Harold Godwineson in the Bayeux Tapestry

How to be rich: the presentation of Earl Harold in the early sections of the Bayeux Tapestry (5901) Aberdeen *1 Ann Williams It may seem that the last thing we need is another paper on status in the Bayeux Tapestry, but there may be some mileage left in its depiction of Earl Harold, which not only reveals his own position in the social hierarchy but also provides an insight into the display of status in eleventh-century England. The first panel of the Tapestry, which deals with events in 1064 The date is implied by the depiction of Duke William’s Breton campaign. The first panel of the Tapestry may have been made in Normandy (Short, 2001, 275)., opens[*2] with King Edward on his high-seat in a richly decorated hall (probably at Winchester), conversing with two figures, one shown by the context to be Earl Harold; the gesture between king and earl (the ‘touching hands’ motif) perhaps indicates the commission of some errand (Wilson, 1985, 174; Owen-Crocker, 2007, 151-2). Harold sets out [*3] immediately (the door to the hall is shown open) and travels with his men to Bosham. Thence they depart on their ill-fated sea-journey [*4], ending in the party being captured by Count Guy of Ponthieu and taken to his residence at Beaurain[*5]. Word of Guy’s prize is brought to Duke William [*6], who orders him to deliver up his captive. Here begins the second panel of the Tapestry, which largely concerns Harold’s stay with Duke William; the relevant scenes are those showing [*7]William conducting Harold to Rouen, [*8]Harold’s return to England, and [*9] his reception by King Edward. Social standing in early medieval England was primarily established by birth, but though a thegn’s offspring, male and female, were of aristocratic status, their precise place in the hierarchy was affected by other considerations. In some cases the mother’s rank may have been more important than the father’s, for English women kept their rank even if married to men of lower status; e.g., Wulfric Wulfruneson, son of Wulfrun of Tamworth, whose father’s name is unknown (Sawyer, 1979, xxxviii-xli). Wealth, especially landed wealth, was one, but the rank of the lord who held their commendation was also important; a king’s thegn had greater standing than a man of similar wealth commended to a lesser lord (Williams, 2008, 5-8). In general terms, the closer one was to the king, the higher one’s status; one of the criteria for a free man to attain thegnhood was ‘a seat and special office in the king’s hall’ (Whitelock, 1955, 432). It is therefore significant that the Tapestry shows Harold very close to King Edward. Whatever the meaning of the ‘touching hands’ gesture [*10], it must indicate a man high in the king’s circle. At their meeting on Harold’s return to England [*11], both king and earl are accompanied by axe-bearing attendants, each of whom points to his own lord, and though it has been argued that the king is reprimanding the earl, the balance of the scene implies a more equal relationship (Owen-Crocker, 2007, 151). The standing of the greater lords was also signalled by their ability to attract the commendation of others; the word ‘lord’ implied someone able to maintain a hired, a household of retainers. From the moment of Harold’s appearance in the Tapestry, he is accompanied by his men. As he rides to Bosham [*12] at the head of his mounted escort, he presents a perfect illustration of a verse in the Old English Maxims: eorl sceal on eos boge, eored sceal getrume ridan: ‘a nobleman goes on the arched back of a war-horse, a troop of cavalry must ride in a body’ (Shippey, 1976, 66-7). In the 990s, Wulfstan of Winchester described an ealdorman ‘accompanied by a large mounted retinue’, and his lay contemporary, Ælfhelm polga, left half his stud at Troston to minan geferan … þe me mid ridað: ‘my companions who ride with me’ (Lapidge, 2003, 530-3; Sawyer, 1968, no. 1487). Gradations of rank are found among retainers as among their lords. At a shire-court in Oxford in 1051-2, the retinue of Earl Harold’s older contemporary, Earl Leofric, is described as ‘Vagn and all the earl’s housecarls’ (Sawyer, 1968, no. 1425; Keynes, 1993, 266-7); Vagn, a leading thegn of the central midlands, was presumably their commander. Vagn held some 55 hides of land in Warwickshire and Oxfordshire (Erskine, 1986, ff 242v, 250). A similar relationship is implied in The Battle of Maldon