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In the [fifth division] Harold and his suite embark, and it should be noted how large a company the Convention of the Tapestry supposes.
The intention of the expedition was almost certainly to make a Norman port. Once in the Channel the square-rigged ships could not beat into a wind that was too westerly for them or too much south of west, and their land-fall was at some point upon the coast of Ponthieu, of which district Count Guy was the lord. The point upon the coast of Ponthieu where the ships beached, or rather cast anchor in the shoal water, we may presume to have been the right bank of the estuary of the Somme, for it is the most convenient entry and has some shelter from a southerly wind; but all that flat sandy coast gave good opportunity for landing from such vessels, and the fleet may have made the Bay of Authie or even the mouth of the Canche. But the choice is not a wide one, for the coast of Ponthieu did not extend beyond the Canche. If the Somme were the point of entry, it has this historical interest: that Harold would then have found himself fated to land at the very point from which William two years later was to sail for the invasion of England. Count Guy seized Harold for ransom, something of a formality, though a formality which was to be of formidable consequence. He takes Harold and his suite to “Belrem”—the place to-day called Beaurain. Here the Tapestry follows Wace very closely, for it is Wace who tells us that Harold was recognised by a fisherman, who sent for Count Guy.
The capital of Ponthieu was Montreuil, and this castle of Beaurain, of which ruins still stand, was six or seven miles up the river from Montreuil—one passes right beneath it in the railway to-day on one’s way to Hesdin.
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