Chapter 16
Viking and English kings
Perhaps it was inevitable that the English monarchical succession would end in disaster plagued as it was by the Vikings as well as by truncated reigns and incompetent kings. It was certainly not a glorious finale but the English had laid the foundations of England and much of their edifice survived the Norman Conquest and lasted in some part to the present day.
Edgar died in 975 and was succeeeded by his son Edward who was murdered in 978 at Corfe, a deed that is described in the Chronicles as ‘the worse deed ever done’. A year later, the ealdorman of Mercia dug up his bones from the unhallowed grave and they were translated to the abbey at Shaftesbury not far away where his tomb became the source of miracles that led to the popular young king turning into a saint.
Ǽthelred, only nine or ten at the time, followed him on the throne. It is clear that the murder, done in his interests, started him off on the wrong foot. He earned a clever nickname, Ǽthelred Un-ræd. Ǽthelraed (æthel and ræd) means ‘noble counsel’ while Unæd means ‘no counsel’ so he became ‘noble counsel, no counsel’ a good headline for a modern newspaper. But he was an unlucky individual, the wrong man in the wrong place.
His was a reign that has become a byword for the incompetent handling of the fyrd by a king who seemed not to be able to take a decision and, what is worse, was not trusted by his subjects. He was not well-served by his subordinates either. In 992 the Chronicles have the story ‘The king then appointed ealdorman Aelfric………..and they were to try if they might trap the (Viking) force out to sea somewhere, Then ealdorman Aelfric sent a command that the (Viking) force be warned, and in the night before the day they were to come together, he fled by night from the troops to his own great disgrace.’ In 1003 we learn that an army was raised to fight the force led by Swein. ‘The ealdorman Aelfric should have led the army, but he displayed all his old wiles. As soon as they were close enough to look on one another, he feigned sickness, and began retching to vomit, and said that he was taken ill; so he betrayed the people he should have led’. In 1010 the Chronicles summed up the situation: ‘..when the force was in the east, the troops were kept west, and when they were in the south, then our troops were in the north’.
During the last years of the tenth century, after the Viking peoples had two centuries of fighting experience behind them, a new and formidable force was invented which was the highly trained professional army whose aim was simply to fight. The first evidence of this comes not from weapons or burials but from a tradition which talks of a stronghold built near Stettin at the mouth of the River Oder. This was Jómsburg. It is described as having a large harbour that could accommodate 300 Viking ships and an adjoining fortress with stone ramparts defended by catapults. Inside there were strict rules: no women were allowed, discipline was fierce and only Jómsvikings of proven valour could be admitted. All booty won in their expeditions was to be allocated by the commanding officer. We may consider that at this time the story is only a martial daydream but hard proof is available in Denmark. There, four similar forts have been discovered built on royal estates at Trelleborg (Figure Six) in western Sjælland, at Fyrkat Mølle near Hobro, ‘Nun’s Hill near Odense and a much larger one at Aggersborg. The first three, built by Sven Forkbeard, between them could probably have housed 3000 soldiers.
Trelleborg has been excavated. A very impressive circular rampart some 17m wide and 68m in diameter has a ditch running round outside the eastern half of its perimeter. Four diametrically opposite gateways give entrance to roads that intersect in the middle of the enclosure. In each quadrant so formed were blocks of four large timber barracks in a hollow square. Each barrack was a hundred Roman feet (29.5m long) and were slightly bow- or boat-shaped. Outside the ditch but within an outer bank and ditch were fifteen similar houses arranged in a curving line and not far off was a cemetery. Excavators found many weapons and the site was interpreted as one of Swein’s military establishments dating to between 950 and 1050. Outside the site the archaeologists have erected an impressive reconstruction of one of the identical barrack blocks but unfortunately misinterpreted the excavation evidence and have given it an overhanging roof supported by upright posts instead of raking struts reinforcing the walls.
