The history of England, from the earliest times to the Norman Conquest

by Thomas Hodgkin

If Harold thought that peril from either of his foes was over for that year he was terribly mistaken. Even while the fleet and army were scattering from the Isle of Wight, the whole aspect of affairs in the north was being changed by the sudden and unexpected arrival off the northern coast of Harold, King of Norway, with an immense fleet of more than three hundred ships. This Harold, surnamed Hardrada (the man of hard counsel), was, even if we may not believe all that the saga-men told concerning him, one of the most romantic figures of the time. A half-brother of the sainted Olaf, by whose side he fought when but fifteen years old at the fatal battle of Stiklestadt, he appears, after some four or five years of a fugitive existence, as one of the chiefs of the Varangian soldiery at the court of Constantinople. The tall statured Scandinavian—his height is said to have been nearly seven feet—rose rapidly in the Byzantine service, and it was hinted that the inflammable Empress Zoe would have gladly welcomed him as one of her numerous husbands or lovers. The life of a soldier was, however, more to his taste than the dissipations of a luxurious court. He wrought great deeds in the eastern waters and shared with the veteran Byzantine general, George Maniaces, the glory of a temporary re-conquest of Sicily. Even then, however, that element of keen egotism in his character which won for him his title of Hardrada made itself visible; and his country’s skalds delighted to tell of the clever but dishonourable stratagem by which he out-witted his brother general when they were casting lots for choice of quarters. Strange to say, one of the most interesting memorials of this Norwegian chief is still to be seen amid the lagunes of Venice. There, in front of the noble gateway of the arsenal, sit two great marble lions, brought by the Venetian general Morosini from the Piraeus, trophies of that fatally memorable expedition in which he converted the Parthenon into a ruin. On the flanks of one of these lions is a nearly effaced Runic inscription, recording the conquest of the port of Piraeus by three chieftains with Scandinavian names. “These men,” says the inscription, “and Harold the Tall, laid considerable fines on the citizens because of the insurrection of the Greek people.” With difficulty Harold escaped from the prison in which he was confined by the jealous caprice of Zoe, and after charging over the great chain which was stretched across the Bosphorus, sailed out into the Euxine and thence up one of the great rivers into the heart of Russia. The king of Novgorod gave him his daughter Elizabeth to wife, and in the year 1045 Harold reappeared laden with treasure in his native Norway. He was sometimes the ally, sometimes the foe of his nephew Magnus the Good, on whose premature death in 1047 he succeeded peaceably to his throne. For fifteen years he waged almost incessant, generally successful, war with the King of Denmark, but in 1062 he concluded a treaty with that prince, which left him free to attempt the larger and more daring enterprise to which he was tempted by the example of Canute and the overtures of Tostig, even the conquest of England.

Harold made first for the Orkneys, then under the rule of the sons of the Norseman, Earl Thorfinn. From thence he sailed along the coast of Scotland, till, either in the Forth or the Tyne, he met his promised ally, Tostig, who “bowed to him and became his man”. They went both together, landed in Cleveland, which they harried; set fire to Scarborough; and at last reaching the mouth of the Humber, sailed with all their enormous fleet up that river and the Ouse, and landed near York. The Earls Edwin and Morkere came forth to meet them with as large a force as they could muster, but were utterly defeated in a great battle fought at Fulford, two miles from York, on September 20, 1066. The two earls escaped alive from the field, but were unable to make any further opposition to the invaders, who entered York in triumph and received the submission of the city. “Then after the fight came Harold and Tostig into York with as many people as to them seemed good, and they took hostages from the city and also received provisions, and so went thence to their ships, having agreed to full peace, that they [the people of York] might all go south with them and conquer this land.” It was to be an expedition of Northumbrians, Scots and men of Orkney, as well as Norsemen, under the command of Harold Hardrada, against Harold Godwineson and the men of Mercia and Wessex.

