The Norman Conquest (29 page)

They had to wait a further fortnight, but eventually their prayers were answered. ‘At length’, says Poitiers, ‘the expected wind blows. Voices and hands are raised to heaven in thanks and, at the same time, a tumult arises as each man encourages the other.’ The Bayeux Tapestry shows men carrying and carting weapons and wine to the ships in a somewhat sedate fashion. It is the
Carmen
that best captures the jubilant but frantic atmosphere that followed:

Immediately, all were of one mind and purpose – to entrust themselves to the sea, now calm at last. Although dispersed, all arrive rejoicing, and run instantly to take up position. Some step the masts, others then hoist the sails. Many force the knights’ horses to clamber on to the ships. The rest hasten to stow their arms. Like a flock of doves seeking their lofts, the throngs of infantry rush to take their places on the boats. O what a great noise suddenly erupts from that place as the sailors seek their oars, the knights their arms!
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Frustratingly, conflicting dates in our source material means we do not know on what day this dramatic scene took place. Most
probably it was 27 September, though just possibly it was 28 September. We can, however, estimate the time of day by looking at the tides. The Normans would have needed to embark on a rising tide, and to have departed soon after high tide, in order for their heavily laden ships to have sufficient clearance. On 27 September 1066 low water at St Valéry occurred at around 9 a.m., high tide at around 3 p.m., and the sun set just before 5.30 p.m. This fits very well with the
Carmen’s
comment that ‘the day was already closing in, the setting sun departing’ when the ships finally cast off their moorings, and the duke’s own vessel raced ahead and took the lead.
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As luck would have it we have a description of William’s ship. A few lines added to the end of the Ship List tell us it was called the
Mora
, and that it been prepared for him by his wife, Matilda. Sadly, we can’t say for certain what the ship’s name signified (though all manner of suggestions have been put forward). The List also tells us about a finishing touch that Matilda had caused to be added: at the prow of the vessel stood the figure of a small, gilded boy, holding a horn to his lips with one hand and pointing towards England with the other. A similar figure appears on one of the ships depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry.
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Once the ships reached the open sea, says William of Poitiers, they immediately dropped anchor. Partly this must have been to enable the fleet to establish the ‘orderly formation’ described by the
Carmen
, but it was also, as Poitiers explains, ‘for fear that they might reach the shore to which they were bound before dawn, and run into danger in a hostile and unknown landing place’. There would, of course, have been no shortage of sailors who had made the same crossing hundreds of times before on hand to advise on timings. The English coast lies about sixty miles from St Valéry; if they maintained a speed of between three and four knots the voyage would take at least twelve hours – bringing them to England, as Poitiers indicates, before the sun had risen. For several hours, therefore, they idled outside the estuary while night fell. As the stars filled up the heavens, says the
Carmen
, so the ocean filled with glowing torches. At length – probably around 9 p.m. – a lantern was lit on William’s ship, a trumpet sounded, and the fleet sailed on.
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When the sun rose the next morning, at around 6 a.m., there was apparently intense anxiety on board the
Mora
. As William of Poitiers explains, during the night the duke’s flagship had raced
ahead of the others (‘trying to equal his ardour by its speed’); at daybreak its occupants discovered they were quite alone, with no other sails in sight. The duke himself, naturally, was unperturbed, and quelled the nerves of his companions by calmly sitting down to an abundant meal, ‘as if he were in his hall at home’. It is a scene worthy of the classical authors that Poitiers sought to emulate, but not directly copied from any of them and so impossible to dismiss completely. Of course, by the time William had finished his hearty breakfast – washed down, we are told, with spiced wine – the crisis was over. ‘On being asked again’, says Poitiers, ‘the lookout saw four ships following; the third time he exclaimed that there were so many they resembled a dense forest whose trees bore sails.’