Some details of the warriors who fought in this new sort of professional army comes from runic inscriptions that commemorate volunteers who were killed in expeditions in the west. One was a famous Swedish Viking whose daughter married Swein Forkbeard, the second is Thorkell the Tall, Jómsviking, and the third inscription mentions that the deceased served with Cnut who became king of England. Another commemorates Úlfr who ‘received geld three times in England. The first was paid by Tόsti, the second by Ђorketill and the third by Knútr (Cnut).’ Swedes were famous mercenary soldiers taking service with several forces, the best-known of which was the bodyguard of the Byzantine Emperors, the Varangian Guard. In the service of the Eastern Emperors they landed in Crete and southern Italy, fought in Mesopotamia and Dalmatia and died in the sands on the Caspian shore. These ‘axe-bearing barbarians’ remained in the Emperor’s service until the early thirteenth century but after 1066, numerous Englishmen left home and soon the guard was more English than Viking.
Back in Denmark their wages were taken out of the tribute paid by the countries into which they intruded. In England this tribute was known as the Danegeld which was probably a source of some English silver pennies found in Scandinavia. Many, throughout the period, and probably all the earlier ones are down to trade but the vast quantities that arrived during the reigns of Ǽthelred and Cnut (978-1035) were mainly Danegeld, most being in the reign of the earlier monarch. Altogether it has been said that over 40,000 have been found in Scandinavia but this is probably only a percentage of the whole The rest of the silver was jewellery and other trinkets, ingots and foreign coins, all collected by the English authorities in the form of tax and weighed out to make up the amount of bullion demanded by the Vikings.
Such soldiers as these, rigorously trained in a ‘brotherhood’ of warfare were not likely to be easily defeated and nor were they in England when their raids resumed in the tenth century. In 1009 an unusually large army was led into Kent by Thorkell the Tall, a famous Jόmsviking and Hemming. A third brother was actually commander of the Jόmsborg fort. The invaders forced the men of Kent to pay tribute but were repulsed by the Londoners so they turned to burn Oxford then marched to East Anglia, where they met the East Anglians in a battle near Thetford and won the day. By the autumn they had completed their murderous circuit and were back in Kent and seized the Archbishop of Canterbury whom they later murdered. Thorkell, their commmander, was so appalled by this that he switched sides when the bulk of his army left England at the end of 1012. Thorkell’s desertion of the Jόmsvikings who owed allegiance to Swein Forkbeard, king of Denmark, perhaps provoked Swein to unvade England in 1013.
Swein, a notable warrior, probably built Jόmsborg and founded Trelleborg. His first intervention was in Kent but this was only a sighting shot. He took his army up the coast to the Humber and, via the River Tees, established a base at Gainsborough. The Northumbrian kingdom at this time was a Danish one and he was enthusiastically accepted as king and also as leader by the Danes in Danelaw. He then marched south into Mercia, took Oxford and from there pushed into Wessex where he received the surrender of the city of Winchester. After an unsuccessful attack on London, he turned west along the route of the present M4 to attack Bath.
Ǽthelred, the English king, gave up at this point and the Londoners surrendered and Swein was recognized as King of England but he died a few months later early in 1014. At the Danish base of Gainsborough the Danes voted to accept Cnut, his son, as their new leader while Ǽthelred took advantage of the lull to return to England and lead a force against the Danes. Cnut, who had pressing matters to settle in Denmark, hag sailed home but returned next year with reinforcements which included Thorkell the Tall who again had switched sides. The English opposition was now led by Edmund Ironside, Ǽthelred’s son, and by the Londoners who acclaimed Edmund as their king who was then able in a brilliant campaign to recover his homeland of Wessex. Cnut had withdrawn to re-organise and recoup but on his return to the front he received a decisive setback in Kent but was not yet ready to give up. In the autumn of 1016 the forces met again at Ashingdon in Essex and this time the victory went to Cnut. In the agreement that followed, Edmund was left with Wessex but Cnut took over the rest of the country. This arrangement lasted only a few weeks for Edmund died and Cnut was at last king of all England.
