mention it in passing, almost as an afterthought. As a result, his words fall a long way short of providing a clear and unambiguous designation of his successor. Indeed, all the king says is that he commends the kingdom to Harold’s protection, which sounds rather more like the words one would use to nominate a regent. Of course, we don’t have to believe that these were actually Edward’s last words, any more than we have to accept the testimony of the pro-Godwine sources that insist Harold did receive his predecessor’s blessing. The
Life of King Edward
was completed after the Norman Conquest, and as such suffers from hindsight. Had there been an unambiguous bequest to Harold, the author and his patron, living in a post-Conquest world, may have diplomatically decided to downplay it. Nonetheless, when all allowances have been made, it remains striking that our best-informed source for the Confessor’s death is so reticent on the crucial subject of who he wanted to succeed him.
⁷

Nor is the
Life
alone in using such guarded language. The E version of the Chronicle may insist that Edward ‘granted’ the kingdom to Harold, but the C and D versions say simply that the king ‘entrusted’ it to him – a significant verbal weakening which again suggests that Harold may have been empowered to take care of the kingdom only as a temporary measure. The Bayeux Tapestry might seem to offer something a little stronger, for immediately after Edward’s death it shows Harold being handed the crown by two figures, one of whom points back to the deathbed scene, as if to indicate that the one event had legitimized the other. But, once again, the Tapestry is carefully ambiguous. Harold’s supporters could interpret this scene as being the moment when the crown was bequeathed to him; his detractors, on the other hand, might see only the moment where Harold
claimed
the bequest had been made. Similarly, it is often argued in Harold’s favour that the Norman chronicler William of Poitiers – a very hostile source – refers to Edward’s deathbed bequest several times and, while he challenges its legitimacy, he makes no attempt to deny that it happened. This, however, proves nothing. Only a handful of people – those present by his bedside – could
have actually
refuted
the suggestion that Edward, in his last hours, had nominated Harold. So far as we can tell, none of them did so. All we can say is, in the case of Queen Edith, she chose to describe it in a very non-committal way, and that such vagueness is also apparent in a number of other contemporary sources. Many people, it seems, harboured serious doubts about Harold’s version of events.
⁸

What of Harold’s election? Was he, as the E Chronicle and John of Worcester maintain, chosen to be king by the English magnates, or did he, as William of Poitiers alleges, seize the throne ‘with the connivance of a few wicked men’? Certainly Harold was in a good position to put his case to a wide audience because, as we’ve seen, Edward the Confessor had died just a few days after Christmas and the dedication of Westminster Abbey, the combination of which events would have ensured there was a crowd of magnates at court. This is confirmed, more or less, by a pair of charters in favour of the abbey, given on the day of the dedication (28 December 1065), which show that during his last days Edward was indeed surrounded by the most important men in his kingdom. On the spiritual side we see no fewer than ten bishops, including both archbishops, as well as eight abbots. On the secular side, we see five earls: Harold, his brothers Gyrth and Leofwine, and also the brothers Eadwine and Morcar.
⁹

The presence of Eadwine and Morcar – and the glaring absence of Earl Tostig – reminds us immediately of the recent rebellion. Just eight weeks earlier, the two brothers had assumed the leadership of the largest uprising in living memory, and successfully brought about Tostig’s downfall, despite the fact that he was supposedly the second most powerful man in England. Morcar was now the new earl of Northumbria, which meant that he and Eadwine (lately recognized as earl of Mercia) between them controlled almost half the kingdom. Clearly, for Harold’s bid for the throne to have been the success that it was, it must have been essential to have secured their support. Harold, of course, had led the negotiations with the rebels in October, and ultimately accepted that Morcar should replace Tostig. Were any other deals, one wonders, struck at the same moment?

Certainly a deal was struck at some point, because by early 1066
Harold was married to Eadwine’s and Morcar’s sister, Ealdgyth. This was very obviously a political match; apart from anything else, Harold already had a long-term partner, after the Danish fashion, named Edith Swan-Neck. Irritatingly, we do not know when his wedding to Ealdgyth took place, so we cannot date the alliance it embodies. She had previously been the wife of Gruffudd ap Llywelyn, the Welsh king killed in August 1063, so in theory her marriage to Harold could have occurred at any point after her first husband’s death. It is most unlikely, however, to have occurred before the rebellion of October 1065: whatever Tostig’s assertions to the contrary, it is impossible to believe that Harold had prior knowledge of the rebels’ plans, and far more plausible that the revolt itself obliged him to reach an accommodation with his brother’s opponents. The question therefore becomes whether the deal was done before or after the Confessor’s death. Given that the king’s declining health must have been evident to everyone in the final weeks of 1065, a deal during those weeks would seem the likeliest scenario. Presumably, though, it was agreed in secret. Harold could hardly have married Eadwine’s and Morcar’s sister without revealing his intentions regarding the throne – especially if, as later chroniclers contend, he had earlier agreed to marry a daughter of the duke of Normandy.
¹⁰

For how long had Harold harboured such intentions? Certainly the idea of becoming king had occurred to him well before his alleged designation by the dying Confessor.
¹¹
That much is clear from the
Life of King Edward
, the original purpose of which was plainly to justify some sort of Godwine takeover once the Confessor was gone. What form this would have taken is uncertain: the author divides his praise fairly evenly between Harold, Tostig and his patron, Queen Edith. But since that plan, and the
Life’
s original purpose, was wrecked by the northern rebellion, we can safely date Harold’s ambition for power earlier than October 1065. Some historians have suggested that it was spurred by his trip to Normandy, which revealed the undiminished hopes of Duke William. Yet if anything this episode pushes the seeds of the earl’s ambition further back in time, for all our sources agree that at least part of his reason for going to Normandy was to effect the liberation of his brother and nephew – men whom William had
long held hostage as a guarantee of his right to one day rule England. Harold’s desire to put his kinsmen beyond harm’s reach arguably indicates that his thoughts were already tending in the same direction.
¹²