The invaders had in this instance reckoned without their host. They thought they had only the young and somewhat inefficient sons of Elfgar to deal with, whereas the namesake of Hardrada, “Harold our king” (as one of the chroniclers calls him), had heard the unwelcome news of their presence in his kingdom, and with almost Napoleonic swiftness of decision, was bearing down upon them. It was only on September 8 that he had dismissed his fleet and army in Hampshire. His journey to London may have occupied a day or two, and we know not how soon the tidings of the invasion reached him; but already on September 24, with all the fyrd that he could assemble in the south, he was at Tadcaster, and on the following day he marched through York. Hardrada and Tostig, whom he had perhaps hoped to surprise cooped up within the city, had marched eastwards some seven or eight miles to Stamford Bridge, on the river Derwent, where they expected to receive the hostages whom Yorkshire was to offer for her fidelity. Against them marched the English Harold, so suddenly, and with such successful precautions against their obtaining information of his movements, that at first when Hardrada saw afar off the steam of the horses and thereunder fair shields and white byrnies (coats of mail), he asked Tostig what host that might be. Tostig answered that they might be some of his kinsmen coming in to seek the king’s friendship, but that he feared it meant “unpeace,” and so it proved. The host drew nearer and nearer, and like the flashing of the sunlight reflected from a glacier was the gleam of their weapons.[249]

There was a short parley ere the armies closed. English Harold sent to offer his brother a third of his kingdom, that there might be peace between them. “’Tis pity,” said Tostig, “that this offer was not made last winter. Many a good man had then been living who now is dead, and better had it been for the whole realm of England; but if I accept these terms, what shall Harold of Norway have in return for his labour?” Then came the celebrated answer (and it is worthy of note that the Norse story-teller has preserved it): “Seven foot’s room, or so much more as he may need, seeing that he is taller than other men”. Tostig honourably refused to make any peace by the sacrifice of his ally; and the battle was joined, a terrible battle which lasted all day long and wrought great slaughter. The English at last succeeded in breaking the invaders’ shield-wall, and, surrounding them on all sides, poured their missiles upon them with deadly effect. Mad at this breach in his ranks, Hardrada leapt in front of his men and made a clear space round him, hewing with both his hands, but he was at last wounded in the throat by an arrow and fell dead upon the field. There was a little lull in the conflict, and Harold Godwineson offered peace to Tostig and the surviving Northmen, but they all whooped out with one voice that they would rather fall each one across the other than take peace of the Englishmen. Tostig seems to have fallen in this second battle. Then another pause, and a host of men, well-armed but breathless, came rushing up from the Norwegian ships in the river. They wrought great havoc in the English ranks, and had well-nigh turned the fortune of the day; but it was not to be. The new-comers were so spent with their march, that at last they threw away their “byrnies” and so fell an easier prey to the English axes.

So ran the story of the fight of Stamford Bridge as told by the descendants of the Norsemen. The English chronicler, with much less detail, describes Harold Godwineson’s unlooked-for attack upon the Scandinavians. According to him, the bridge itself was the key of the position and victory was impossible for the English until it was crossed. In its narrow entrance one Norwegian long held the English host at bay: an arrow availed not to dislodge him, but at length one of Harold’s men crept under the bridge and pierced him through the corselet. Then the king of the Englishmen came over the bridge and the victory was won. Great slaughter was made both of the Norsemen and Flemings, but Olaf, the son of Harold Hardrada, was left alive. With him, with a certain bishop who accompanied him, and with the Earl of Orkney, the English Harold made terms. “They all went up to our king,” says the chronicler, “and swore oaths that they would ever keep peace and friendship with this land; and the king let them depart with twenty-four ships. These two folk-fights [Fulford and Stamford Bridge] were both fought within five days” (September 20 to 25, 1066).

Short time had Harold for rest at the great northern capital, York. It was probably in the earliest days of October that news was brought to him that on September 28 William of Normandy had landed at Pevensey. Let us hear the story of what happened from that day to the fatal October 14 in the few simple words which are all that the only Saxon chronicler (he of Worcester) can bring himself to devote to the subject. “Then came William, Earl of Normandy, into Pevensey, on the eve of St. Michael (Sept. 28), and as soon as his men were fit

“He dies and makes no sign.” This is all that the Saxon chroniclers, whose guidance we have followed through six centuries, or any native English historians have to tell us of the death of the Saxon monarchy. One is half disposed to leave the matter there, and not to repeat the stories, many of them, as we may suspect, falsely coloured or absolutely untrue, and often quite inconsistent with one another, with which the Norman chroniclers and poets have enriched their jubilations over England’s downfall. But as this can hardly be, an attempt will be made to present only the broad outlines of the story, omitting all reference to recitals obviously fictitious, and for brevity’s sake declining to enter into any of the controversies which have been fiercely waged round certain parts of the narrative.