between Ealdorman Byrhtnoth and Offa, possibly the nephew of Theodred, bishop of London (Scragg, 1981, lines 198-202, 239-43, 288-94; Lockerbie-Cameron, 1991, 246). Perhaps we may see their equivalent in Earl Harold’s entourage in the Bayeux Tapestry. In the opening scene [*13], a second figure stands beside Harold as he speaks with king, and the fact that he is the taller is significant, since height and status are linked in the Tapestry’s iconography (Lewis, 2005, 78-9, 139). Another taller figure [*14] attends the earl as he enters the church of Bosham; both are shown in the attitude of genuflection, but only Harold is wearing a cloak, another indication of status in the Tapestry’s repertoire (Lewis, 2007, 104; Owen-Crocker, 2007, 160-1). When Harold enters the hall of Count Guy at Beaurain [*15], he is again accompanied by a taller man, while the rest of his entourage remain outside, but here the difference in status is shown by the fact that the earl is allowed to carry his sheathed sword, whereas the similar sword in the hand of one of Guy’s retainers presumably belongs to his companion. If the sword belonged to Guy’s man, he would be wearing it. The height of the man who rides with Harold on his return to England [*16] cannot be judged, but though both wear spurs, only the earl has a cloak, and his horse is a stallion, whereas his companion rides a gelding. In the following scene in King Edward’s hall [*17], Harold is again accompanied by a single retainer, bearing an axe, who balances the axe-bearing retainer beside the king, each pointing to his own lord. None of these figures is named, and they need not all relate to the same man, but some may portray the leader of Earl Harold’s hired. The bearded man with an English hair-style who stands immediately behind Earl Harold in Duke William’s hall at Rouen, wearing a sword and carrying a spear and a kite-shaped shield, and touching the earl’s right hand, has been interpreted as Harold’s brother Wulfnoth, held hostage by the duke; a similar spear-bearing figure (but without a beard) observes the earl in the oath-taking scene (Owen-Crocker, 2007, 151-2). One of the duties owed by a lord to his followers was to provide them with food and drink (the word hlaford means ‘bestower of bread’). Harold fulfils this obligation by eating with his men in his house at Bosham [*18]. The earl, in the centre of the table, drinks from a cup with a decorated rim, while two of his men have drinking-horns with decorated mouths, one of which has a terminal shaped like an animal’s head. The table is laid with a bowl of food and what appears to be a loaf, suggesting a simple meal of bread, the staple food, and an accompanying ‘relish’ (gesufel) (Davidson 1997, 20-22). Twelfth-century peasants who did compulsory ploughing-services were entitled to companagium, ‘something to go with bread’ (Stacy, 2006, 97). The tenth-century regulations of the London ‘peace-guild’ record that when a guild-brother died, each of his fellows was to contribute a loaf with its relish (gesufelne hlaf) to the funeral feast (Attenborough, 1963, 164-5), while the food-rent from Newton (Suffolk) in the time of Abbot Leofstan (1044-65) included ‘relish (syflincge) for 300 loaves’ (Robertson, 1956, 192-3). What the ‘relish’ entailed varied according to the season, as well as the wealth of the provider. Then as now, butter was a common accompaniment to bread, but OE smeoru covered lard, fresh cheese and dripping, and more exotic relishes included black cumin, ‘the southern wort that is good to eat on bread’ (Hagen, 2006, 389-90). Cumin must have been imported; the merchant in Ælfric’s Colloquy included spices (wyrtgemangc) among his wares (Garmonsway, 1991, 33). The room at Bosham [18 CONT] in which the meal is eaten is on the upper floor of a two-storied building, entered via what appears to be an external staircase. Since no pre-Conquest domestic buildings survive except as robbed-out trenches and empty post-holes, it is difficult to interpret the Tapestry’s representation, but the royal residence at Calne, Wilts, had an upper story (upflor), which in 977 collapsed beneath the weight of a meeting of the king’s council (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ‘DE’, s.a. 1077). William of Malmesbury translates upflor as solarium (Mynors et al, 1998, 132-3). The same word could be used to describe the upper levels of a church; it was from an upflor that Abbot