Cnut was no weakling. He was remembered as a splendid Viking ‘Gracious giver of mighty gifts, you made corselets red in Norwich. You will lose your life before your courage fails. Still you pressed on, blunting swords upon weapons; they could not defend their strongholds when you attacked. The bow screamed loud. You won no less renown, driver of the leaping steed of the roller, on Thames’ bank. The wolf’s jaws knew this well. King bold in attack, you smote the Swedes in the place called Holy River, and there the she-wolf got much wolf’s food. Terrible staff of battle, you held the land against two princes, and the raven did not go hungry there. You are swift to deal with the race of men.’ (Norse poem).
His kingdom included a large number of Scandinavians who had settled in northern and eastern England so in that sense he had a population who were already half-inclined to support him but he acted brutally to strengthen his hold on the English throne. Eadwig, the only surviving son of Ǽthelred by his first wife was hunted down and killed and Alfred, one of his two sons by his second wife, who had taken refuge in Normandy and had unwisely returned to England, died in Cnut’s prison from ill-treatment. The rest of the English royal family, consisting of two children of Edmund Ironside, had been taken to Hungary after their father died. One later became Edgar the Ǽtheling and the other grew up to be St Margaret of Scotland.
Cnut spent a good deal of time in securing his position in Denmark so that the government of England was left very much in the hands of earls whom he appointed to rule in each of four large divisions of the country. Cnut was generous to the Church, founding Bury St Edmund’s monastery and St Benet’s Holme and presenting the port of Sandwich to Christ’s Church, Canterbury, but outside areas of royal influence, religious foundations depended on the generosity of the land-owning class and there developed a tradition of church-building by noblemen who often regarded them as their own property. In pagan days, shrines were thought of as personal property so the idea had had a long history. In Domesday churches were treated like any other disposable property. An example of this is the history of the ownership of St Mary in Huntingdonshire. The abbot of Thorney had given it to certain burgesses. Later, King Edward had sold it to two of his priests who had sold it back to his chamberlain who had in turn sold it to two priests of Huntingdon. Cnut himself built a church as a thanksgiving for his victory over Edmund on the battlefield of Ashingdon in Essex. Parts of the building on the site today date back to Cnut’s time.
Some of the earls were English and men of some distinction. One was Godwine, earl of Wessex, Later on, his daughter, Edith, became the wife of Edward the Confessor and one of his sons was King Harold. Another was Leofric who became earl of Mercia and was influential in the reign of Edward of Confessor. Northumbria was governed by a succession of earls whose task, on the border of Scotland, was often difficult. Cnut invaded Scotland on one occasion and later appointed the Dane Siward, as earl who was strong enough to keep the peace and wise enough to marry into the native Northumbrian family of earls. He instigated a code of secular and ecclesiastical law which became traditional by the time of the Normans.
Cnut visited Rome in 1027 to attend the Coronation of the Emperor Conrad II and while there negotiated with the newly-crowned Emperor and the king of Burgundy for the alleviation of tolls on English merchants on their journeys south to the Mediterranean. Pilgrims from England to Rome also used this route and they too had to pay tolls at the custom-house in Pavia. But, concern for the welfare of their English subjects was not shared by all of Cnut’s family. William of Malmesbury tells us that Cnut’s sister, who married Godwin, ‘was in the habit of purchasing companies of slaves in England, and sending them into Denmark; more especially girls, whose beauty and age rendered them more valuable, that she might accumulate money by this horrid traffic’.
During Cnut’s reign the country groaned under his tax known as the heregeld or army geld that was introduced by Swein and used to support a standing army and navy. During the period, almost all the church plate went to pay it and in one instance the church at Worcester had to sell land to raise the money. Harthacanute carried heregeld on and made it heavier and it was not abolished until 1051. After Cnut’s death and burial in Winchester in 1035 there was a period of confusion that ended with the accession of Harold, son of Cnut by Ǽlgifu of Northampton in 1037. He died in 1040 and was succeeded by Harthacnut in 1040 who only reigned until 1042. This ended the period of Viking rule. It had been a dominating factor in the history of the country for three centuries and, on the whole, it is probably fair to say that on balance the usurpers contributed as much as they had taken but their popular image was often pretty bad:
‘Never before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race…..Behold, the church of St Cuthbert, spattered with the blood of priests of God, despoiled of all ornaments; a place more venerable than all in Britain is given as a prey to pagan peoples.’
