J. Collingwood Bruce

“ The Duke, desirous of doing all honour to his expected guest, goes out to meet him. When the two parties approach, Guy very officiously introduces Harold to the Duke, and seems to expect great commendations for his zeal and activity. Harold himself follows Guy, having once again the mantle of gentle birth on his left shoulder, and carrying his hawk upon his fist, looking forward, in token of liberty. William sits firmly upon his horse; his manner is quiet, but very decided; his figure is that of a strong, square-built man. ”

“ He is stripped of the cloak which marked his nobility; and though he carries his hawk upon his fist, its usual posture is reversed, an intimation that his hawking days are over. Harold is well guarded by a party of armed horsemen. Guy rides before, clad in the decorative mantle of his rank, and having the falcon upon his fist, with its head advanced as if ready to take wing. The artist has very successfully portrayed in the countenance of Guy the chuckling conceit of this heartless chieftain in the possession of so rich a prize as Harold. ”

“ At the word of command, Dex aie, the Normans halted, and turned their faces towards the enemy. Now commenced the fiercest part of that bloody day’s encounter. Neither party was wanting in courage. All the chroniclers do justice to the contending forces. “One hits, another misses; one flies, another pursues; one is aiming a stroke, while another discharges his blow. Norman strives with Englishman again, and aims his blows afresh. One flies, another pursues swiftly; the combatants are many, the plain wide, the battle and the melée fierce. ”

“ The day came that no man can escape, and King Edward drew near to die. He had it much at heart that William should have his kingdom, if possible; but he was too far off, and it was too long to tarry for him, and Edward could not defer his hour. He lay in heavy sickness, in the illness whereof he was to die; and he was very weak, for death pressed hard upon him. Then Harold assembled his kindred, and sent for his friends and other people, and entered into the King’s chamber, taking with him whomsoever he pleased. ”

“ With these statements that of William of Malmesbury agrees—“By frequently making a stand, they slaughtered their pursuers in heaps; for, getting possession of an eminence, they drove down the Normans, when roused with indignation and anxiously striving to gain the higher ground, into the valley beneath, when, easily hurling their javelins and rolling down stones on them as they stood below, they destroyed them to a man.” With these descriptions the delineation of the Tapestry agrees in a remarkable manner. ”

“ Wace says, “The Duke placed a lantern on the mast of his ship, that the other ships might see it, and hold their course after it. At the summit was a vane of brass gilt. On the head of the ship, in the front which mariners call the prow, there was a figure of a child in brass, bearing an arrow with a bended bow. His face was turned towards England, and thither he looked, as though he was about to shoot.” ”

“ The commonalty, left unprotected, became a prey to the most powerful, who amassed fortunes, by either seizing on their property, or by selling their persons into foreign countries; although it be an innate quality of this people to be more inclined to revelling, than to the accumulation of wealth. Drinking was a universal practice, in which they passed entire nights as well as days. They consumed their whole substance in mean and despicable houses; unlike Normans and French, who, in noble and splendid mansions, lived with frugality. ”

“ Horses and men exhibit the frantic contortions of dying agony. At the further end of the compartment a party of Saxons, posted on a hill, exposed to the enemy on one side, but protected by a forest (represented by a tree) on the other, seem to be making head against their assailants. The Normans had attacked the Saxon encampment with the utmost impetuosity in front and in flank. The Saxons maintained their ground well, but some, through fear or misadventure, were constrained to flee. The victorious Normans, strongly armed and well mounted, pursued the flying footmen. ”

“ William established a strong government. Had Harold been unopposed from without, he would have had rivals from within the nation. The opposition of his own brother Tostig was but a prelude of what the general result of his reign would have been. Ambitious men, such as Edwin and Morcar, the Earls of Mercia and Northumbria, would on the least provocation have espoused the cause of Edgar Atheling, and by rendering the land a scene of internal discord, have made it an easy prey to new bands of adventurers from Denmark, Norway, Flanders, and France. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The night before a battle must be a season of peculiar solemnity and suspense. The shades of night, giving indistinctness to the landscape, harmonize too well with the doubts which becloud the mind as to the morrow’s destiny. ”

“ A messenger, who has blown the horn, to inform our voyagers that the boats are ready, till he is tired, comes personally, horn in hand, to urge their departure.
The scene of the embarkation is curious. Harold, the most powerful subject in England—if he can be called a subject—strips off his lower garments, and wades into the sea. His companions follow him in similar guise. Harold has, as usual, his hawk upon his fist, and he and his companion (the representative of the rest) , more careful of their hounds than themselves, carry them dry-shod on board the ship that waits to receive them. ”

“ The saddles of the horses are peculiar, having a high peak before and behind. We can readily understand how William, when he had become corpulent, received a mortal injury by coming down with violence upon the pommel of such a saddle. No horse armour is used, neither have any of the horses a saddle-cloth. “On the seal of Henry I. is the first representation of a saddle-cloth, and either during that reign or the preceding one, the high peak behind the saddle was altered for a back of greater breadth.” ”