Turstin’s knights shot at the monks of Glastonbury as they sheltered behind the high altar of their abbey church, and Queen Edith presided over a sale of land on an upflor at Wilton in 1072 (AS Chronicle ‘E’, 1083; Simon Keynes, ‘Giso, bishop of Wells’, ANS 19 (1997), pp. 262-3). In his translation of the Pastoral Care, King Alfred envisages a train of thought rising ‘as on a ladder … until it stands firmly in the upper chamber (solor) of the mind’, and such upper rooms may be attested archaeologically (Sweet, 1871, 77; Reynolds, 1999, 115). Whether the Tapestry’s representation indicates a first-floor-hall, or a two-storied chamber block, the earl’s residence at Bosham was evidently a high-status dwelling. It was also associated with a important church, though, like the secular building, the Tapestry’s picture [*19] cannot be related to any surviving structure; the closest comparison is St Laurence at Bradford-on-Avon, Wilts (Lewis, 2005, 2). King Edgar had legislated on the division of ecclesiastical dues between churches built by thegns on their estates (tunkirkan) and the minsters into whose jurisdiction they had been intruded (Robertson, 1974, 20-1; Wormald, 1999, 313-7), but Bosham was no mere tunkirk. Though its early history cannot be reconstructed, its description in Domesday Book reveals it as ‘the richest unreformed minster remaining in southern England’ (Blair, 2005, 328-9). In King Edward’s time, the manor of Bosham, reckoned at 113 hides, had been divided between King Edward’s chaplains, Osbern and Godwine), and Harold’s father, Earl Godwine. One hide (at Itchenor) had been detached after the Conquest (Erskine, 1986, ff. 17-17v). It is not easy to calculate how the manor had originally been divided Earl Godwine’s share had originally been 56½ hides (Erskine, 1986, fo 16), which, at half the hidage assigned to the church, suggests a 50/50 split. Before 1066, Godwine the priest held 47 hides of the church’s share (Erskine 1986, ff 17v, 27), which, if the minster retained 56½ hides, leaves 9½ hides for Osbern. Domesday, however, says that Osbern ‘received’ 65 hides (Erskine, 1986, fo 16), while Godwine’s share, held by the king in 1086, had been reduced to 38 hides, which add up to 103 hides, rather than 113. The minster held a further 19 hides at Lavington and Elsted, plus 10 hides in Hampshire, a total holding of 132 hides Godwine’s manor, held in 1086 by the king, had been assessed at 56½ hides, which suggests a 50:50 split between the minster and the earl, and though the Domesday figures are ambiguous, his relationship with the community at Bosham resembles that between the minster of Deerhurst, Gloucs, and Earl Odda, who appropriated roughly half its endowment and used the southern half of its precinct to establish his own residence. The site of Odda’s manor-house is marked by the church of Holy Trinity which Odda built to commemorate his brother (Taylor, 1902, 230-40; Blair, 2005, 286, 328; Taylor and Taylor i, 1965, 209-11). That Odda was nonetheless regarded as ‘a good man and pure, and very noble’ (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ‘D’, s.a. 1056) is a reminder that thegnly acquisition of minsters was not necessarily hostile; many lay proprietors restored and revived ailing communities, even as they appropriated a share of their property (Williams, 2001, 20-1). Harold’s first action on arriving at Bosham [19 CONT] is to visit the church, and the depiction of him genuflecting and crossing himself as he enters suggests an element of piety as well as proprietorship (Owen-Crocker, 2007, 160-1). There is no point in being rich if no-one knows it, and material wealth was demonstrated by personal adornment and expensive possessions. The physical form of the Tapestry makes the portrayal of distinction in dress difficult, but when Harold’s party is captured by Count Guy [*20], the earl, barefoot and bare-legged after wading ashore, wears a unique garment whose skirt is decorated with vertical stripes, possibly to indicate his rank (Owen-Crocker, 2004, 255). Other items of lordly display are more easily illustrated. On his journey to Bosham [*21], the earl is the only rider mounted on a stallion, which denotes both his rank and his horsemanship; as the Old English Rune Poem says, ‘in the hall riding seems pleasant to every warrior, but it is very stressful for the man who sits on the back of a powerful horse covering the mile-long roads’ (Shippey, 1976, 80-1). The word translated as ‘riding’ (rad) may in fact refer to the environment of the hall, but the meaning is the same - sitting comfortably at home is better than handling a spirited horse on a long journey (Page, 1999, 68-9). For the Tapestry’s horses, see further Keefer, 2005, 93-108. Native British horses are quite small and stocky, but attempts were being made to improve the breed; studs are recorded on the lands of Æthelstan ætheling, eldest son of Æthelred unræd, and local magnates like Thurstan Lustwine’s son and Ælfhelm polga (Sawyer, 1968, nos 1487, 1503, 1531); an ‘old stud-fold’ adjacent to a royal park (haga) is recorded in a tenth-century boundary-clause (Sawyer, 1968. no. 1370; Hooke, 1990, 115-8, 286-7). The ætheling bequeathed a white horse to his father the king, a pied stallion (anes fagan stedan) to his discþen Ælfmær, and a black horse to Bishop Ælfsige, colours which suggest that the animals were arab stallions from Spain, or bred therefrom (Jones, 2008, 161-2). The fact that the English fyrd did not fight on horseback (except in the pursuit) does not mean that fine bloodstock was not desirable: the Rune Poem observes that ‘a war-horse (eh) is a delight to princes in front of their nobles, a horse that steps proudly (hors hofum wlanc) while rich men on horseback exchange talk about it’, and according to The Fortunes of Men, ‘a good man values a good, well-broken horse (mearh), familiar, well-tried and round-hoofed’ (Shippey, 1976, 70-1, 82-3). The high-stepping horse of the Rune Poem reappears in The Battle of Maldon, when the treacherous Godric flees on wlancan þæm wicge (‘on the prancing steed’) belonging to Ealdorman Byrhtnoth. He both betrayed his lord thereby and also started the flight, for ‘too many believed … that it was our lord’, being deceived not only by the quality of the horse, but also its opulent tack (gerædu), since horses owned by great lords were decked out to indicate their riders’ rank (Scragg, 1981, lines 184-90; Graham-Campbell, 1992, 77-89; Owen-Crocker, 1991, 220-37). Ælfric the homilist writes of angelic horses with ‘golden trappings’ (mid gyldenum gerædum), and bequests of saddle-gear in contemporary aristocratic wills suggest that this was no literary conceit (Skeat, 1966, 98; Sawyer, 1968, nos 1497, 1503, 1537). Reins and tack (bridelþwancgas and geræda) were produced by the shoemaker in Ælfric’s Colloquy, along with spur-straps and halters (Garmonsway, 1991, 35), and in the late tenth century a stolen bridle was valuable enough to provoke an armed conflict (Sawyer, 1968, no. 883). Since much of the horse’s tack was made of perishable materials, little survives, though the Coppergate site in York produced what might be part of a wooden saddle-bow, decorated with geometric forms and interlace, and studded with silver rivets which once secured strips of horn (Webster and Backhouse, 1991, 278-9; Graham-Campbell, 1992, 80). Most of what remains consists of decorative mounts and buckles; a fine set of harness-mounts in gilded bronze was found at Velds, in Denmark but is ‘either English work or made by a Scandinavian craftsman under English influence’ (Owen-Crocker, 1991, 233), and a stirrup-iron inlaid in copper and brass-wire, found near Seagry, Wilts, may have been of English manufacture (Backhouse et al, 1984, 105-6; Graham-Campbell, 1992, 87-8). Like the clothing of the riders, the embellishment of the horses’ accoutrements is not easily illustrated in the Tapestry’s medium, but on the journey to Bosham [21 CONT] Harold is the only member of the party to wear spurs, and the horse which he rides on his return to England [*22] appears to have an embroidered headstall and reins and a jewel-studded breastband; there may also be a decorated band on the lower part of the earl’s saddle. Horses formed part of the heriots required in Wessex from earls, king’s thegns, and thegns commended to lesser lords (Whitelock, 1955, 429). Hunting-dogs and hawks also appear; according to the Berkshire customs recorded in Domesday Book, the heriot of a ‘king’s thegn or household warrior’ (tainus vel miles regis dominicus) included his dogs and hawks (canes vel accipitres) ‘if he had any’ (Erskine, 1986, fo. 56v). King Edward’s fondness for hunting is well known (Barlow, 1992, 62-3, 78-9; Mynors et al, 1998, 404-5), but earlier kings seem to have made similar stipulations; the wills of the Kentish thegn Brihtric (between 973 