The Bayeux Tapestry Elucidated

by J. Collingwood Bruce

2. Again, the architecture, the dresses, the armour, the furniture, of the Tapestry are those which prevailed at the period of the Conquest, and at no other. It is at all times exceedingly difficult, whether by writing or painting, to portray accurately the manners, language, and modes of thought, of an anterior period. In mediæval times, however, the attempt was seldom made. The draftsmen represented the manners “living as they rose.” “It was the invariable practice with artists in every country,” says Mr. Charles Stothard,[8] “excepting Italy, during the middle ages, whatever subject they took in hand, to represent it according to the manners and customs of their own time. Thus we may see Alexander the Great, like a good Catholic, interred with all the rites and ceremonies of the Romish church. All the illuminated transcripts of Froissart, although executed not more than fifty years after the original work was finished, are less valuable on account of the illuminations they contain not being accordant with the text, but representing the customs of the fifteenth century instead of the fourteenth. It is not likely that in an age far less refined this practice should be departed from. The Tapestry, therefore, must be regarded as a true picture of the time when it was executed.” The testimony of an earlier authority, Strutt, is to the same effect:—“To a total want of proper taste in collecting of antiquities, and application to the study of them, are owing the ignorant errors committed by the unlearned illuminators of old MSS.; and so far were they from having the least idea of any thing more ancient than the manners and customs of their own particular times, that not only things of a century earlier than their own era, are confounded together, but even representations of the remotest periods in history. The Saxons put Noah, Abraham, Christ, and King Edgar, all in the same habit, that is, the habit worn by themselves at that time; and in some MSS., illuminated in the reign of Henry the Sixth, are exhibited the figures of Meleager, Hercules, Jason, &c., in the full dress of the great lords of that prince’s court. At the latter end of one of these MSS., indeed, the illuminator, reading something about a lion’s skin, has covered the shoulders of the beau Hercules with that kingly animal’s hide over his courtly load of silk and gold embroidery. Yet this is a lucky circumstance in the present want of ancient materials; for though these pictures do not bear the least resemblance of the things they were originally intended to represent, yet they nevertheless are the undoubted characteristics of the customs of that period in which each illuminator or designer lived.”[9] A comparison of Master Wace with the Bayeux Tapestry will furnish us with an illustration in point. Wace, after alluding to the negotiations which took place before the armies closed at the decisive field of Hastings, says, “As the Duke said this, and would have said more, William Fitz Osbern rode up, his horse all covered with iron; Sire, said he to his lord, we tarry too long, let us arm ourselves. Allons! Allons!”[10] Now, if we look at the Tapestry, we shall find that not a single horse is equipped in steel armour; and if we refer to the authors who lived at that period, we shall find that not one of them mentions any defensive covering for the horse. Wace, who flourished in the days of Henry I. and Henry II., is the first writer who mentions horse-armour, and, excepting from the passage which has just been quoted, it could not be proved that it had been introduced even in his day. Wace is therefore probably guilty of an anachronism, and describes what happened at the close of his own time as having occurred in that of his immediate predecessors.[11] This example shows how exceedingly difficult it is to portray customs with accuracy a few years after the period in which they prevailed. Had the Tapestry been made by Matilda the Empress, as some contend, numerous similar anachronisms must have occurred.

3. But the design of the Tapestry shows its early date. Its manifest object is to prove the right of William to the throne of England, to exhibit in strong colours the undutifulness and ingratitude of Harold in attempting the usurpation of the crown, and to record the punishment with which that disloyal and sacrilegious act was visited.[12] In the latter days of the Conqueror such an undertaking would have been valueless. He had planted his foot firmly upon the necks of the native population; the barons, too, by whom he achieved the Conquest, had been brought into subjection. He was king of England by the power of his sword; he cared not then about the will of Edward the Confessor, the oath of Harold, or the election of the nobles—he was king de facto, and let them who durst deny it! These remarks, made with reference to the close of the Conqueror’s reign, apply with still greater force to the time of the Empress Matilda, to whom, as some conceive, we are indebted for the Tapestry.[13] She would not have thought it necessary to establish in so elaborate a manner her deceased grandfather’s right to the throne, and to display at such length the obligations under which Harold lay to him. The Brittany campaign would not have been given in such detail excepting it had been quite a recent event. The Tapestry, it will be observed, ends with the battle of Hastings. It does not even include the subsequent coronation of William. It represents the first act in the drama of the Conquest of England, and was doubtless intended to prepare for the scenes which were to follow. It is difficult to conceive that the Tapestry was designed at any period save that immediately subsequent to the battle of Hastings. William had not then assumed the character of an arbitrary monarch, which he subsequently did. The Saxon ladies, full of reverence for the character of their lately deceased monarch, Edward the Confessor, might naturally resent the attempt of Harold to resist the evident wish of that monarch to bequeath his crown to William, and, imbued with the superstition of an ignorant age, regard the fatal results of the battle of Hastings as a just judgment from God for the violation of an oath taken upon the relics of the saints. Taking this view of it there was nothing unpatriotic in their entering zealously into the views of their queen. But if, after England had reaped the bitter fruits of the conquest; if, after their fathers had been slain, their husbands driven into exile, their children made to herd with the dogs of the Conqueror’s flock, they had lent their skill to commemorate the desolation of their country and their homes, they would have dishonoured their lineage and their name. On these general grounds, therefore, we may conceive the Tapestry to be of the era of the Conqueror, and to date from an early period in his reign. Many opportunities of reverting to this subject will afterwards occur.

