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Home , Domesday Book, Hereward the Wake

1066: The Limits of our Knowledge

Marc Morris

s the most pivotal and traumatic fills three large printed volumes. But crucial years – it has no entries at all. event in English history, the by way of sad contrast, the itinerary The insufficiency of our source ANorman Conquest continues of (1066–87) material means that vast tracts of the to generate controversy and debate, fills only three printed pages, because Conquest story lie beyond our reach and especially among those who know little government archive from the eleventh must forever remain a mystery. To take about it or enjoy passing judgement on century is virtually non-existent. Despite perhaps the most celebrated example the past. Who had the better claim to the the immense importance of William’s of all, consider the old chestnut about English throne, William the Conqueror reign to English history, we can barely whether King Harold was killed with or Harold Godwineson? Was Harold say where he was from one year to the an arrow in the eye. At first glance, it out-generalled at or simply next. seems certain that the story must be unlucky? Was William a war-criminal We are not, thank goodness, solely true: not only is it alluded to in several or just a typical warrior of his time? reliant on official documents. We also chronicles, it is also famously depicted Confronted with the abundance of have monastic chronicles, and these can on that most wondrous survival, the such hardy perennials, wags might be go some way to making good the deficit. . But the closer you tempted to quote the apocryphal words But with such chronicles we are at the look, the more the arrow-in-the-eye of Chinese premier Zhou Enlai, asked in mercy of the monks who wrote them; story itself starts to look like a piece the 1970s about the significance of the we have always to take into account of embroidery. In the first place, the French Revolution: it’s too early to tell. their tendency to interpret events as chronicles that mention it are somewhat The real problem, of course, is that the unfolding of God’s great plan, and vague: Harold is variously said to have 1066 was a long time ago. When we sometimes their political bias as well. been hit in the eye, the brain or some move back almost a millennium into Also, as with the archive, we are often unspecified place. They are, moreover, the past, the evidence is not that good. confronted with quite insuperable all written some time after the event, Eleventh-century was a literate gaps. Take the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the earliest dating to the beginning society, but literacy existed only in our principal source for what was of the twelfth century. Contemporary pockets. Other societies at the time – happening in England both immediately chroniclers, by contrast, even those that those in Scandinavia, for example, with before and after the . supply long and detailed descriptions of which England was intimately involved – Sometimes it is extremely garrulous, but the , do not mention were scarcely literate at all. Much was left at other times infuriatingly tight-lipped. the arrow story at all, and one of them unwritten, and much that was written Describing, for example, the arrival of relates a very different version of events, has long since been lost. In comparison a Viking fleet in 1057 led by the son wherein Harold is hacked down by a with the later Middle Ages, the survival of Harold Hardrada, the Chronicle dedicated Norman death-squad. The rate for eleventh-century evidence comments: ‘a pirate host came from only contemporary source to feature is awful. By the thirteenth century Norway. It is tedious to tell how it all the arrow is the Bayeux Tapestry, and royal government was producing vast happened’. The same taciturn attitude the Tapestry is famously ambiguous (Is amounts of written material every day; infects the Chronicle at other critical it really an arrow? Is it really Harold?). the royal chancery had more than a junctures. ‘The king arrested Bishop Its testimony is also fatally undermined hundred clerks producing thousands Odo’ is all it has to say about William’s by its demonstrable debt to other of documents, many of which can still detention of his notorious half-brother artistic sources. The scene that depicts be read in the National Archives. Thus in 1082, while the sum total of its entry Harold’s death appears to derive from the itinerary of Edward I (1272–1307), for 1084 is to record the death of the earlier manuscript illustrations of the compiled and published in the 1970s, abbot of . For other years – biblical king Zedekiah, punished by