and 987) and the Hertfordshire lady Æthelgifu (from the 990s) both include hounds in their heriots, and Brihtric includes two hawks as well (Sawyer, 1968, nos 1497, 1511). Dogs are connected with the aristocratic pursuit of hunting; the dogs of Æthelgifu and Brihtric are specifically described as staghounds (headeorhundas), used for the pursuit of red deer (hea[h]deor). The remains of what are probably hunting-dogs have been found at several excavations (Lewis, 2005, 90; Hagen, 2006, 135), and the earliest life of St Dunstan describes how, in the early 940s, the hounds of King Edmund plunged to their death in the Cheddar Gorge along with the red deer stag (cervus) which was their quarry (Stubbs, 1874, 23-4; Lapidge, 1992, 247-59). Earl Harold’s hunting-dogs [*23], with bells on their collars, run before him as he rides to Bosham, preceded by two smaller creatures interpreted as a brace of hares, though they might be terriers (Wilson, 1985, 175; Brunsdon Yapp, 1987, 27). The two dogs who are carried on board ship at Bosham[*24], one in the arms of the earl himself, may be the pair who follow Count Guy’s party [*25] after their lord’s capture and precede the earl [*26] as he is taken by William to Rouen; they do not appear thereafter. The maintenance of a pack of hunting-dogs requires considerable expenditure, and could be undertaken only by the wealthy. Some animals were quartered on the lord’s men; Rectitudines Singularum Personarum, a tract on estate management, requires each pair of dependent tenants to maintain one staghound, and the Confessor gave a hide at the royal manor of Hendred, Berks, to Godric the sheriff’s wife ‘because she was rearing his dogs’ (Douglas and Greenaway, 1961, 814; Erskine, 1986, fo 57v). Hawks were another sign of status (Owen-Crocker, 1991, 220-9, 235-6; Evans, 1990, 79-99). They could be taken from the wild; there are numerous references to eyries in Domesday Book, which reveals that Harold himself had ‘three nests of hawks in the woodland’ (iii nidi accipitrum in silva) attached to his manor at Limpsfield, Surrey (Erskine, 1986, fo 34). Native birds were probably released at the end of the hunting-season; the wildfowler of Ælfric’s Colloquy let his birds go every summer, to save the cost of feeding them (Garmonsway, 1991, 32). Especially prized, however, and probably therefore retained in a mews, were the imported falcons called wealhhafocas, ‘foreign hawks’. The royal dues of Worcestershire, recorded in Domesday Book, included £10 for ‘a Norwegian hawk’ (accipiter norresc), probably a peregrine (Erskine, 1986, fo 172), and identical sums were due from Leicestershire, Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire, Warwickshire and Wiltshire, though the sources of these birds are not recorded (Erskine, 1986, ff 64v, 154v, 219, 230, 238). The seal of Cnut IV of Denmark (d. 1085), the earliest from Scandinavia, shows on its reverse the king on horseback, with a hawk or falcon on his fist (Harmer, 1950, 128-9). The Fortunes of Men describes the training of such a wælisca by its keeper (hagosteald, a word implying someone in a lordly household); he puts jesses (wyrplas) on it, and feeds it small morsels of food until it learns to return to his hand (Shippey, 1976, 60-3). Harold collected books on the art of falconry, later used by Adelard of Bath (Haskins, 1922, 398-400), and it is probably a falcon [*27] which he carries on his journey to Bosham; the jesses, apparently terminating in bells, are clearly visible. The bird travelled with him to Frankia, and is seen again on Harold’s fist as Count Guy conducts his prisoners to Beaurain, bearing his own falcon [*28]; once Harold passes into William’s hands, however, it is the duke who holds the bird [*29], which does not appear thereafter. None of those who carry hawks are depicted with gloves, which, given the size and strength of the creatures’ talons, would seem essential; as Maxims says, hafuc sceal on glofe:‘a hawk must go on a glove’ (Shippey, 1976, 76-7). The Tapestry’s portrayal of the earl shows him with most of the contemporary indicators of high status; a close relationship with the king, a retinue which he feasts at his own residence, in close proximity to an important church, fine clothes, a high-stepping horse, suitably caparisoned, hunting-dogs and a hawk. Clearly Harold is a person of consequence in his world; but there is something more. The text which accompanies his