So wrote Alcuin to Ethelred, king of Northumbria in the eighth century. This is the sort of reporting that, at the time, gave the Vikings the reputation that they have had for many centuries. But we must remember that these are the reports of the victims, the British clergy, the sole literati of the time, who were able to report only their own experience of the Vikings. We are told by a modern Scandinavian scholar, Ingmar Jansson, professor of archaeology at Stockholm University, that ‘Viking’ is a misused term. He says ‘the Vikings belonged to the upper class. They were the sea warriors who had the means to equip ships and the leisure to roam abroad. But most people were Scandinavians. For them, the normal life was to stay at home and be a farmer. He goes on to say ‘ ‘And they (also) were artists, shipbuilders and innovators. More than anything, they were excellent traders who connected people from Baghdad to Scandinavia to the mainland of North America’.
But they were traders in slaves as well as commodities like furs and amber from the north lands and elsewhere anything else that took their fancy. It is truly said that the Viking travelled with his sword in one hand and a pair of trading-scales in the other. In France the Vikings settled in Normandy and, as in England, were swiftly integrated into the contemporary culture. Charles the Simple, king of France in 911, ceded a part of northern France to the Vikings as a buffer state which he hoped would off further attacks by the Vikings on his kingdom. Rollo was the leader of this new state. He claimed the title of Duke and his followers became the new aristocracy of the dukedom of Normandy. Some of their ambitious warriors set out to win lands for themselves and in a short time, certainly by the mid-tenth century, had taken over parts of southern Italy, Sicily and Malta. To their reputation for ferocity the Normans had added another for piety to which the dukes largely contributed with their support for a reformed church and the foundation of monasteries like the abbey of Mont Saint-Michel in 966. Another of their churches, the abbey of Jumiège, became the model for Westminster Abbey. The duchy of Normandy became the most powerful in France, able in 1066 to extend its frontiers to include the conquered England of the unfortunate Harold.
Edward, the only surviving son of Ǽthelred, had been living for the past few months in England at Harthacnut’s invitation after twenty-five years of exile in Normandy and he was readily acclaimed king in London in 1042 even before Harthacnut had been buried. With the support of earls Godwine, Leofric and Siward, he was crowned and they accompanied him to Winchester to seize the funds in the national treasury that were in the keeping of his mother, Emma. At the same time he deprived her of her lands. She lived in retirement in Winchester for another ten years.
In 1046 occurred one of the hard winters which brought disaster to a society that lived as close to the knife-edge of existence as the pre-medieval one did. After Candlemass (2nd February) the winter was as hard as anyone could remember. Snow and frost covered the ground for weeks, cattle died, birds fell from the trees and fish were frozen in the rivers and, above all, there were many deaths, poor people perished in their houses from lack of fuel and warm clothing and even the rich suffered from a famine which was all the worse since it followed on from a very severe dearth of two years before.Trials and tribulations of these sorts were part of common life during the pre-Conquest period and brought much hardship not only while they were being experienced but economically the effect was felt for several years after the happening. On top of natural disasters were the ever-present threats of civil war and depredation.
Edward’s main worry was the threat from Danes who thought they had a better claim to the English throne than he did. This threat dissolved by 1051 and he was able to disband the fleet that had been on stand-by for so many years. Shortly afterwards a quarrel broke out between the king and the powerful Godwine family which almost brought England to the brink of a civil war. The matter was serious for a time but, in the end, the Godwines chose to go abroad for a time until the matter had blown over. During their absence Edward took the opportunity to strengthen his ties with Normandy where he had spent so many years of his early life. William of Normandy paid him a visit and it is thought by some historians that the question of Edward’s successor was discussed.