12 The Historian – Spring 2013 Nebuchadnezzar by having his eyes been 5’ – a result far more compatible veritable mine of information. Here, put out. The inescapable conclusion is with the fact that she bore at least nine at last, is the cold hard data which can that we have no good contemporary children. But in any case the heights of confirm or deny the hearsay and opinion evidence for the arrow-in-the-eye story, both Matilda and William were only of the chronicles. only a pictorial source of dubious worth, estimates, in her case extrapolated from But Domesday itself is a fairly which may in turn have spawned a later the size of part of her pelvis. If indeed it intractable source. It says a lot about its chronicle tradition.1 was her pelvis. Since tombs at Caen were nature that, after more than a century You never know: one day someone desecrated on two separate occasions, of rigorous scholarship, historians are may dig up a skeleton, perhaps at their contents scattered by Huguenots in still not agreed on what it was made for, Waltham , perhaps on a hill the sixteenth century and revolutionaries or indeed precisely when it was made. near Hastings, surrounded by obvious in the eighteenth, any conclusions about With careful winnowing by experts alive trappings of royalty, an arrowhead the size of the Conqueror and his queen to its limitations and idiosyncrasies, rattling inside its skull. But despite the must surely be so qualified as to be all Domesday can be made to yield valuable excitement generated by the apparently but worthless.2 (albeit qualified) answers about the certain identification of dead medieval Apart from the Bayeux Tapestry, nature of as it existed monarchs, even the best-intentioned the Conquest period boasts one other both before and after 1066. But without archaeology can sometimes take us world-famous piece of evidence in the such cautious handling it too can create in the opposite direction of historical form of . A record of more layers of misinformation. Over truth. In the late 1950s, experts in landholding in England compiled and a century ago, for example, a scholar Caen decided to crack open the tombs collated in 1086, Domesday is justly called Francis Baring posited that it was of William the Conqueror and his famous: running to two volumes, 832 possible to chart the course of William’s queen, Matilda, and as a result it was folios and somewhere in the region of armies by looking at Domesday’s widely reported that, while he was an two million words, it has justly been recording of ‘waste’ (vasta) – the impressive 5’10”, she was a diminutive called ‘the most complete survey of a assumption being that such devastation 4’2”. Widely reported, but not accurately pre-industrial society anywhere in the had been caused during the campaigns reported. When the disbelieving royal w o r l d ’. 3 As a source it could hardly be of 1066. It all looked very clever and gynaecologist Sir John Dewhurst looked more different from the Tapestry, which well substantiated, but was completely further into the matter, he discovered is artistic, ambiguous and derivative. discredited by a more careful scholar, that the French archaeologists had Domesday is crammed full of personal John Palmer, some twenty years ago. actually concluded that Matilda had names, place names and figures, a Nevertheless, books continue to be

The Historian – Spring 2013 13 , : despite recent controversy, contemporary voices assure us it was built ‘on the very spot’ where King Harold was defeated.

any way they like by roaming through the fields of fiction. Those who claim to be historians, by implication, ought to exercise greater restraint, yet the temptation to fill the gaps with psycho- history often proves irresistible. One of the most popular books on the subject in recent times has been 1066: The Year of the Conquest by David Howarth. written that follow the Conqueror along Biography, however, and you’ll discover In many respects a charming piece of the detailed but bogus routes sketched that his surname is not recorded until writing, easy-going and uncluttered, out by Baring.4 the twelfth century, as Harefah, and Howarth’s book is nevertheless laced We have to face up to the fact probably arose from confusion with throughout with constant speculation that some things about the Norman the Norwegian king, Harold Fairhair. about the mental state of its characters, Conquest are completely irrecoverable The same applies to the legendary based on nothing more than its author’s own questionable reading of their actions and some amateur stabs at We have to face up to the fact that some things about psycho-analysis. Discussing the famously childless , for the Norman Conquest are completely irrecoverable – not example, Howarth comments: ‘given the behaviour of Edward’s mother, a least the personalities of some of the key players. psychiatrist would not be surprised to find a homosexual son; but to judge by – not least the personalities of some of English hero , whose his reputation, whatever instinct he had the key players. Consider, for instance, cognomen was once thought to betoken was strictly suppressed’. That’s splendid Harold Harefoot, son of King Cnut, who an unusual level of alertness, yet almost on two levels: first, in its assumption succeeded his father in 1035 and ruled certainly arises from his supposed that homosexuality is caused by distant until 1040. King of England for the best connection with the later medieval Wake and unloving mothers; second, in its part of five years, and yet, because of the family. allusion to Edward’s spotless reputation, reticence of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Naturally, the fact that we cannot effectively admitting that there is no we know precisely nothing about him recover anything of these characters’ historical evidence to support such idle – no contemporary source offers us so personalities does not deter some from comment. Plenty more follows in a much as a single adjective. Look him up trying. After all, people have been similar vein. When Tostig Godwineson online and you’ll discover that Harold’s making up stories about the Conquest attacks England in 1066, Howarth colourful surname apparently signified from the moment it happened, and is quick to diagnose mental illness. that he could run as fast as a hare, a continue to do so today in the form ‘Certainly if anyone behaved like Tostig happy notion put about by an American of historical novels, television dramas today he would be sent to a psychiatrist’. writer called Albert Le Roy Bartlett in and so on. But as the Conqueror’s And at the end of the book Howarth is his Essentials of Language and Grammar contemporary biographer, William of wheeling out the consulting couch again, as recently as 1899. Look the same king Poitiers, so aptly points out, poets are this time for Harold Godwineson, who up in the Oxford Dictionary of National allowed to amplify their knowledge in (in this version of events) discovers he