But although it be admitted that the Tapestry is of the age of the Conquest, it does not necessarily follow that it was wrought by the Queen and her court. The opinion that Matilda presided over its execution has been strongly controverted, chiefly by those, however, who deny its early antiquity. The Abbé de la Rue, as formerly observed, ascribes it to Matilda the Empress. Mr. Bolton Corney, in an able paper entitled Researches and Conjectures on the Bayeux Tapestry, contends that it was not executed until the year 1205, and that it was then done at the expense of the Chapter. Dr. Lingard adopts Mr. Corney’s views, and in a note appended to the first volume of his History of England condenses his arguments. If, however, the Tapestry bear internal evidence of an earlier date, these arguments are of little value.

No contemporary historian indeed tells us that the Tapestry was made by Matilda. It is not mentioned in her will, or the Conqueror’s. The inventory of the treasures of the church at Bayeux, bearing date 1369, and which is the earliest document mentioning the Tapestry, contains no allusion to Matilda. Another inventory, made in 1476, and professing to be a descriptive catalogue of the jewels, ornaments, books, and other valuables of the church, mentions the Tapestry, describes its form and subject, and names the period of its public exhibition; but gives no hint that it was made at the command of Matilda. It is difficult, it may even be impossible, satisfactorily to account for the absence of all allusion to the Queen in these documents, but negative arguments prove little. Besides, the case is by no means singular. The compilers of ancient documents seem to have left much to be taken for granted. Sir Henry Ellis, in his General Introduction to Domesday, says, “Of Queen Matilda’s gifts to foreign monasteries, two only are particularly specified in the Survey; the land at Deverel in Wilts, which she gave to St. Mary at Bee; and two hides at Frantone in Dorset, which she gave to the Conqueror’s foundation of St. Stephen at Caen. No mention occurs of the Conqueror and his Queen having founded the monasteries of St. Stephen and the Holy Trinity in that city: although their lands in England are specified.”[14] It is scarcely less difficult to account for these omissions in the Domesday Book, than it is to account for the absence of all allusion to the framer of the Tapestry by contemporary writers. In the absence of direct evidence, we are thrown upon probabilities. And what is more likely than that the opinion which Montfaucon found prevailing at Bayeux when he discovered the Tapestry is the correct one? As the Abbé de la Rue himself argues, “To have undertaken this Tapestry would have required a considerable degree of interest in the subject of it, and to have possessed the necessary powers for its execution.”[15] Who can be supposed to have had so great an interest in the establishment of the Conqueror’s right to the throne of England as Matilda of Flanders, and who but herself would have been at the trouble of asserting it in such full detail? Would any one but an immediate connexion of the Duke’s have taken such prominent notice of the rescue of Harold from his captivity in Ponthieu, and of his subsequent friendly intercourse with William in Brittany; and would even Matilda herself have done this if the Tapestry had been prepared after the stupendous results of the battle of Hastings had fully developed themselves?

Dr. Lingard, in appealing to the roll itself, says, “Nor does the costliness of the work bespeak a royal benefactor.” “There is in it no embroidery of gold, none of silver, none of silk, nothing worthy the rank or the munificence of the supposed donor.” Had the article in question been a royal robe, or sacerdotal vestment, the omission of the precious metals might have been unaccountable; but in a piece of embroidery of such extent, it is nothing wonderful. Neither should the artistic value of the document be overlooked. Its figures may appear uncouth in our eyes, but they are done in the very best style of the period. A person of ordinary resources could not have commanded, to the extent required, the services of the ablest artists of the day. The preparation of the Tapestry must have been a costly and laborious process, not at all unworthy of the wife of the victor of Hastings.[16] What is more likely, then, than that the traditional opinion which Montfaucon found prevailing in his day at Bayeux is well founded, and that to the first of our Norman Queens we are indebted for this most wonderful piece of needle-work?