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Some three hours later, around 9 a.m., the Norman fleet landed on the English coast. Their port of arrival was Pevensey, and this was almost certainly intended. The town itself was insubstantial, but it boasted the attraction of a former Roman fort (Anderitum) which afforded the invaders some immediate protection. More importantly, aiming his ships at Pevensey meant that William could make use of Pevensey Bay, a suitably extensive landing ground for his several hundred ships. The Bayeux Tapestry shows the horses being unloaded from the ships, and Norman knights racing to occupy the town of Hastings, a dozen miles further east along the coast. Here too they seized an ancient fortification, in this case the Iron Age hill fort that stands on the cliffs high above the town. ‘You repair the remnants of earlier fortifications and set guards to protect them’, says the
Carmen:
the fort at Hastings, like the one at Pevensey, was immediately customized to meet the Normans’ requirements. As we can see from the surviving remains, the invaders dug ditches and raised ramparts to reduce the size of both sites, transforming each from an old-style communal fortress into that modern French phenomenon, the castle. At Hastings, the Tapestry shows teams of diggers labouring to create that most distinctive of early castle features, the motte.
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Thus William landed in England, probably on the morning of 28 September, possibly the morning after. When did Harold learn of his arrival? The answer depends, of course, on where the English king was, and here our sources leave us somewhat in the dark. We know that he fought and won the battle of Stamford Bridge on 25 September, but what he did in the days that followed is uncertain.
One possibility is that, still anxious about the Norman threat, he immediately rounded up the remnant of his army and set out southwards, but this does not seem at all probable. Having won his great victory over the Vikings, it is far more likely that Harold would have remained in Yorkshire for a few days, resting his men and attending to the region’s pacification. We know that he negotiated with the Norwegian survivors and granted them safe passage home, and we can reasonably assume that he would have wanted to reimpose his authority on the citizens of York. As we’ve seen, William of Malmesbury claims that the body of Tostig Godwineson was taken to the city for burial, an occasion for which his brother is likely to have been present. Another twelfth-century writer, Henry of Huntingdon, says explicitly that Harold was holding a celebratory feast in York when news arrived of the Norman landing.
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The king’s location is important because it determines how much time he had to react. From Pevensey to York is approximately 270 miles: if the Normans landed in the morning of 28 September, news can hardly have reached him before 1 October. Looking ahead for a moment to our one indisputable date (and not, I hope, giving too much away), the Battle of Hastings took place on 14 October. Harold, in other words, moved from Yorkshire to the Sussex coast in barely a fortnight. Moreover, as all the chronicles attest, he spent some of that time paused in London – six days, if we believe Orderic Vitalis. All of which means the king must have travelled south from Yorkshire very quickly – much more quickly than he had travelled on his outward journey, which usually attracts greater admiration. If Orderic is right, Harold must have covered the 200 miles between York and London in just four or five days. Obviously he cannot have marched infantry at a rate of forty or fifty miles a day; most likely the foot soldiers who had fought at Stamford Bridge were dismissed in the wake of their victory. The conclusion must be that the king rode south, as fast as he could, accompanied only by mounted men. As they rode, fresh orders must have been sent to the shires, with orders to assemble a new army in London.
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Back in Sussex, the Normans themselves must have been anxious for news of their enemy – not least who their enemy was. As we have seen, it is highly likely that William’s original departure from Dives, around 12 September, had been inspired by news that Harold had stood down his army a few days earlier. It is also likely that, in
the days that followed, the Normans learned about the arrival in Yorkshire of Tostig and Harold Hardrada. They cannot, however, have heard about the battle of Stamford Bridge on 25 September before their departure from St Valéry just two or three days later. It is a fact that has been noted by historians many times in the past, but is no less arresting for all that: William arrived in England not knowing which Harold he was going to have to fight.