By about the middle of August William’s preparations were completed, and his fleet, collected near Caen at the mouth of the river Dive, was ready to sail. For a whole month the wind was contrary to them—a fateful month during which, as we know, but as William possibly did not know, Harold’s crews were being paid off and his army disbanded. A slight westward veering of the wind enabled the ships to creep a hundred miles up the Norman coast to St. Valery, at the mouth of the Somme. Some vessels seem to have been lost by storm, but at last, after a fortnight’s further detention at St. Valery, a favourable breeze blew—men said as the result of the exhibition of the relics of the saint and prayers for his intercession—and on the night of September 27 the fleet set forth on the great expedition. Though one chronicler puts the number of ships as high as 3,000, we are informed on what seems to be good authority[250] that they were 696. William’s own ship, named the Mora, the fastest of the fleet, had a lantern at the mast-head to serve as a signal to her consorts, a vane above the lantern to show the direction of the wind, and on the prow a bronze figure of a child with bow and arrow aiming for England. When dawn was breaking the Mora found herself alone, having outsailed all the others. A sailor sent to the mast-head reported that he saw nothing but sky and sea. The duke cast anchor, told his companions not to lose heart, and cheered them and himself with a mighty breakfast, accompanied with copious draughts of wine. On a second journey to the mast-head the sailor reported that he saw three or four ships; on a third, that the whole fleet were in sight and approaching rapidly. By nine o’clock in the morning, September 28, 1066, the fleet was all assembled off the coast of Sussex, a few miles north-east of Beachy Head, and the landing, absolutely unopposed, was effected without difficulty on the long flat shore of Pevensey, in sight of the ruins of Roman Anderida.

The most notable incident of the landing, if true, is the well-known story of William’s fall. It is said that he, being first to spring to land, stumbled and fell with both his hands on the shore, that all round him raised a cry: “A bad omen is that,” but he with a loud voice said: “Lords, by the splendour of God, I have taken seizin of this land with my two hands. No property was ever let go without a challenge. Now all that is here is ours.” From Pevensey the army marched eastward to Hastings (a distance of about fifteen miles), and there entrenched themselves in a strong camp with high earthen ramparts, fosse and palisades. They also began to ravage the country for some miles round Hastings, a fact which is attested both by the entries in Domesday Book and by a picture in the Bayeux Tapestry, “Here a house is being burnt”. The tidings of William’s landing, however swiftly carried to York, can hardly have reached Harold before October 1. They, of course, necessitated another forced march back to London, so rapidly had the shuttle to fly backwards and forwards in the loom of war. Harold reached London probably about October 6, and waited there for a short week, expecting the arrival of the troops whom he summoned from all quarters for the defence of the country. This summons seems to have been well responded to from the home counties and East Anglia; and some fighters came, we are told, from Lincoln and Yorkshire. But Edwin and Morkere, the Earls of Mercia and Northumbria, are accused of not having rallied as they should have done to the support of the king, who had saved them from utter destruction at the hands of Hardrada. The accusation which comes to us on the authority of so well-informed and generally so impartial an historian as Florence of Worcester, is one which cannot be passed over in silence. At the same time it is but fair to observe that the troops of the two northern earls had suffered severely at Fulford, and that there was very little time to collect new levies and bring them into the field from Northumberland and Cheshire before October 14. The impression left on one’s mind by the conduct of these two young earls, is rather one of inefficiency than of deliberate treachery. At the same time it must be admitted that when Harold broke with Tostig, perhaps also with his sister Edith, and allied himself with the house of Leofric, he adopted a policy which brought him little help abroad or happiness at home.

On October 12—after a hasty visit to Waltham where he had built a great minster in honour of the Holy Rood—Harold marched southward and took up a position on the last spur of a low range of Sussex hills, about seven miles to the north-west of Hastings. He is said to have been earnestly entreated by his younger brother, Gyrth, Earl of East Anglia, to adopt a more cautious line of policy, to anticipate William’s ravages of Sussex and Surrey by ravaging them himself, and to force the Norman to advance through a wasted land and attack him in the strong position of London. The advice would seem to have been wise; and surely a fortnight’s delay would have given Harold a better fighting instrument than the hasty levies which reinforced the war-wearied and march-wearied men of Stamford Bridge. But Harold was exasperated by the ravages which William had already begun in the country round Sussex. He patriotically refused to imitate those ravages in counties which had ever shown a special affection for him and for his father’s house. There are also some slight indications that he somewhat under-rated the strength of William’s army, and hoped by a sudden stroke like that at Stamford Bridge to sweep it into the sea.