However, when the Godwines returned they engineered the expulsion of several of the Normans that Edward had imported in their absence including the Archbishop of Canterbury and Stigand, more acceptable to the Godwines, was appointed. The power of the family was further increased in 1055 when Tostig, another of the Godwine sons, was appointed to be earl of Northumbria where, however, he was regarded as a southern interloper. West of Offa’s Dyke the power of the king of Gwnedd was becoming a matter for concern. Gruffydd ap Llywelyn had won a resounding victory over the king of southern Wales and he became virtual ruler of the whole country and this provoked a series of campaigns between the England and Wales. Gruffydd was aided and abetted by Ǽlfgar.one-time earl of East Anglia. Eventually, Ǽlfgar was restored and later succeeded to his father’s earldom of Mercia while the Welsh king, after a combined operation by Tostig and and his brother Harold, met his end at the hands of his own men in 1063.
Perhaps next year, Harold made his famous visit to Normandy if the Bayeux Tapestry is to be believed. Contemporary English chroniclers don’t mention it and it may have been propaganda on the part of the instigators of the work. In this story, Harold, who for some reason was aboard a ship in the Channel, was caught in a storm and was driven onto the coast of Normandy where he was taken under guard to William who received him as an honoured guest and took him with him on a military expedition to Brittany but, before sending him on his way extracted an oath from him to support his (William’s) claim to the English throne.
A rebellion developed in Northumbria against Tostig. The rebels wanted Morcat, brother of Edwin, earl of Mercia to take his place and after mediation by Harold, this was done and Tostig departed the country in high dudgeon. He was to return not long after with the army of Harald Hardrada and fight against his brother at Stamford Bridge. Meanwhile, Harold seems have been close to the king, he was described by one contemporary as the under-king, leading the army in major campaigns in Wales and acting as hunt-master for the king’s favourite occupation.
King Edward (the appellation of Confessor is entirely undeserved), who through illness had been unable to attend the consecration of Westminster Abbey, the building of which was the main preoccupation of his later years, died on December 18th, 1065 and on the day of his burial Harold was made king. It is not clear whether Edward bequeathed his kingdom to Harold but later writers describe a death-bed speech in which this was announced and the Chronicles certainly record that he ‘committed’ the realm to Harold.. Edward was buried in his new church under a plain tombstone and it stood until it was rebuilt in the later thirteenth century.
William, Duke of Normandy, was convinced that Edward intended him to be heir to the English throne for Edward had spent all his early life in the Duchy and was in any ways more Norman than English and perhaps it was at that time that the notion pf William’s succession was first discussed between them. William had become duke of Normandy at the age of eight and spent years in an atmosphere of intrigue and violence, facing a series of rebellions that schooled him in warfare without entirely brutalizing him. Throughout his life, like most rulers of the time, he was extremely pious, founding the abbey of St Étienne in Caen, which still stands and making a great friend and confidante of Lanfranc, its abbot, who later became Archbishop of Canterbury. At Edward’s death, William immediately began to prepare for a great expedition to England to pursue what he was convinced was his rightful claim to the throne. He was ready with his ships loaded and his army enrolled in late September but the weather was against him and he was forced to wait until he could be sure that he had a steady wind from the south. His army was a ragbag of volunteers and adventurers from all over northern Europe, who had joined up in the hope that in the event of William winning the day they would be rewarded with estates in England or at least have the opportunity of seizing land for themselves in Wales.
Early in May, Harold received news that his brother Tostig was beginning a cruise around the south and eastern coasts of Britain, raiding and harrying the coastal towns as he went. After he was driven off, Harold had to make preparations for the expected attack from across the Channel. But William was still delayed by contrary winds and during this time further news came that Tostig, with the Scandinavian king, Harold Hardrada, had entered the Humber with 300 ships propelled by the same winds. They burnt Scarborough as a provocation and a challenge to the king to bring him to battle. Harold’s dilemma was real. Much depended on the weather in the Channel. He had to make a swift choice between staying on guard in the south or marching three hundred miles north in the hope that the winds would not change.
