Chapter XXXVII: Appendix: NOTE A. p. 3 (9)

The two stories are here very awkwardly joined together, and there cannot be the least doubt that the version in the De Inventione gives the legend in its earliest and genuine form.

NOTE KK. pp. 442 et seqq.

THE DETAILS OF THE BATTLE OF SENLAC.

I had hoped to deal with the great battle as I have dealt with the other great points of my history, that is to give a narrative of the events as I conceive them, uninterrupted by foot-notes, and to discuss all details in a separate essay. But I found this course impossible. My view of the battle is founded on so many minute hints in so many different writers that I found that, if I separated my particular statements from the evidence on which they rest, I should be practically calling on the reader to accept the statements without full means of testing them. To every statement therefore which seemed open to any possibility of question, I have added the authority on which I ground it. Each reader can therefore judge for himself how far my narrative is borne out by my authorities. At the same time I think that no one will be justified either in confidently accepting or in confidently rejecting my version, unless he has himself gone over the ground with the original accounts fresh in his memory. I have myself visited Battle four times. The first time was as long ago as 1853, when I was already deeply interested in the subject, but when I had not yet planned the present work. I went more carefully over the ground, with a special reference to this history, in July 1866, and again in December 1868. This third time I had the advantage of the company of Mr. J. R. Green, who has a much keener eye than I have for topography, especially for military topography. But I am happy to say that his observations had mainly the effect of explaining and confirming the conclusions to which I had come two years before. Lastly, in the same month I walked specially from Hastings to Battle, a part of the process almost as needful as the survey of the actual battle-ground.

Most of the accounts of the battle, ancient and modern, show very little understanding of the site. Of the primary authorities, William of Poitiers and Guy of Amiens both show by several touches that they understood it. But Guy alone bears the position in mind throughout his story. William begins with an excellent description, but his topography is soon lost in his rhetoric. The local historian, the author of the Chronicon de Bello, is still more distinct; so is the author of the Brevis Relatio. The Tapestry gives but little idea of the general site, though some particular incidents are displayed with wonderful vividness. Wace, I think, could not have seen the ground. The English contemporary writers give no details of any kind; the later writers, as William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon, give incidental help, which is sometimes very valuable, but they seem to have had very little notion of the general position. Henry of Huntingdon is the most remarkable case. The latter part of his account contains a great deal that is very much to the purpose, and we owe to him the admirable comparison of Harold’s camp to a castle (see p. 442). Yet this follows on a statement so grotesquely inaccurate as that Harold “aciem suam construxit _in planis Hastinges_” (M. H. B. 762 C). It will be easily seen that my narrative is mainly drawn from the Tapestry, William of Poitiers, and Guy, using the other writers, Wace at their head, as subsidiary. In no part of the enquiry does the paramount value of the Tapestry come out more strongly. There is little contradiction among the primary authorities as to the main facts, though they often differ as to their order. In these cases I have had to choose according to the best of my discretion; the reader must judge with what success.

The modern accounts, including those of Thierry, Lappenberg, M. de Bonnechose, and Mr. St. John, seem to have been written with little or no attention to the ground. If we learn from them that Harold’s position was on a hill, it is as much as we do. Sir Francis Palgrave, in his early work (Hist. Ang. Sax. 385), so completely misunderstood the battle as to say that Harold, when struck by the arrow, “dropped _from his steed_ in agony,” and this is actually reprinted in his posthumous third volume, p. 317. Lord Lytton, in his romance, shows a better understanding of the site than anybody else; he had at least seen it; but he has unfortunately encumbered his picture of the battle with many incidents which are imaginary and impossible. An intelligent local antiquary of the district, Mr. M. A. Lower, has done more to explain matters than any professed historian. His account (see Sussex Archæological Collections, vol. vi. p. 15, and Lower’s Contributions to Literature, p. 36) is very carefully done, and it brings out several points which had never been brought out before. Mr. Lower evidently knows the ground well, and he has made good use of Guy of Amiens, to whose full value no earlier writer seems to have been alive. Mr. Lower’s paper is on the whole very satisfactory as far as it goes, and I shall not have to speak of many points of difference between his views and mine. I may however mention that Mr. Lower has been misled as to the site of the Standard. The point commonly shown as such is plainly the site of the altar of the Lady Chapel; the site of the Standard was marked by the high altar, which of course stood further to the west.

Having thus, much against my will, encumbered my text with a cloud of references, I have now only to discuss a few points which seem to call for explanation or to be open to controversy.

1. The name of Senlac for the hill on which Harold encamped rests, as far as I know, solely on the authority of Orderic, who seems to take a kind of pleasure in repeating it. The spot was anciently called Senlac (501 A); the battle was fought “in campo Senlac” (598 A); “in epitumo Senlac” (659 B)—whatever “epitumo” may mean; the Abbey was founded on Senlac (505 B); the battle is the battle of Senlac (“Senlacium bellum” 502 D, 504 A, “certamen Senlacium” 523 A). I do not profess to know the etymology of the name, and Orderic’s form may possibly be corrupt. But he cannot have invented the word, which evidently survives in “Santlaches,” “Saintlake,” &c. (in various spellings), “the Lake,” “Battle Lake,” and so forth, the local names for the south-eastern part of the town. (See Lower, p. 70.) “Sanglac” or “Sanguelac” I take to be simply a French pun on the name. On the authority of Orderic then, I have not scrupled systematically to use the word, especially as a name for the spot is wanted. In Domesday and elsewhere the battle is “bellum Hastingense,” “bellum apud Hastinges,” but that is simply as Stamfordbridge is “bellum apud Eboracum.”

