76
The last two panels ([75] and [76]) are the breaking of the ranks and the flight. They need no comment save perhaps one note: the conventional tree in the last panel may well enough stand for the wood of the Weald which lay behind the Saxon position, and into which the rout pressed as darkness fell.
It has been suggested that the Tapestry continued further than the point at which it now ends, both because it is somewhat frayed at that end and because in the description of another Tapestry (lost) the account of the day following the battle is given.
What seems to me to prove definitely that the Tapestry did end almost exactly where its frayed edge terminates it to-day, is the fact that it was exactly of a length to go round the nave of Bayeux Cathedral, and that the measurements of the existing stuff correspond with that length.
Printed in France.
- Transcriber’s Notes:
- Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
- Typographical errors were silently corrected.
- Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book.