Although the actual execution of the Tapestry devolved upon the ladies of Matilda’s court, there can be no doubt that they wrought from a design prepared by some draftsman. The priests were the principal artists of that day. The Latin inscriptions prove that in that part of their work, at least, the ladies had the assistance of some educated person. The name of the designer has not come down to us; unless indeed there be truth in the following statement made by Miss Agnes Strickland:—“This pictorial chronicle of her mighty consort’s achievements appears to have been, in part at least, designed for Matilda by Turold, a dwarf artist, who moved by a natural desire of claiming his share in the celebrity which he foresaw would attach to the work, has cunningly introduced his own effigies and name,[17] thus authenticating the Norman tradition, that he was the person who illuminated the canvas with the proper outlines and colours.”[18] Though ignorant of the individual who designed the Tapestry, the style of the work induces us to believe that the artist was an Italian. The postures into which many of the figures are thrown are not English or French, but Italian.[19] The cordiality subsisting at the time of the Conquest between the courts of Normandy and Rome, and the successful exhibition of Norman prowess for some time previously on the plains of the Italian peninsula, sufficiently account for the introduction of the peculiarities of southern Europe into the Tapestry.

Perhaps, however, we have acted rashly in having ventured even thus cursorily to touch upon the antiquity of the Tapestry. Miss Agnes Strickland, who, in her Lives of the Queens of England, shows how vigorously she can wield the pen, is rather indignant that any one who is not learned in cross-stitch, should venture to discuss the subject. Before we argue, she wants to know if we can sew. She says, “With due deference to the judgment of the lords of the creation on all subjects connected with policy and science, we venture to think that our learned friends, the archæologists and antiquaries, would do well to direct their intellectual powers to more masculine objects of inquiry, and leave the question of the Bayeux Tapestry (with all other matters allied to needle-craft) to the decision of the ladies, to whose province it belongs. It is matter of doubt to us whether one, out of the many gentlemen who have disputed Matilda’s claims to that work, if called upon to execute a copy of either of the figures on canvas, would know how to put in the first stitch.”[20] Few of the rougher sex would like to be put to theexperimentum acus, and therefore it may be as well at once to exercise the best part of valour, and beat a hasty retreat.

The attention of the learned world was first, in modern times, called to the Bayeux Tapestry by M. Lancelot, who in 1724 found a drawing of a portion of it in the Cabinet of Antiquities at Paris. He was struck with its appearance, and at once pronounced it to be of the age of William the Conqueror, and intended to commemorate his exploits; but he was unable to conjecture whether the drawing represented a bass-relief, a piece of sculpture surrounding a choir of a church or a tomb, a painting in fresco or upon a glass window, or even, he adds, if it be a piece of tapestry. He conceived that the original would be found at Caen. In consequence of his suggestion, Father Montfaucon made diligent inquiries, and, after some trouble, found the Tapestry, not at Caen, but at Bayeux. He ascertained that it was there popularly ascribed to Queen Matilda.[21] M. Lancelot further informs us that it was ordinarily called in the country La Toilette de Duc Guillaume. At that period, and for long afterwards, it was kept in a side chapel of the cathedral, rolled upon a kind of winch, and was exposed to public view only once a year, on the festival of the relics (July 1), and during the octave. On these occasions it was hung up in the nave of the church, which it completely surrounded.

In the autumn of 1803, when Bonaparte, then First Consul of France, contemplated the invasion of England, the Tapestry was brought from its obscurity at Bayeux, and exhibited in the National Museum at Paris, where it remained some months. The First Consul himself went to see it, and affected to be struck with that particular part ([Plate VII.]) which represents the appearance of a meteor presaging the defeat of Harold: affording an opportunity for the inference, that the meteor which had then been lately seen in the south of France was the prelude to a similar event. The exhibition was popular; so much so, that a small dramatic piece was got up at the Theatre du Vaudeville, entitled La Tapisserie de la Reine Mathilde, in which Matilda was represented passing her time with her women in embroidering the exploits of her husband, never leaving their work, except to put up prayers for his success.

At present the Tapestry is preserved in the town’s library at Bayeux, where it is advantageously exposed to view by being extended in eight lengths from end to end of the room, and is at the same time protected from injury by being covered with glass.