2. The story of Harold and Gyrth going by night to spy out the Norman camp (see p. 447) comes from Wace, 12120–12217. Like a good deal that is said about Gyrth, it rests on no sufficient evidence. The tendency to exalt Gyrth is common to several of the Norman writers, but it comes out more strongly in Wace than anywhere else. In fact this part of his poem is little short of a Gyrthiad. The English Earl is perhaps less prominent than the Norman Duke, but he is more prominent than any one else. Wace evidently takes a special pleasure in talking of him; the conception of his character is well drawn, and his story is wrought up with a good deal of epic skill, till he is cut down at the very end of the battle by the hand of William himself. We may accept the valour and wisdom of Gyrth on the witness of his enemies; but there must be some reason for the special favour which he enjoys. Perhaps it was felt to be necessary to the greatness of William that he should be matched with a worthy adversary. Harold’s skill and valour are not disputed, but the perjurer and usurper could not be painted as a hero in the higher sense. The place was open for Gyrth, and it doubtless suited his traditional character. But all this makes me somewhat suspicious of the details of any story in which he is prominent.

3. William of Poitiers (132) has a strange statement that there were Danish auxiliaries at Senlac; “Copiosa quoque auxilia miserat eis [Anglis] cognata terra Danorum.” There is not a word more about them in his narrative, nor, as far as I know, anywhere else. By Danes is possibly meant Northumbrians. The few Yorkshire volunteers who followed Harold (see p. 424) may have got magnified into an army fresh from Denmark. I do not understand what Lappenberg (549) means, when he says, “die Dänen wurden unbrauchbar, da sie nicht gegen Herzog Wilhelm selbst fechten zu wollen erklärten.” Does this come from the words which immediately follow in William of Poitiers? “Non tamen audentes cum Willelmo ex æquo confligere, plus eum quam Regem Noricorum extimentes, locum editiorem præoccupavere, montem silvæ per quam advenere vicinum.” But this simply means the occupation of Senlac by the English army in general.

4. The order of events (see p. 482) as to the real and the feigned flight of the Normans differs a good deal in our authorities. William of Poitiers gives the order which I have followed. The feigned flight is suggested to William by the fortunate result of the real flight. See p. 489, note 1. But in Guy’s version (423 et seqq.) the feigned flight at first succeeds; the fugitives turn and slay ten thousand of the accursed Englishmen;

“Pars ibi magna perit, pars et densata resistit;
Millia namque decem sunt ibi passa necem.
Ut pereunt mites bacchante leone bidentes,
Sic compulsa mori gens maledicta ruit.”

(vv. 435–438.)

But the superior numbers of the English give them the advantage, and the Normans are driven to fly in earnest;

“Anglorum populus, numero superante, repellit
Hostes, inque retro compulit ora dari;
Et fuga ficta priùs fit tunc virtute coacta;
Normanni fugiunt, dorsa tegunt clipei.”

(vv. 441–444.)

Then William recalls the fugitives; another attack is made on the English, and Gyrth is killed. The account of William of Poitiers seems much more natural and probable; but that of Guy may be thought to be confirmed by the Tapestry, which places (pl. 15) the scene of William and Odo recalling the troops both after the death of Gyrth and Leofwine (pl. 14) and after the incidents of the ravine and the little hill (p. 490). On the whole I look on the Tapestry as the highest authority of the three, but in the nature of things exact chronological order is not its strongest point. See for instance the awkward shifts to which the designer is driven in pl. 14 to express the attack of the Normans on several points of the English position at once.

5. As to the part of Eustace in the battle (see p. 483) our accounts are somewhat contradictory. William of Poitiers mentions only his advice to Duke William in the pursuit after the battle (see p. 503), but he tells us elsewhere (157) that Eustace had given his son to William as a hostage (“filium de fide ante bellum in Normanniâ obsidem dederat”). This may possibly imply some suspicion either of his courage or of his good faith. Guy tells us of his giving his horse to William (see p. 487) and of his share in the butchery of Harold (see p. 499). In the Tapestry (pl. 15) Eustace is shown giving some piece of advice to William at the very moment of the Duke recalling the fugitives, and William certainly does not seem to be giving him much attention. The nature of his advice, as I have given it in the text, comes from Benoît (37414–37421). William has just spoken to the fugitives;

“Dunc vint poignant Quens Eustace,
Qui le Duc effreie e manace,
E dit: ‘Morz est, por veir, senz faille,
S’il ne se part de la bataille:
Nul recovrer n’a mais és suens.’
Ci pout grant ponte aveir li Quens,
Qu’à trop mauvaise e à trop fole
Fu puis tenue la parole.”

On the other hand, the local chronicler of Battle (p. 4) seems to claim for Eustace, the only man besides the Duke and William Faber whom he mentions by name, the main credit of the device of the feigned flight; “Strenuissimus Boloniæ Comes Eustachius clam callidâ præmeditatâ arte, fugam cum exercitu Duce simulante, super Anglos sparsim agiliter insequentes cum manu validâ a tergo irruit.” This picking out of Eustace as a special hero is significant. It is plainly meant as a contradiction; but what is the value of the contradiction? The passage from Benoît seems to fit in admirably with the scene in the Tapestry; still it is possible that Eustace is giving some other advice, and that Benoît transferred to this point the advice given in the later pursuit.

6. The death of Gyrth is told as I have told it (see p. 485) by Guy (471–480). William kills him with his own hand;

“Nam velox juvenem sequitur veluti leo frendens,
Membratim perimens, hæc sibi verba dedit:
‘Accipe promeritam nostri de parte coronam,
Si periit sonipes hanc tibi reddo pedes.’”

In the Tapestry (pl. 14) Gyrth and Leofwine are killed at this stage of the battle or earlier, but seemingly not by the hand of William. Wace (13947 et seqq.) makes the fall of Gyrth the last act of the battle, after Harold is dead; the deed is wrought by William’s own hand;

“Guert vit Engleiz amenuisier,
Vit k’il n’i out nul recovrier,
Vit son lignage dechaeir:
De sei garir n’out nul espeir,
Fuir s’en volt, maiz ne poeit,
Ke la presse toz tems creisseit.
A tant puinst li Dus, si l’ateint,
Par grant aïr avant l’empeint,
Ne sai se de cel colp morut,
Maiz ço fu dit ke pose jut.”