News of Stamford Bridge must have reached William within a few days of his arrival – probably around the same time that Harold was made aware of the Norman landing. According to William of Poitiers, the messenger who brought the news was sent by Robert fitz Wimarc, a Norman who had come to England many years earlier in the company of Edward the Confessor and served in the former king’s household (he is the ‘Robert the Steward’ who was present at the Confessor’s death). If Poitiers can be believed – and here we must bear in mind his desire to dramatize events – the message sent by this sympathetic Norman was not encouraging. Harold had defeated and killed both Tostig and Hardrada, destroying their huge armies, and was now heading south to confront William. The duke was advised to stay behind his fortifications.
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Harold was thus aware of William’s arrival, and William of Harold’s return to London. As such, we have little difficulty in believing the various chroniclers who tell us that in the days that followed messages were exchanged between the two men. Both the
Carmen
and William of Poitiers purport to give the content of these messages as spoken by the monks who delivered them; what they are actually doing is rehearsing the arguments of both sides for possession of the English throne. In the case of William of Poitiers, in particular, his account becomes a rhetorical exercise to justify the Norman invasion; quite probably he was drawing on the legal case that had earlier been prepared for the pope. We hear, once again, of a grateful Edward the Confessor making William his heir; of oaths sworn and hostages given; of Harold’s visit to Normandy and his promise to uphold the duke’s claim. In fairness to Poitiers, we also hear Harold’s counterargument, namely the story of the Confessor’s deathbed bequest and its historic legitimacy. Naturally we don’t have to believe that all of these arguments were revisited in the course of these exchanges, though no doubt some of them were. Certainly we can believe the
Carmen
that offers were made by both sides in the hope of avoiding
conflict. William, we are told, offered to let Harold hold the earldom of Wessex if he resigned the kingship; Harold, rather less generously, promised to let William return to Normandy unmolested if he made reparations for the damage he had caused.
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That the Normans had already caused extensive damage is beyond doubt. ‘Here the horses leave the boats’, says the Bayeux Tapestry, above the fleet’s arrival, ‘and here the knights hurry to Hastings in order to seize food.’ While they waited in France, William’s army had been forbidden to live off the land; once in England, they could start to plunder the surrounding countryside. On the Tapestry this requisitioning operation looks fairly innocuous; more space is devoted to the preparation of the tasty sit-down meal than the manner in which it was obtained. Of course, as with the creation of castles at Pevensey and Hastings, the damage involved in the search for food could be considered as collateral, but our sources leave no room for doubt that the Normans were also engaged in deliberate and indiscriminate destruction. In the
Carmen
, Harold is informed that William ‘has invaded the land, wastes it and sets it on fire’. The Tapestry famously shows two Norman soldiers torching a house from which a woman and a child are seen trying to flee.
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Indiscriminate it may have been, but this was devastation with a purpose. William, for the first time in his career, was engaged in a battle-seeking strategy. Had Harold decided to remain in London, the duke would have been in a difficult fix. His only option would have been to leave the security of his camp and lead a march into hostile territory, with all the dangers that implied. An army forced to live off the land would be vulnerable to attack as it spread out to forage, or death from disease or hunger if it failed to do so. Far better, then, from William’s point of view, to have the English king come to him and decide their dispute in a decisive battle. In William’s devastation, therefore, we discern a deliberate attempt to provoke a fight. It no doubt helped in this regard that the Normans had landed in Harold’s own territory, and were therefore terrorizing the king’s own tenants.

Harold, it seems, rose to the bait. In the opinion of several sources, the English king set out from London too soon: ‘before all his host came up’, says the E version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a comment later amplified by John of Worcester to ‘half his host’. Another later writer, Orderic Vitalis, relates a dramatic conversation
in London between the king and the rest of his family. His mother Gytha, already lamenting the loss of Tostig, tried to dissuade Harold from riding to war for a second time. His brother Gyrth also urged caution, saying ‘You have just returned worn out after the war against the Norwegians; are you now hastening to move against the Normans?’ According to Orderic, Gyrth volunteered to lead the army on Harold’s behalf, on the rather unlikely grounds that he had sworn no oath to William. These representations, however, came to nothing: Harold flew into a violent rage, rebuked his relatives and hurried off to do battle.
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