In the Tapestry, Harold stands between two objects. One of them is a reliquary of the usual form, to which two staves are attached for the purpose of carriage. This reliquary has, however, a superaltare attached to it, such as is usually placed upon altars for the purpose of containing the consecrated wafer. The other object is an altar of the usual form and character. There does not seem to have been much temptation to William to practise a trick upon Harold, for he had so completely committed himself to the Duke that he could not avoid taking the oath, even though no covering had concealed the bones. But whether William did or did not practise this base artifice upon the Earl, it was natural that the Tapestry, being the work of Matilda, should endeavour to throw a veil over it. He is certainly in the Tapestry exhibited as swearing by the relics in the chest and by the host upon the altar, and he evidently touches them as if he knew they contained something very dreadful—he could not approach red-hot iron much more charily. We can readily conceive that after the ceremony William, by way of making as lively an impression as possible upon the mind of his victim, displayed the bones to him in all their sepulchral hideousness, and told them out in full tale before him. In such a case Harold might readily shrink from the exhibition, and be surprised at the number of martyrs which William’s diligence had brought together. William was too brave a man to attempt the mean artifice which historians ascribe to him. Harold never accused him of it. When reminded before the battle of Hastings, by a messenger of the Duke’s, of the oath he had taken, he sent this answer back, “Say to the Duke that I desire he will not remind me of my covenant nor of my oath; if I ever foolishly made it and promised him any thing, I did it for my liberty. I swore in order to get my freedom; whatever he asked I agreed to; and I ought not to be reproached, for I did nothing of my own free will.”[57]
But after all, this oath of Harold’s was not in the estimation of the men of that day the serious thing that has been represented. Men whom an oath taken in the name and in the presence of the living God could not bind, were not to be restrained by any moral influence. A little ingenuity only was requisite to release a man from an oath taken upon the relics. In the Roman de Rou we have a case in point.[58] At Val de Dunes the rebel lords of Normandy appeared in arms against the Duke. Before the opposing hosts joined, Raol Tesson, who was arrayed against William, was seen to act with hesitancy. His men besought him not to make war upon his lawful lord, whatever he did, reminding him that the man who would fight against his lord had no right to fief or barony. Raol could understand this argument, but what was he to do? he “had pledged himself, and sworn upon the saints at Bayeux to smite William wherever he should find him.” The difficulty was however got over. Ordering his men to rest where they were, “he came spurring over the plain, struck his lord with his glove, and said laughingly to him, ‘What I have sworn to do that I perform; I had sworn to smite you as soon as I should find you; and as I would not perjure myself, I have now struck you to acquit myself of my oath, and henceforth I will do you no farther wrong or felony.’ Then the Duke said, ‘Thanks to thee!’ and Raol thereupon went on his way back to his men.” Success attended the side which Raol thus espoused, and we hear nothing of his perjury. Harold fell on the hard-fought field of Hastings, and heaven and earth resounded with cries of horror at the foul sin. Had he won, a new abbey, or the re-imposition of Peter’s pence, would have cleared off the score.
Harold was now permitted to return home. The ship in which he sailed is represented in the Tapestry. Over the scene is the inscription, HIC HAROLD DUX REVERSUS EST AD ANGLICAM TERRAM—Here Harold the Earl returned to England. His approach to the shore is anxiously looked for by a watchman on the top of the gate-tower of his palace at Bosham. On reaching the land of his nativity Harold lost no time in repairing to court—ET VENIT AD EDWARDVM REGEM—And came to Edward the King. At the beginning of Plate VII. we see him in the presence of his sovereign, who reprimands him, as we have already observed (p. 28), for the miscarriage of his Commission.
V. THE SUCCESSION.
“Crowned but to die.”——
Rogers.
The latter days of Edward the Confessor were embittered by the prospect of those evils which he saw were coming upon England. On the Easter day before he died he held his court at Westminster. William of Malmesbury tells us that “While the rest were greedily eating, and making up for the long fast of Lent by the newly-provided viands, he was absorbed in the contemplation of some divine matter, when presently he excited the attention of the guests by bursting into profuse laughter.” On earnest enquiry being made of him as to this unusual circumstance, he said “that the seven sleepers in Mount Cœlius, who had lain for two hundred years on their right side, had now turned upon their left; that they would continue to lie in this manner for seventy-four years, which would be a dreadful omen to wretched mortals. Nation would rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; earthquakes would be in divers places; pestilence and famine, terrors from heaven, and great signs; changes in kingdoms; wars of the gentiles against the Christians, and also victories of the Christians over the pagans.”[59]
This was not the only vision he had. On one occasion he had lain two days speechless; on the third, sadly and deeply sighing as he awoke from his torpor, he said, that two monks from Normandy whom he had known in his youth had appeared to him, and had spoken to the following effect:—“Since the chiefs of England, the dukes, bishops, and abbots, are not the ministers of God, but of the devil, God, after your death, will deliver this kingdom, for a year and a day into the hands of the enemy, and devils shall wander over all the land.”[60]
Borne down by these painful anticipations, Edward rapidly sank. Feeling death approach, he hastened the completion of the abbey church of Westminster, in which he designed that his body should be laid. He lived to realize this his last care. Roger of Wendover says, “Edward King of England, held his court at Christmas (1065) at Westminster; and, on the blessed Innocents’ day, caused the church which he had erected from its foundations, outside the city of London, to be dedicated with great pomp in honour of St. Peter, the prince of the apostles; but both before and during the solemn festival of this dedication, the King was confined with severe illness.” At length “the pacific King Edward, the glory of England, the son of King Ethelred, exchanged a temporal for an eternal kingdom, in the fourth indiction, on the vigil of our Lord’s Epiphany, being the fifth day of the week. The day after his death the most blessed King was buried at London, in the church which he himself had built in a new and costly style of architecture, which was afterwards adopted by numbers.”[61]
The Tapestry exhibits to us the church of St. Peter at Westminster, and the funeral procession of the recently departed monarch. The church is a building of the Norman style in its greatest simplicity. As is usual in cathedrals and conventual churches of the first class, it has its tower in the centre, and is provided with transepts. The weathercock may perhaps excite attention, as proving that this appendage of our churches is no novelty. It appears in the Saxon illustrations of Cædmon. But what is particularly worthy of our notice is, that a workman appears to be in the act of affixing it. By this, the designer of the Tapestry means to show that the church was but just completed when the interment of the Confessor took place. A hand appears over the western end of the church to denote the finger of Providence, and to indicate that it was the will of God that the remains of the departed King should be deposited in that building. A similar hand appears on the coins of some of the Roman emperors, and in several of the sculptures of the catacombs at Rome. This is another indication that the artist was acquainted with the Roman method of treating such subjects.