Wace, it will be seen, does not commit himself to Gyrth’s death, no doubt with an eye to a legend which I shall speak of in a later note.

Of these three accounts I follow that of Guy, as the clearest in itself, and as drawing a certain amount of support from each of the other versions. It agrees with the Tapestry in placing the death of Gyrth early in the battle; it agrees with Wace in making him die by the hand of William.

The group in the Tapestry (pl. 14) representing the deaths of Gyrth and Leofwine is well worth study. Five Englishmen are shown, two of whom are falling dead. Of the other three, one is manfully wielding his axe, another his spear; a third rushes up, sword in hand. Can these be the five _Wulfnothingas_, Ælfwig, Harold, Gyrth, Leofwine, and Hakon? Might not the Abbot, a man of a past generation, use the sword rather than the axe? It should be noticed that it is only here, and again in the group immediately round Harold in pl. 16, that we see the round shield with the boss, spoken of in p. 473, either in the main picture or in the border.

7. The part in the battle played by the small detached hill (see p. 490) has, as far as I know, never been mentioned by any modern writer. I must leave it to the reader to judge whether the words of William of Malmesbury and the representation in the Tapestry, when taken together, bear out the meaning which I have put upon them. The hill is very distinctly marked in the Tapestry, and it seems impossible that the words “occupato tumulo” in William’s account can mean the general occupation of the hill of Senlac itself by the English army.

8. It will be seen that I make (pp. 490, 503) two occasions when the Normans suffered from an attack of English fugitives in marshy ground. The scene described by William of Malmesbury, and represented in the Tapestry as happening comparatively early in the battle, cannot be the same as that which William of Poitiers, Orderic, and the Battle Chronicler place at the very end of the battle. The order in the Tapestry may not always be quite exact, but it could not go so far wrong as this. The ground also supplies places which exactly suit both occasions. Mr. Lower (Contributions to Literature, 54) identifies the account in William of Malmesbury with the account in the Battle Chronicler. But this last seems very well to describe, with some exaggeration, the steep ground north of the hill (Chron. de Bello, 5);

“Siquidem et inter hostiles gladios miserabile quoddam, in proximo spatiosè protentum, ex naturali telluris hiatu vel forsan ex procellarum concavatione, præcipitium vastè patens, licet uti in vastitate dumis vel tribulis obsitum, oculis minùs prævideretur, innumeros et maximè Normannorum Anglos persequentium, suffocavit. Nam dum inscii cum impetu dissilirent ibidem in præceps acti, flebiliter contriti necabantur. Quod quidem baratrum, sortito ex accidenti vocabulo, _Malfosse_ hodieque nuncupatur.”

This is evidently the scene of the slaughter of Normans which took place in the dark, after Harold’s death, when the light-armed English were flying. It lies in the natural direction for their flight; but it does not at all suit the circumstances of the first slaughter, which must have happened somewhere to the south or south-west of the hill. The small ravine to the south-west seems exactly what is wanted.

9. The time at which Harold died (see p. 498) seems clear from Florence, and with his statement most of the other accounts agree. It is clear from the Tapestry that Harold was cut down by the four knights almost immediately after he received the wound in the eye. Wace (13299 compared with 13932) seems—perhaps only seems—to make a long time pass between Harold’s first wound and his death. I need hardly stop to refute the strange mistake of William of Jumièges (vii. 36) followed by Orderic (501 D); “Heraldus ipse in primo militum progressu (“congressu,” Ord.) vulneribus letaliter confossus occubuit.” Orderic puts the death of Leofwine soon after (“deinde”), but this time he does not name Gyrth.

The battle of Senlac seems in several points to have borne much likeness to the battle of Aghrim, described by Macaulay, iv. 90. It is the last battle of Saint Ruth.

“The spot on which he had determined to bring the fate of Ireland to issue seems to have been chosen with great judgment. His army was drawn up on the slope of a hill, which was almost surrounded by red bog. In front, near the edge of the morass, were some fences out of which a breastwork was without difficulty constructed.”

We read of the great difficulties which the English found in crossing the muddy ground and attacking the hill. “Again and again the assailants were driven back. Again and again they returned to the struggle. Once they were broken, and chased across the morass: but Talmash rallied them, and forced the pursuers to retire.” The battle is decided, as evening is closing in, by Saint Ruth’s death by a cannon-ball. The Irish breastwork is carried, and most of its defenders slain, either on the hill or in the pursuit. “The number of the slain was, in proportion to the number engaged, greater than in any other battle of that age.”

I am sorry that I have not seen the ground, but when I was in Ireland some years back, the likeness between the two battles had not struck me.

NOTE LL. p. 459.

RALPH OF NORFOLK.

I believe that I have gradually felt my way to the true history and position of a somewhat mysterious person of whom we get glimpses in the reign of Eadward, and who becomes prominent under William. This is Ralph, called of Gael or of Wader, afterwards Earl of Norfolk or of the East Angles (Fl. Wig. 1074), whom I believe to have been of English birth, and whom I therefore have not scrupled to speak of in the text as an English traitor. This I do on the express authority of the Abingdon and Peterborough Chronicles (1075–1076). In recording the famous bride-ale which led to the death of Waltheof, both Chroniclers, with slight verbal difference, expressly say that Ralph Earl of Norfolk was Breton indeed on his mother’s side, but that his father was an Englishman of the same name, born in Norfolk (“se ylca Raulf wæs Brittisc on his modor healfe, and Rawulf his fæder wæs Englisc, and wæs geboren on Norðfolce”). William of Malmesbury indeed (iii. 255), seemingly with the Chronicle before him, calls Ralph “Brito ex patre.” This may be either a mistake or an intended correction, but it can hardly outweigh the testimony of the two Chroniclers. We have another indication of Ralph’s English origin, in an entry in the Norfolk Domesday (131), where we find mention of “Goduinus avunculus Radulphi Comitis.” In classical Latin the word “avunculus” would rather show that Ralph’s connexion with England was only on the mother’s side, but, as I have before shown (vol. ii. p. 644), “avunculus” had now got the general sense of “uncle.” A man named Godwine must have been an Englishman; and we thus find two brothers, Ralph and Godwine, both of them Norfolk landowners, one the father and the other the uncle of Ralph the Earl. Ralph as the name of an Englishman is certainly puzzling, but as we find in England a solitary Lothar (see vol. i. p. 334), a solitary Frederick (see p. 555), and a nearly solitary Carl, a solitary Ralph does not seem impossible. Or if any one pleases, Ralph may have been English in the sense of being an English-born son of one of the French followers of Emma, which would account for one of his two sons bearing a French name and the other an English one.