journey to Bosham reads [*30]: Harold dux Anglorum et sui milites equitant ad Bosham, the dux being emphasized by the pointing hand of one of Harold’s men (Owen-Crocker, 2007, 148, 149). It has been argued that the title dux Anglorum, ‘clearly inappropriate in an English context’, is included to establish an equivalence with William dux Normannorum (Short, 2001, 279). While it is true that the exact expression does not reappear in pre-Conquest sources – though Ælfgar of Mercia is styled comes Anglorum in a charter ostensibly of 1061 (Sawyer, 1968, no. 1237; Baxter, 2008, 267-70) - this is not quite the whole story. From earliest times English ealdormen and earls appear in charters as duces, but their spheres of authority are rarely defined; even when describing the complex manoeuvres of 1051-2, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle does not specify territories, referring rather to ‘Siward’s earldom’, ‘Leofric’s earldom’ and so forth. Worcestershire leases of the late tenth and eleventh centuries usually acknowledge the consent of the current dux Merciorum, and one surviving royal diploma gives territorial titles for King Æthelred’s ealdormen (Sawyer, 1968, no. 891), but even here ealdorman and earls appear as lords of people rather than places; Æthelred’s ealdormen are Æthelweard dux of the Western Provinces, Ælfric of the provinces of Winchester (Wentaniensium Provinciarum), Ælfhelm of the Northumbrian Provinces, Leofsige of the East Saxons (Orientalium Saxonum), and Leofwine of the Hwiccian Provinces. For Ælfhelm’s title see also Sawyer, 1968, no 1380. This usage reflects the fact that tenth-century ealdordoms and eleventh-century earldoms were not territorial entities, like the counties and duchies of Frankia. In England there was no tier of local administration higher than the shire, and shires could, at the king’s will, be transferred from one earl’s authority to another’s, or re-combined in new groupings. In 1043 Edward created an earldom for Swein Godwineson consisting of two ‘West Saxon’ shires (Berkshire and Somerset) and three ‘Mercian’ (Herefordshire, Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire), but the constituent parts are recorded only by the post-Conquest chronicler, John of Worcester; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle refers merely to ‘Earl Swein’s district (folgoð)’, though it does reveal the inclusion of Herefordshire (McGurk, 1995, 558-9; Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ‘D’, 1051). Earls were figures of national rather than regional importance, who could be moved from one earldom to another; both Harold and Ælfgar were successively earls in East Anglia before the deaths of their respective fathers. From at least the tenth century there was a hierarchy of earls, partly based on seniority of appointment. Dominant earls frequently acquired quasi-royal bynames: Æthelstan, who presided over most of eastern England between 931 and 956, was called ‘Half-king’, and his younger contemporary Ælfhere, who tops the lists of ealdormen in royal diplomas from 957 to 983, was described by Byrhtferth of Ramsey as princeps Merciorum gentis (Hart, 1992, 569-604; Williams, 1980, 143-72). In 1007, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records the appointment of Eadric streona, widely regarded as the evil genius of King Æthelred’s later years, to the kingdom of the Mercians (on Myrcena rice), and describes a meeting of the witan in 1014 as ‘Ealdorman Eadric and all the chief councillors of England’. Eadric is described as quasi subregulus in the post-Conquest Worcester cartulary (Hearne, 1723, 280-1). is that accorded his father Godwine, in the life of King Edward - totius pene regni … dux et baiulus: ‘ealdorman and ruler of almost the whole kingdom’ (Barlow, 1992, 10-11) - words paralleled in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s description of Godwine’s fall from power in 1051: ‘it would have seemed remarkable to everyone in England if anybody had told them that it could happen, because he had been exalted so high, even to the point of ruling the king and all England’. It is in this context that Harold might be described as dux Anglorum; not just any earl, but the senior earl of the kingdom, the closest to the king and the highest in his counsel. The title is not analogous to that of his rival, William dux Normannorum. 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