Chapter XV: The Norman Invasion and the Campaign of Hastings.1055 (5)

This brings us to the other story to which I have already alluded, and which, in its main outline, I am prepared to accept. This is that the body of Harold, first buried under the cairn by Hastings, was afterwards translated to his own minster at Waltham. That Waltham always professed to be the burying-place of Harold—that a tomb bearing his name was shown there down to the Dissolution of the Abbey—that fragments of it remained in the middle of the seventeenth century[1497]—are facts beyond dispute. But these local traditions would not, under the circumstances, be of themselves enough to lead us to accept a local claim which at first sight seems to be opposed to the witness of contemporary writers. But a little examination will show that the two stories, the story of the cairn-burial and the story of the burial at Waltham, are not really contradictory. And there is a mass of evidence of all but the highest kind in support of the claim of Waltham to have at last sheltered [Sidenote: His body translated from the shore to Waltham. December, 1066?] the bones of its Founder. I then accept the view that the body of Harold, like the body of Waltheof ten years later, was removed from a lowlier resting-place to a more honourable one, in short from unhallowed to hallowed ground. Waltheof was first buried on the scene of his martyrdom by Winchester, and was afterwards removed for more solemn burial in the Abbey of Crowland.[1498] Such I believe to have been the case with Harold also. This view reconciles the main facts as stated by all our authorities, and it falls in with all the circumstances of the case. With our feelings we might wish that the body of Harold had tarried for ever under its South-Saxon cairn. In William’s own words, no worthier place of burial could be his than the shore which he had guarded. But even modern feelings would be revolted at such a burial of any hero of our own time. And in those days the religious feeling of Harold’s friends and bedesmen would never be satisfied till their King and Founder slept in a spot where all the rites of the Church could be offered around him by the hands of those who were nourished by his bounty. Nor was it at all unlikely that William should relent, and should allow such honours to be paid to the memory of his fallen rival. The first harsh order exactly fell in with the policy of the first moment of victory. But, even before the end of the great year, a time came when William might well be disposed to listen to milder counsels. When the Conqueror had become the chosen and anointed King of the English, he honestly strove for a moment to make his rule as acceptable as might be to his English subjects. In those milder days of his earlier rule, it would quite fall in with William’s policy to yield to any petition, either from Gytha or from the brotherhood at Waltham, praying for the removal of Harold’s body from its unhallowed resting-place. He had then no motive for harshness. The Crown was safe upon his own head; he was the acknowledged successor of Eadward, and he could now afford to be generous to the memory of the intruder of a moment.

[Sidenote: His burial in the minster]

Then it was, as I believe, that the body of Harold was translated from the cairn on the hill of Hastings [Sidenote: and later translation.] to a worthier tomb in his own minster at Waltham. There the King and Founder was buried in the place of honour by the high altar. A later change in the fabric, probably an enlargement of the choir, caused a further translation of his body. On that occasion our local informant, a subject of the Norman Henry, saw and handled [Sidenote: Destruction of his tomb. c. 1540.] the bones of Harold.[1499] For his tomb we now seek in vain, as we seek in vain for the tombs of most of the noblest heroes of our land. The devastation of the sixteenth century, the brutal indifference of the eighteenth, have swept over Hyde and Glastonbury and Waltham and Crowland and Evesham, and in their destroyed or ruined choirs no memory is left of Ælfred and Eadgar and Harold and Waltheof and Simon of Montfort. But what the men of his own time could do they did; the simple and pathetic tale of the local historian shows us how the fallen King was lamented by those who had known and loved him, and how his memory lived among those who shared his bounty without having seen his face. Their affection clave to him in life, their reverence followed him in death; they braved the wrath of the Conqueror on his behalf; they bore him first to his humble and unhallowed tomb, and then translated him to a more fitting resting-place within the walls of the noble fabric which his own bounty had reared.

ὡς οἵγ’ ἀμφίεπον τάφον Ἕκτορος ἱπποδάμοιο.[1500]

Thus was the last native King of the English borne to his last home in his own minster. Once only since [Sidenote: The body of Edward the First at Waltham. 1307.] that day has Waltham seen a royal corpse, but then it was one which was worthy to rest even by the side of Harold. Two hundred and forty years after the fight of Senlac, the body of the great Edward was borne with all royal honours to a temporary resting-place in the church of Waltham.[1501] Harold was translated to Waltham from a nameless tomb by the sea-shore; Edward was translated from Waltham to a still more glorious resting-place beneath the soaring vault of the apse of Westminster. [Sidenote: Comparison of Harold and Edward.] But for a while the two heroes lay side by side—the last and the first of English Kings, between whom none deserved the English name or could claim honour or gratitude from the English nation. The one was the last King who reigned purely by the will of the people, without any claim either of conquest or of hereditary right. The other was the first King who reigned purely as the son of his father, the first who succeeded without competitor or interregnum. But each alike, as none between them did, deserved the love and trust of the people over whom they reigned. With Harold our native kingship ends; the Dragon of Wessex gives place to the Leopards of Normandy; the Crown, the laws, the liberties, the very tongue of Englishmen, seem all fallen never to rise again. In Edward the line of English Kings begins once more. After two hundred years of foreign rule, we have again a King bearing an English name and an English heart—the first to give us back our ancient laws under new shapes, the first, and for so long the last, to see that the Empire of his mighty namesake[1502] was a worthier prize than shadowy dreams of dominion beyond the sea. All between them were Normans or Angevins, careless of England and her people. Another and a brighter æra opens, as the lawgiver of England, the conqueror of Wales and Scotland, seems like an old Bretwalda or West-Saxon Basileus seated once more upon the throne of Cerdic and of Æthelstan. The conqueror of Gruffydd might welcome a kindred soul in the conqueror of Llywelyn; the victor of Stamfordbridge might hail his peer in the victor of Falkirk; the King with whom England fell might greet his first true successor in the King with whom she rose again. Such were the men who met in death within the now vanished choir of Waltham. And in the whole course of English history we hardly come across a scene which speaks more deeply to the heart, than when the first founder of our later greatness was laid by the side of the last kingly champion of our earliest freedom—when the body of the great Edward was laid, if only for a short space, by the side of Harold the son of Godwine.