The English birth of Ralph thus seems plain from the Chronicles, and it is not set aside by the passages which, like William of Malmesbury quoted above, speak of him as a “Breton.” He is “genere Brito” in William of Jumièges (vii. 25; viii. 15). So Wace, 11512 and 13627, in which latter place the words are, “Bret esteit è Bretonz menout.” He was the son of a Breton mother; he held the castles of Wader and Montfort (Ord. Vit. 535 C) in his mother’s country, and he appeared at Senlac in command of a body of his mother’s countrymen. That he should therefore be spoken of as a Breton is really not wonderful.

The evidence of Domesday also no less distinctly gives us two Ralphs in Norfolk, father and son. The elder Ralph is clearly the same as Ralph the Staller of Eadward’s time (see vol. ii. p. 347, and Taylor’s Wace, 226). The number of entries T. R. E. in his name is very great, especially in Norfolk and Suffolk. He also signs many charters. In Cod. Dipl. iv. 121, of 1055, he signs as “Minister,” and is distinguished from “Radulfus Dux.” In 1060 (iv. 143) he signs as “Regis Dapifer,” in 1061 (iv. 151) as “Minister,” in 1062 (iv. 159) as “Regis Aulicus,” and in the charter of Abbot Ælfwig, quoted in vol. ii. p. 347, he appears as “Steallere” along with Esegar and Bondig. But we can go a little further. The signatures and the entries in Domesday belonging to Ralph the Staller must not be confounded with those of Earl Ralph of Hereford, King Eadward’s nephew, from whom we find him pointedly distinguished, both in the charter just quoted, and in Domesday, 337, where both Earl and Staller appear in the same entry. Yet the elder Ralph of Norfolk seems to have borne the title of Earl. The many entries of “Radulfus Comes” in the East-Anglian Domesday generally belong to the younger Ralph, for in several of them the forfeiture of his lands to William is mentioned. But Ralph the father is clearly distinguished in two entries (128 _b_ and 129) as “Comes R. vetus;” and in 194 we find “Radulfus Comes” holding land T. R. E., after which the entry goes on to say, “postea tenuit Radulfus Comes, filius ejus, postea Ailmarus Episcopus de utroque, postea Arfastus Episcopus.” Lastly, in 409 _b_ we read of land in Suffolk; “Hanc habuit Radulfus Stalra in vadimonio de vicecomite Toli [the Sheriff who appears in Cod. Dipl. iv. 208, and in many other writs of Eadward] ... et tenebat die quâ Rex E. fuit mortuus, et postea Radulfus filius ejus.”

This evidence seems quite distinct. There were two Ralphs in Norfolk, father and son, the younger being the son of a Breton mother. The elder was Staller, and is also called Earl; he must have held some subordinate government under Gyrth. He was in possession of his lands at the time of Eadward’s death, and he was succeeded in them by his son. The elder Ralph must therefore have died early in the reign of Harold. But as we find his son fighting among his mother’s countrymen on William’s side at Senlac, it is plain that the younger Ralph must have been outlawed by Harold for some unrecorded treason or other crime. He then evidently migrated to his mother’s country and joined himself to the Breton followers of William. One of the entries in Domesday would almost seem to show that part of his lands were granted by Harold or Gyrth to the East Anglian Bishoprick. Of his career in William’s reign we shall hear in my next volume.

I can only regret that I had not fully worked out these facts sooner, as some of them throw light on Harold’s character and position. Whether Ralph was a partizan of William or of Tostig, or what other crime may have led to his outlawry, I do not venture to guess.

NOTE MM. p. 512.

THE BURIAL OF HAROLD.

I have quoted in the text those passages of the contemporary writers which distinctly assert a burial of Harold on the rocks at Hastings. I will now quote the authorities which assert a burial at Waltham. The full story is given in the De Inventione (c. 21). The two Canons, Osgod and Æthelric, go to the Duke and ask for the body. William answers that Harold, notwithstanding his crimes, shall not be deprived of burial (“Rex vester fidei suæ religionis immemor, etsi dignas transgressionis ad præsens exsolverit pœnas, non meruit sepulturæ beneficio privari”). He adds that it is his design to found a church, to be served by a body of an hundred monks, who are to pray for the soul of Harold and of all others who died in the battle. In that church Harold shall be buried with all honour (“paratus sum ... ipsum Regem vestrum in ecclesiâ eâdem debito cum honore præ cæteris sublimare”). The Canons offer William ten marks of gold that their founder may be buried in his own church where he wished to be buried (“corpus ad locum quem instituit ipse remittere”). William grants their prayer, but refuses the money. They strive in vain to find the body. Osgod then goes home and brings Eadgyth, by whom it is found. The body is then taken to Waltham amidst a vast concourse both of Englishmen and Normans (“multis heroum Normanniæ comitatûs honorem corpori exhibentibus”).