Harold decided he had no option but to ride north. He set out on the journey with his housecarls on the 20th September and joined the fyrds from Mercia and East Anglia on the way. At Tadcaster in Yorkshire he paused to take stock and received news of the defeat of Earls Edwin and Morcar who had challenged the invaders at Fulford. The Vikings had already entered and left York, taking hostages with them and had demanded that the Northumbrians bring hostages to them at Stamford Bridge. Harold determined to attend the rendezvous himself. After stopping briefly in York, he marched towards Stamford Bridge. He arrived shortly after the Viking force which, quite unaware of his imminent arrival, were positioned in two groups each side of the bridge, When the English suddenly materialised, Hardrada formed the bulk of his men up on a ridge south of the bridge facing the English who, in several ranks, advanced up the slope. Fighting was fierce and went on all day but the English had the best of it. Both Harold Hardrada and Tostig were killed and the surviving Vikings fled back to their ships which Harold allowed them to board and push off. Of the 360 odd ships that had brought with them, the Vikings needed only 36 to evacuate their survivors. It has been said that Stamford Bridge was the bloodiest battle of the medieval period. Not stopping to clear up the battlefield, for he had heard disturbing news from the south, Harold turned his face in that direction, leaving the spoil and the wounded and dead to the local people and the ravens and wolves.
In Bayeux in Normandy hangs the Bayeux Tapestry (more properly, embroidery) which is thought to have been made in England on the order of the warrior bishop Odo of Bayeux within twenty years of the events it records. It illustrates the story of the events of 1066 from the start of William’s expedition to the death of Harold. Apart from the striking beauty of some of the designs and the skill of the embroiderers, to the archaeologist it is a fund of knowledge of the immediate pre-Conquest period. In the borders are pictures of hunting with dogs, of ploughing, of animals, near-fabulous and fabulous like camels, gryphons and Pegasus while the main scenes are the best authority for the arms and armour of the period. It is claimed that the Tapestry contains the first evidence for a first-floor hall, that ubiquitous structure of the medieval period used in castles, town-houses and monasteries. Here it is Harold’s hall and he is pictured feasting with his companions on the first floor while a servant on the staircase is pointing out that their ship is already being loaded with his hunting falcons and dogs.
It was clearly fashionable in England at the time to wear a moustache since practically all of the English have one while the Normans are shown beardless with the backs of their necks shaven too which apparently deceived the English at first into mistaking them for priests.
Fully-armed knights wore a mail-shirt made of linked iron rungs, a very expensive item at the time, slit at the back and the front below the waist. Above the neck it was extended into a hood worn underneath the helmet and, sometimes, the breast has extra protection in the form of a second layer of the mail. The outfit is so heavy that we see it being carried it by two men in the Tapestry. Both English and Normans wore it both on foot and on horseback and the mounted leaders have their legs similar protected by mail leggings. Others have only have wrappings or paddings that look rather like the puttees of the First World War. Helmets are conical with a nosepiece that protects the face from a blow from a sword and are undecorated. But there is decoration on the shields with what could be personal emblems which might have been the forerunner of family heraldic designs. Some warriors have animal emblems or, more commonly, a series of dots around a larger circular blob. Most shields are pointed at the bottom with a rounded top while there are still a few of the old-fashioned circular ones.
Swords and lances are the commonest weapons while the English also used both hands to wield the heavy axe. Swords were worn on a belt. Lances were sometimes carried in a rest and sometimes used in this position which was possible since the introduction of the high saddles and stirrups. Sometimes the lance was thrown; the English seem to have been equipped with shorter kinds for this purpose. Decoration in the form of pennons was used on some lances, presumably serving the same purpose of identification as the devices on the shields. Maces are carried by William and Odo (a churchman, sworn by his calling not to shed blood) and the English throw another type. It is the French who, with the exception of one English archer, who use the bow-and-arrow and they do so unmounted, again with one exception, and only one of them is wearing a mail-shirt. But they are not the longbows of the later medieval period.
No armour was worn by the horses. On the English side, the horses have their manes hogged in contrast to the Norman horses whose manes are generally long. Apparently, an attempt had been made to introduce cavalry into the English armed force but this had not been popular, perhaps on the grounds of expense so in the Tapestry, it is only Harold rides about before the battle on his horse.