14 The Historian – Spring 2013 The initial page of the a grievance against the Norman court. this fact, responsible historians admit Chronicle, one of the Anglo-Saxon It would have been a little unfair, but the limitations of their source material, Chronicles, contains unique information hardly unexpected, if he had claimed both to themselves and to their readers. about the after the that his Norman relatives had kept Norman Conquest. William of , one of the him out of his ancestral inheritance’.7 greatest of all medieval historians, wrote It would, in fact, have been completely his account of the Conquest period unfair, because it is entirely at odds barely fifty years after 1066 itself, yet with the evidence. Twice during his occasionally found enormous difficulty exile Edward tried to regain England piecing together what had actually by force, and on each occasion his happened. ‘I should like to warn the Norman hosts supplied him with fleets reader’, he wrote, before describing the and soldiers. We can also see that the contentious events of 1051, ‘that here I recognized Edward’s status as perceive the course of my narrative to be England’s rightful king during this same somewhat in doubt, because the truth of period, since he is styled with that title in the facts is in suspense and uncertain’. surviving ducal charters. As this example proves, there is sometimes enough evidence to counter References the worst excesses of the why-not- 1 D. Bernstein, ‘The Blinding of Harold and the Meaning of the Bayeux Tapestry’, Anglo-Norman make-it-up brigade; sometimes we can Studies, 5 (1983), 60–4; C. Dennis, ‘The Strange say what happened in the distant past Death of King Harold II’, The Historian (2009), with something approaching certainty. 14–18. 2 J. Dewhurst, ‘A Historical Obstetric Enigma: How Despite the noisy newspaper headlines Tall was Matilda?”, Journal of Obstetrics and in recent months, for instance, we can Gynaecology, 1 (1981), 271–2. still reasonably suppose that the Battle 3 S. Baxter, ‘Domesday Book’, BBC History Magazine, 11 (August, 2010), 25. of Hastings was fought on the site where 4 F. Baring, ‘The Conqueror’s Footprints in Battle Abbey now stands, because the Domesday’, English Historical Review, 13 (1898), has been excommunicated by the pope contemporary voices that tell us so 17–25; J. J. N. Palmer, ‘The Conqueror’s Footprints in Domesday’, The Medieval Military Revolution, on the eve of the Battle of Hastings, are so compelling. ‘On the very spot ed. A. Ayton and J. L. Price (1995), 23–44. with fatal consequences. ‘Harold’s own where God granted him the conquest of 5 D. Howarth, 1066: The Year of the Conquest confidence in himself, his cause, his England, he caused a great abbey to be (1977), 34, 84, 164. 6 F. McLynn, 1066: The Year of Three Battles very right to be king, can only have been built’. So says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (1999), 13–14, 67–8, 78. shaken to its foundation’.5 in its obituary of William the Conqueror, 7 F. Barlow, Edward the Confessor (1970), 51–2. Sadly Howarth is not alone in a passage clearly composed before 1100 8 J. Grehan and M. Mace, The Battle of Hastings 1066: The Uncomfortable Truth (2012). peddling such nonsense. We find similar by an Englishman who describes himself cod-psychiatry in 1066: The Year of Three as having lived at the king’s own court. Battles by Frank McLynn, where Edward Unsurprisingly, it is a source that goes The Norman Conquest by Marc Morris the Confessor is described as ‘a cross- unmentioned by those who contend that is now out in paperback (Windmill, grained neurasthenic, a neurotic with the battle was fought elsewhere.8 2013). Marc has recently made a short a tendency to paranoia and possessed But the basic truth remains that, film dealing with the same theme, of a fearsome temper that often made when we venture back almost a the limitations of source material for him impervious to reason... his ‘saintly’ millennium into the past, there is often the Conquest period, which you can detachment can be read in quite another far less evidence than we could wish, and watch at: way, as the ‘schizoid’ alienation of the certainty remains elusive. Faced with www.marcmorris.org.uk/p/films.html classic lone-wolf’. How do such writers, one wonders, arrive at such vivid diagnoses? The answer, it seems, is by a kind of historical Chinese whispers. McLynn, for example, is adamant that the Confessor, despite spending almost a quarter of century in exile at their court, owed no debt of gratitude to the dukes of Normandy, because ‘he had not been especially well treated’. It is a notion that hardens as the book progresses: later we are told that Edward ‘hated and despised’ Normandy and ‘was in reality livid with anger’ at the Normans.6 Yet there is not a shred of evidence to support this interpretation. It derives entirely from comments made thirty years earlier by Edward’s modern biographer, Frank Barlow, who was equally insistent that his subject had no reason to be grateful to the people who had raised him. ‘It would seem just as possible, perhaps more likely’, wrote Barlow in a wholly speculative passage, ‘that Edward had

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