The story however does not rest only on the authority of the Waltham writer. William of Malmesbury (iii. 247), after saying that the body was given to Gytha (see p. 512), adds, “acceptum itaque apud Waltham sepelivit, quam ipse ecclesiam ex proprio constructam in honore Sanctæ Crucis canonicis impleverat.” Wace (14093) had evidently heard two or three stories, and with his usual discretion he avoided committing himself, but he distinctly asserts a burial at Waltham;

“Li Reis Heraut fu emportez,
E à Varham fu enterrez;
Maiz jo ne sai ki l’emporta,
Ne jo ne sai ki l’enterra.”

The continuator of Wace’s Brut, in the passage which I have already quoted (see above, p. 743), buries Harold in the choir at Waltham. The French Biographer of Eadward (4631) tells the same story;

“Le cors le roi Haraud unt quis,
E truvé entre les ocis:
E pur co ke il rois esteit,
Granté est k’enterrez seit
Par la prière sa mère.
Portez fu le cors en bère,
A Wautham est mis en carcu,
Kar de la maisun fundur fu.”

Now, in harmonizing these accounts, it is impossible to escape the strong contemporary evidence which asserts that Harold’s body really was buried on the coast of Sussex. The statements of William of Poitiers and Guy, though they may differ in one or two trifling details, must be admitted as to the main fact. But the evidence for a burial at Waltham is almost equally strong. If it were not so, how did the tale arise? A tomb of Harold was one which there was very little temptation to forge. Harold was not an acknowledged saint, whose burial-place would be a profitable object of pilgrimage. A burial-place of the penitent at Chester might indeed become such an object, but hardly that of the fallen hero at Waltham. The only writer who shows any disposition to canonize Harold distinctly removes his sepulchre from Waltham (see below, p. 759). If the Waltham tomb was a forgery, it was a forgery older than the days of William of Malmesbury; it was a forgery which must have been owing to motives strongly tinged with political feelings, political feelings any such expression of which would, we may be pretty sure, have been put down at once by the strong hand of the Norman King. The statement of William of Malmesbury distinctly proves that it was currently believed, not only at Waltham but generally, that Waltham was Harold’s burying-place. And I need not say that William of Malmesbury does not write in the interest of Waltham or of England. He is a thoroughly independent witness; so is Wace, who, after his manner, honestly confesses his ignorance of some details, while he distinctly asserts the burial at Waltham. So early and so extensive a fabrication as their narratives would imply seems quite out of the question.

The unavoidable inference therefore is that Harold was first buried on the rocks of Hastings under a heap of stones, and afterwards was translated for more solemn interment in the minster at Waltham. This view I worked out for myself in 1857 (see vol. ii. p. 428), but I afterwards found that I had been forestalled in it by M. de Bonnechose (ii. 283), who takes this theory for granted, without reference or argument. On this supposition, we can easily account for all the reports. William of Poitiers and Guy of Amiens, in recording the fight of Senlac, recorded that burial of Harold which formed part of their story; a later translation had no interest for them. The Waltham writers, on the other hand, naturally dwelt only on that burial which formed a part of their own local history. The cairn-burial was something which they would naturally seek to slur over, and to throw out of remembrance. In a short time it would be forgotten; the date of the funeral at Waltham would be shifted back two or three months, and would be held to have immediately followed the battle. Even writers who had no connexion with Waltham, writers like William of Malmesbury and Wace, would naturally think most of that burial which had left a visible witness before the eyes of men, and would have no temptation to dwell upon the hurried ceremony performed by William Malet upon the rocks of Sussex.

And lastly, as to the details of the Waltham story, as to the share in the transaction taken by the two Canons and by Eadgyth Swanneshals. The story, as it stands, cannot be made to agree with the contemporary statement as to Harold’s first burial at Hastings. But the contradiction is little more than a contradiction as to time. The Waltham story implies that the body was found and was buried at Waltham within a few days after the battle. The finding and the burial are placed, if not while William was still on the hill of Senlac, yet at any rate before he left Hastings for Romney. This is of course distinctly contradicted by William of Poitiers and Guy of Amiens. But if we believe that Harold’s body was translated to Waltham at the time of William’s coronation or later, the only error of the Waltham writer would be that he has transposed events and given them wrong dates. The body was found, as he states, on the morrow of the battle, or within a few days after it, but the burial at Waltham did not take place till two or three months later. Two petitions to William seem to be rolled into one. The first, made on Senlac or at Hastings, was followed by the search for the body. The second, made at a later time, was followed by Harold’s translation to Waltham. It was then doubtless that William offered a burial in his own Battle Abbey instead. It is on this view that I have ventured to ground the narrative in the text. And I am strengthened in doing so by the fact that there are several small touches in which all accounts agree. William of Poitiers, William of Malmesbury, and the Waltham writer all agree in making the Duke refuse the offered gold of Gytha and of the Canons. So again the statement of William of Poitiers that Harold’s body was recognized by certain marks exactly falls in with the Waltham story. The Archdeacon of Lisieux tells us that certain persons—to him it was quite indifferent who they were—found Harold’s body in a particular way. The Canon of Waltham tells us who those persons were, and how they came to be there. Just so William of Malmesbury, recording the second burial only, and placing it at the date of the first, speaks of Gytha only, just as William of Poitiers speaks of William Malet only. If Gytha and the Chapter of Waltham joined in a petition for the removal of the body, it is not wonderful that a writer at Malmesbury thought chiefly of the interposition of Gytha. Osgod, Æthelric, Eadgyth, were persons of no interest or importance to either of our Williams; in the local history of Waltham they doubtless filled a great place. I believe therefore that the only mistake in the Waltham story is a mistake of date, the mistake, natural under the circumstances, of thinking that the charitable work of Eadgyth and the two Canons was at once followed by the burial at Waltham. I cannot believe that their story is mere invention; it has all that local and personal character about it which seems to imply a ground-work of truth. The introduction of Eadgyth is an especial mark of truth. The Waltham writers, both the writer De Inventione and the Biographer, are clearly a little puzzled how to describe her position. It is most unlikely that Harold’s clerical panegyrists would either have invented an imaginary mistress for their hero or have exalted a real one into an imaginary prominence. To Eadgyth herself, and to the few hints that we have as to her personal existence, I give another note.