Unfavourable winds that had penned William’s fleet in the Somme estuary throughout September changed in the last week of the month and two days later William of Normandy set sail and landed on a shingle beach at Pevensey. Today the village of Pevensey and the Roman coastal fort of Anderida are a kilometer inland. Within the Roman walls, he built a fort on the spot on which the present medieval castle stands. For some reason, this did not suit entirely him, probably because the countryside was too flat to provide him with any strategic protection and he quickly moved to Hastings where he constructed a motte-and-bailey castle. The present castle in Hastings, now eroded by the sea, is probably not the site of William’s castle, which is believed to have been further east to afford better protection for the ships, perhaps beyond the Priory Valley. In the Bayeux Tapestry, men are shown building the motte-and-bailey and this is our first representations of one, but it is not the first example in Europe.
Mottes first appeared in the marshy country between the rivers Rhine and Loire during the latter part of the tenth century. Known as châteaux, they were the result of the breakdown of the Frankish Empire and the rise of locally powerful feudal lords around whom men grouped themselves for protection. Stout timbers were implanted in the ground to support a wooden superstructure and earth from a ditch dug around the structure was piled around these ‘legs’ to form a mound or motte and protect them from the axes or the torches of besiegers. A bailey or enclosure beside the mound was surrounded by an earthen bank with a fortified gateway and perhaps with a palisade on top of the bank to complete the ensemble. Cheap to build and quickly thrown up, they were the ideal fortifications for local feudal lords and they became common in England during the Norman period but in time became such a thorn in the flesh of kings who were trying to establish a law-abiding kingdom that they were ordered to be destroyed.
Harold had heard the news of William’s arrival on October 1st and he set out for the south immediately. Thirteen days later, in London, he issued orders for members of the fyrd to join him and marched to Hastings where he took up position on Caldbec Hill, part of the Senlac Ridge which blocked the road out of the peninsula in which Hastings was then situated. On either side of the Hill were areas of ravines and marsh, impassible to bodies of troops, although William might have been able to infiltrate small parties and attack Harold’s army from the rear. Harold positioned his housecarls and thegns in a shield wall with the fyrdmen behind them ready to launch an attack on the Normans when the moment was opportune. William was left with the option of attacking uphill in a frontal assault and breaking down the shield wall rather like General Haig’s tactics in the first battle of the Somme of trying to break through the trench line but William, having no artillery, had to make do with flights of arrows.
On the left flank, William had positioned a contingent of Bretons, moving forward with the Normans in the centre and French and Flemish on the right, and it was the Bretons who the first to turn tail. Part of Harold’s army pursued them down the hills and ran into a contingent that stood their ground and cut them down. William’s second attack was equally unsuccessful and, again, like General Haig, having begun, he had to keep on repeating the tactic. Towards the end of the day, the archers started to fire high and this dropping fire began to demoralise the English soldiers and the shield wall began to degrade so that, eventually, the Normans broke through and killed Harold. The housecarls and thegns continued to fight on until they fell.
There is controversy about the burial place of King Harold. Experts believe that the traditional story of his being killed by an arrow in the eye is a fable and he was cut down and dismembered. Both Waltham Abbey and Bosham Church in west Sussex are contenders for the burial place and the uncertainty about the location of the grave may be due to the Normans who deliberately obscured the location to prevent it becoming a shrine. They then went on to govern England with much vigour for William continued to claim that he was the lawful successor to Edward the Confessor and a good deal of what had been pre-Conquest England survived under the new leader and a new aristocracy.
Over the great span of time from 400 to 1066 the evidence for the experiences of the people is not yet, unfortunately, a continuous narrative – there are many gaps, some of which are filled in, often inadequately, with supposition, but we know enough to be sure that these were our ancestors. Different, as we are, from our neighbours in Europe, and indigenous to this land, and not the fruit of a barbarian invasion of the fifth century, we developed a national character during this period but even at Domesday did not fill the land. Only six counties had more than fifty thousand inhabitants each and, altogether, perhaps only 1.25 million all told in the country. Most populous was the county of Norfolk with some 95,000 people, Suffolk and Devon next in order, then Essex and Somerset. Yorkshire, devastated by William the Conqueror, probably had fewer than thirty thousand.
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