I must quote one writer more. Benoît (37627) follows the story of the first burial up to the point where Harold’s body is given to William Malet, but he declines to say where William buried him.

“Li reis Herault fu seveliz;
Et si me retrait li escriz.
Que sa mère por lui aveir
Vout au duc doner grant aveir;
Mais n’en vout unques dener prendre
Ne por riens nule le cors rendre:
Mais à un Guillaume Malet,
Qui n’ert tosel pas ne vaslet
Mais chevaliers durs e vaillanz.
Icist l’en fu tant depreianz
Qu’il li dona à enfoïr
Là où il vendreit à _plaisir_.”

I now turn to the legend according to which Harold did not die at Senlac. Of this doctrine Harold’s own romantic biographer is the great prophet. But however much he may have embellished the story, he is not to be charged with inventing it. It is found in several other writers, some of whom are earlier than himself. Thus in Giraldus, Itin. Kamb. ii. 11 (p. 140 Dimock), after a story that the Emperor Henry the Fifth had died as a hermit at Chester, we read as follows;

“Similiter et Haroldum Regem se habere testantur: qui, ultimus de gente Saxonicâ [_Cambrensis_ is speaking] Rex in Angliâ, publico apud Hastinges bello cum Normannis congrediens, pœnas succumbendo perjurii luit; multisque, ut aiunt, confossus vulneribus, oculoque sinistro sagittâ perdito ac perforato, ad partes istas victus evasit: ubi sanctâ conversatione cujusdam urbis ecclesiæ jugis et assiduus contemplator adhærens, vitamque tamquam anachoriticam ducens, viæ ac vitæ cursum, ut creditur, feliciter consummavit. Ex utriusque, ut fertur, ultimi articuli confessione, veritas antea non comperta demum prodiit publicata.”

So Æthelred of Rievaux (X Scriptt. 394), evidently alluding to the same story, says of Harold, “aut miserè occubuit aut, ut quidam putant, pœnitentiæ tantum reservatus evasit.” So Gervase of Tilbury, in the strange story which I have already analysed (see above, p. 693), leaves Harold’s death and escape as alternative stories. “Heraldus utrum fugâ sibi consuluerit, an in prœlio ceciderit, adhuc dubium reliquit.”

Ralph of Coggeshall (Martene and Durand, Ampliss. Coll. v. 801) records Harold’s defeat and death, and adds, “quamvis quidam contendant ipsum Haroldum inter occisos delituisse, nocturnâque fugâ lapsum post multas peregrinationes apud Cestriam eremiticam vitam duxisse, et usque ad ultima tempora Regis Henrici Secundi in sancto proposito durâsse.” The age of Harold in 1189 would be about 168 years.

Ralph Higden (lib. vi. p. 286, Gale) quotes William of Malmesbury’s account of the burial at Waltham, as also the alternative statements of Giraldus and Æthelred. To that of Giraldus he very properly, as a Chester man, adds a bit of local detail. The scene of Harold’s penance was “cella Sancti Jacobi, juxta ecclesiam Sancti Johannis.”

Bromton (961) quotes the accounts of William of Malmesbury and Giraldus, without naming either. He prefers William’s account, but he adds some details to the other story; “Cujus tumba in ecclesiâ Sancti Johannis Cestriæ, ad dorsum crucis in medio areæ crebrò ostenditur. Cum quo etiam, dum adhuc vixit, ut quidam volunt, Henricus Primus Rex Angliæ de Walliâ rediens, apud Cestriam colloquium habuit. Sed quia inde a multis dubitari solet, eâ facilitate contemnitur quâ dicitur.” The discourse with Henry the First would be either in 1112 or in 1121, in which latter year Harold would be about a hundred years old.

Knighton (2342) quotes William of Malmesbury, without naming him, and Giraldus by name, with Higden’s addition about the cell of Saint James. He adds; “De istâ opinione fiat qualiter poterit, hoc unum scio, quod tumulatio ejus cum imagine superpositâ in ecclesiâ Abbathiæ de Waltham videre adhuc volentibus ostenditur, ubi dicitur Haraldum humatum fuisse.”

But this Chester story is not the only one. According to another account, Harold escaped alive from the battle, but died soon after. We find this story in the Liber de Castro Ambasiæ (D’Achery, iii. 276); “Hæroldus vincitur, et vulneratur graviter, non multùm post mortuus est.” So too Harold’s great Scandinavian admirer, the biographer of Olaf Tryggwesson, whom I have already had twice to quote (see above, pp. 601, 613, and vol. ii. p. 542), gives the story of Harold’s escape in great detail (p. 263). On the night after the battle, a churl (“þorpkarl”) comes to rob the dead bodies; a man lying among the dead bodies rebukes him sharply for so shameful a deed. He goes home and tells his wife, who at once insists on going to the battle-field with a horse and cart. When she has got there, she asks whether there is any living man among the bodies who can speak to her. A voice answers that there is one who can, and one only. With much trouble she finds the speaker among the bodies; she and her husband put him on the cart and take him home. They wish to know who he is, but he never tells them; they infer however from his face and from his rich garb that he must be a man of the highest rank. The writer explains that this man was King Harold, that he had fallen through weariness and loss of blood, having received many wounds, though none of them were mortal. But the weight of the dead bodies that were heaped upon him hindered him from getting away. He is taken to the churl’s house, and there recovers. The next day the enemy come to seek for his body, and are greatly surprised not to find it. Harold, having recovered, determines, by the example, we are told, of Olaf Tryggwesson, to forsake the world, and to give himself to heavenly contemplation. He makes himself a dwelling-place under a rock, and abides there some while. On his death King William has his body taken to London and buried among the former Kings (“Vilhialmur Kongur let færa lik hans i Lunduner, oc grafa veglega hia odrum Kongum”).

In this last rather unlucky statement, the Scandinavian writer, like Guy of Amiens (see above, p. 542), overrates the antiquity of Westminster, which is doubtless meant by London, as a royal residence and burying-place.

Both these versions, or one which took in both, were known to the writer De Inventione, who indignantly rejects both (c. 21). “Quidquid fabulentur homines quod in rupe manserit Doroberniæ, et _nuper_ defunctus sepultus sit Cestriæ, pro certo quiescit Walthamiæ.” There are parts of the De Inventione which must have been written after 1177. Can this have been written so late? May not the first sketch of the work have been made earlier?

The other Waltham writer, the biographer of Harold, had the difficult task of forcing the legend of Harold’s escape into agreement with the fact that Harold’s tomb existed in Waltham minster, and with the local tradition of the finding of the body by Eadgyth. He is driven to the very awkward shift of saying that Eadgyth found, and that the Canons of Waltham solemnly buried, a wrong body (Chron. Angl. Norm. ii. 209–212). Eadgyth reaches the field; the Normans boast of Harold’s death; those who had saved him also spread abroad the same rumour for their own ends. “Inter hæc mulieris errorem non mirandum, quæ desecti, cruentati, jam denigrati, jam fœtentis corporis speciem minùs discernere valens, pro æstimatione publicâ truncatum cadaver, quum aliud non inveniret quod certiùs agnosceret Regis proprium, rapuit et secum attulit alienum.” The Canons of Waltham are equally undiscerning. “Quod [cadaver] a canonicis reverenter exceptum, indiscussâ rei veritate, honestè in ecclesiâ Sanctæ Crucis sepulturæ est traditum.”

This, I need not say, is neither history nor legend nor romance, but a patched up story of the poorest kind. Of the writer’s own story I have given a sketch in the text. The journey into Denmark is by no means ill conceived, when we remember how important the intervention of Swend Estrithson in English affairs soon became. The German journey also falls in with the fact that William’s name was dreaded on the Rhine as well as on the Thames, and that men feared that he would come as the invader of the continental, as well as of the insular Saxony (see Lambert, 1074). When his hopes of foreign aid are blighted, Harold first takes up his abode on the cliff at Dover (“in quâdam rupe secus Dovram,” p. 198), where he abides ten years. Then he goes into Shropshire on the borders of Wales (pp. 199, 215), where, as in a land where he was very well known, he covers his face with a cloth (200), and calls himself by no name but Christian. He suffers much from the “homines bestiales,” the “infidi ferinique homunculi” (202) of those parts, and at last, under the guidance of an angel (“ductu comitatûs angelico,” 204), he takes up his abode at Chester, in Saint James’s chapel by Saint John’s church (220). He is often asked whether he had been in the battle in which Harold fell, and he always answers that he was. Sometimes he is asked whether he is not Harold himself, and he then makes an evasive answer; “Quando apud Hastingas dimicatum est, nullus Haroldo me carior habebatur” (206). After living several years at Chester (220), he reveals himself, when at the point of death, to Andrew, a priest of Saint John’s (221), from whom and from one Moses (220), who had been Harold’s servant both in Shropshire and at Chester, the writer heard the story. As the book was written (185) after 1206, we here again find Harold living to a patriarchal age.

I have already spoken of the utter worthlessness of these stories as professed matters of history. As for their details, the notion of Harold taking up his abode on a rock at Dover or elsewhere seems to have been suggested by his burial on the rock at Hastings by William Malet. The way in which Harold is said to have escaped falls in exactly with the remarkable passage of Wace which I quoted in p. 508, and it was most likely suggested by the real escape of Esegar and Leofric, and no doubt of others also.

According to Harold’s Biographer (211), Gyrth too escaped as well as his brother. This tale was clearly known to Wace, who, it will be remembered (see above, p. 749), carefully avoids committing himself to Gyrth’s death. According to the legend, Gyrth was seen very publicly in the days of Henry the Second (“visus est tam ab ipso Rege quam a magnatibus terræ et populo”). He was then, as is not wonderful, very old (“erat jam tunc grandævus valdè”), but, as those who had seen him told the writer, very tall and handsome (“sicut eâ tempestate a multis accepimus qui eum viderant, venustus adspectu, facie decorus, proceritate corporis admodum longus”). Walter, the first Abbot of the new foundation at Waltham, with certain of his brethren, met him at the King’s court at Woodstock, and inquired most particularly whether they were right in believing that the bones of Harold lay at Waltham (“diligenter sciscitari studuit utrum reverà cineres germani sui in suo, ut credebatur, monasterio servarentur”). Gyrth answered in English that they might have the body of some churl, but not that of Harold (“Anglicè respondit, ‘Rusticum,’ ait, ‘quemlibet habere potestis; Haroldum non habetis’”). He even went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Cross of Waltham, and, being shown his brother’s tomb, he again distinctly affirmed that Harold was not there (“obliquè illud intuitus, ‘non,’ ait, ‘homo scit’—sic enim jurabat—‘non hic jacet Haroldus’”). This is told on the authority of Michael, Chamberlain of the Church of Waltham, who heard Gyrth say it. Here we find Gyrth, as well as Harold, living to an age which might justify the chronology of Ivanhoe.

Lastly, the savage way in which this writer attacks William of Malmesbury (207) is worth noticing. He remarks how the “facundissimus Meldunensis Willelmus” professes impartiality in his judgements (“promittit se medium inter obtrectantium necnon et commendantium partes incessurum”). But mark how this impartial writer treats Harold (208);

“Cæterum in aliis quæ de meritis Haroldi vel moribus, prout ani mus tulit aut fama suggessit, aureo nunc, nunc verò piceo commentatus est stilo, venaliùs fortè exorbitaverit a tramite veri, in ipsum verò christum Deum [Dei?] truculentiùs deliquit. Tres enim lanceas in ipsum violentus intorsit, quibus non tam illius personam quam ipsam contigit impeti veritatem. Dixit enim ictu sagittæ capite vulnerato oppetisse, dixit militem qui Regi mortuo femur inciderat Ducis censurâ victoris ab exercitu pulsum, rettulit a matre funus regium oblatâ pecuniâ a Triumphatore Willelmo postulatum, sed receptum absque pecuniâ, apud Waltham tumulatum. Sic in femur, sic in caput, sic in omne hominis corpus, lingua licentiùs debacchatur oratoris clanculò scriptitantis quam militis armata manus in propatulo dimicantis.”

Literary controversy was at least as bitter in the thirteenth century as it is in the nineteenth. But in contrast to the wicked monk of Malmesbury, the Biographer gives us the praises of another writer who left the question of Harold’s death undecided; “Temperantiùs scripsit hujus ipsius scriptoris contemporaneus, venerabilis admodum Abbas Edelredus.”

NOTE NN. p. 514.

EADGYTH SWANNESHALS.

Our direct notices of Harold’s mistress Eadgyth come from the two Waltham writers, who plainly describe her as a concubine, or at most as a Danish wife, though they evidently try to veil her position under a mist of words. In the De Inventione, c. 21, we read, “Placuit ... mulierem quam ante sumptum Anglorum regimen dilexerat, Editham cognomento Swanneshals, quod Gallicè sonat _collum cygni_, secum adducere, quæ Domini Regis quandoque cubicularia secretiora in eo signa noverat cæteris ampliùs, ad ulteriora intima secretorum admissa.” With the _cubicularia_ of this writer we may compare Sir John Maundevile, c. ix.; “And Abraham had another son Ysmael, that he gat upon Agar his _Chambrere_.” The Biographer of Harold (p. 210) brings in “quamdam sagacis animi feminam nomine Editham ... hæc enim præ cæteris femina commodiùs videbatur ad hoc destinanda, quæ inter millia mortuorum illius quem inquirebat eo quoque faciliùs decerneret, eo quod benevolentiùs tractaret exuvias, quo eum arctiùs amaverat et pleniùs noverat, utpote quam thalami ipsius secretis liberiùs interfuisse constaret.”

A mistress of Harold (“quædam concubina Heraldi”) is mentioned in Domesday, 2, as holding three houses at Canterbury T. R. E. See Ellis, i. 316; ii. 81.

An Eadgyth or Eadgifu—the two names are hopelessly confounded—of the Swan’s Neck, “Edgyve Swanneshals,” occurs in the Chronicle of John of Oxenedes, p. 292 (cf. Ellis, ii. 81). She is mentioned in the driest way, without reference to Harold or to anything else, in a list of benefactors to the Abbey of Saint Benet of Holm, to which she gave Thurgarton in Norfolk (cf. Domesday, ii. 216 _a_). Along with her are found the names of Earl Ralph and Ralph the Staller, who are carefully distinguished (see above, p. 753). The gifts of all these, and of many other persons, were confirmed by King Eadward in 1046.

John of Oxenedes wrote after 1292. His authority therefore for an historical fact would be nowhere; but when he is plainly copying an earlier list of benefactors without any special object, his witness is nearly equal to that of a contemporary.

I am certainly inclined to identify the swan-necked lady of the Waltham story with the swan-necked lady of the Saint Benet’s catalogue. And in default of evidence to the contrary, we may also identify her with Harold’s Canterbury mistress. Eadgyth was clearly a Norfolk woman by birth, but there is nothing wonderful in her having property within her lover’s later Earldom. But if she was a benefactress of Saint Benet’s in or before 1046, she was no longer young in 1066. That is to say, Harold’s connexion with her began during his East-Anglian government, between 1045 and 1053. This also makes it likely that she was the mother of all Harold’s children, except Wulf, who was doubtless the son of Ealdgyth (see p. 511). We hear nothing of any earlier wife of Harold, and the incidental way in which Harold’s sons are first mentioned some time after their father’s death, falls in with the notion of their illegitimacy.

Another question is whether Eadgyth Swanneshals is the same as “Eddeva pulcra,” “faira,” or “dives,” who appears in Domesday as holding lands in various parts of England, East-Anglia among them. Sharon Turner (Hist. Eng. i. 53) makes them the same, but the identity is disputed by Sir Henry Ellis (ii. 79) and Lappenberg (556). Sir H. Ellis further identifies Eddeva Pulcra with the Lady Ealdgyth. This last does not seem to me at all likely; as to the identification of Eddeva Pulcra with Eadgyth Swanneshals, there is absolutely no evidence either way. There is also another East-Anglian Eadgyth, “Edied quædam libera femina” (Domesday, ii. 286), who is clearly distinct from Eddeva Pulcra, but who may or may not be Eadgyth Swanneshals. And I cannot help noticing the will of an East-Anglian lady named Wulfgyth (Cod. Dipl. iv. 106), in which a female name, which is evidently corrupt, but which must be meant for Eadgyth or Ealdgyth, comes into dangerous neighbourhood with the name of Harold. Wulfgyth leaves land to two daughters and to various churches; then follows, “And ic ge-an Ælgyðe mínre déhter ðæs landes æt Certæcere and æt Essetesforde and ðæs wuda ðe ic legde ðǽrto; and ic ge-an Godwine Eorle and Haralde Eorle Friðtúnes.” I cannot identify these places. The date is 1046. Is it possible that Eadgyth Swanneshals was Wulfgyth’s daughter, and that her mother’s bequest formed her benefaction to Saint Benet’s?

As to the relation between Harold and Eadgyth, it looks very much as if it was a case of the Danish marriage. Eadgyth and Ealdgyth very likely answered to the two Ælfgifus in the life of Cnut, and to Sprota and Liutgardis in the life of William Longsword. Anyhow the connexion was “ante sumptum Anglorum regimen.”