“ In the battle of Hastings the great event of the day turned upon an arrow skilfully sped. Had Harold’s eye not been pierced, the battle would have been a drawn one, and in William’s peculiar circumstance such a result was defeat.
The Saxon javelin differed from the Norman: it was short, and was used as a missile. In the Tapestry we see that some of the English have a bundle of spears in their hands, and that others are in the act of throwing them at the enemy. The Norman spear was a long one, adapted for use on horseback, and was employed in giving a thrust ”

“ At Easter a comet appeared, which is noticed by nearly all the chroniclers. Wace thus describes it:—“Now while these things were doing a great star appeared, shining for fourteen days, with three long rays streaming towards the earth; such a star as is wont to be seen when a kingdom is about to change its king. I have seen many men who saw it, men of full age at the time, and who lived many years after. Those who would discourse of the stars call it a comet.” Our worsted astronomers have produced a very brilliant meteor, with more than twice three streams of fire issuing from it. ”

“ In a battle, where all is confusion—where few can obtain a general view of what passes—and where each is intensely occupied with his own foeman—it is exceedingly difficult for any one to give a just account of the whole scene, or to reconcile the conflicting statements of others. All our historians agree that both the brothers of Harold were slain in the battle of Hastings;—had it been otherwise William would not have been crowned at Westminister that Christmas. ”

“ Harold was not less diligent than his antagonist in making preparations. “He ordered the men of Kent to go where the Normans were likely to make the attack; for they say that the men of Kent are entitled to strike first, and that whenever the king goes to battle, the first blow belongs to them. The right of the men of London is to guard the king’s body, to place themselves around him, and to guard his standard; and they were accordingly placed by the standard to watch and defend it.” “Each man had a hauberk on, with his sword girt, and his shield at his neck. ”

“ An Englishman began to speak first, as Harold had directed him, and said, ‘Sire, we sorrow greatly that we are about to lose thee; and we are much alarmed, and fear that great trouble may come upon us. No heir of thine remains who may comfort us after thy death. ”

“ The result of the fool’s interference in behalf of Harold soon appears. We are now introduced to two personages, sent by Duke William, who, in their master’s name, demand the deliverance of the captive. Guy is standing, and wears a haughty air. He holds an axe in his hand, by way of asserting that he has the power of life or death over his prisoner. He is partially habited in the costume of war. Under his chlamys he wears a tunic of scale armour, probably composed of overlapping pieces of leather. ”

“ The colours, owing probably to the restricted extent of them at the command of Matilda, are employed somewhat fancifully, and we have horses exhibited to us of hues which, could they be realized in living specimens in Hyde Park now-a-days, would attract the envy and admiration of all beholders. Notwithstanding the liberty thus taken, the harmony of the colouring is such, that persons may look at the Tapestry for some time without discovering that truth, in this particular, has been in any degree violated. ”

“ A watchman, elevated upon a tree, observes the movements of this second embassy, probably with the view of giving William the earliest intelligence respecting it. All this is cleverly designed, in order to show the deep interest which William took in the welfare of his captive friend, who was afterwards, according to the court version of the story, to repay him with so much ingratitude. These horsemen wear a threatening aspect; they are armed with spear, shield, and sword; their spears are pointed threateningly towards the place of their destination. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is well known to persons conversant in antiquity, that the great men of those times had only two ways of being accoutered when they set out upon a journey; either in the habiliments of war, or for the chase. Harold, as going on an errand of peace, we find here represented in the latter. The bird upon the fist was a mark of high nobility. We see it frequently upon seals and miniatures, of that age, of ladies as well as men; and so sacred was this bird esteemed, that we find it prohibited in the ancient laws for any{31} one to give his hawk or his sword as part of his ransom. ”

“ The legs in the Tapestry are for the most part left unprotected; occasionally they are wrapped round{100} with bandages of leather; in the case of a few of the leading personages they are covered with mascled or ring armour. The weight of the hauberk, or haubergeon, must have been considerable. In taking the dresses down to the ships we observe two men are employed to carry one; they bear it on a pole upon their shoulders. One of William’s nobles, whilst waiting at Hastings for the onset of Harold, complained of the weight of his armour. ”

“ The artist, very modestly mistrusting his own powers, has usually affixed an inscription, in Latin, to each subject, the more fully to explain his intention. The letters, like the figures, are stitched in worsted, and are about an inch in length.
That the Tapestry should from a period beyond all record have belonged to the church of Bayeux is nothing surprising. Odo, the uterine brother of William, who rendered the Conqueror such efficient assistance in the battle of Hastings, and in the subsequent government of the kingdom, was archbishop of that place. ”

“ That Harold should have been elected by the people is nothing wonderful. The native population had groaned under the domination of a crowd of foreigners, brought over by Edward the Confessor. They must have felt that under William, a Norman by lineage as well as education, the evil would be perpetuated and increased. Hence they gave their voices most cordially and unanimously for the Saxon. Most of the English chroniclers distinctly state, that Harold was duly elected to the office by the nobles. ”

“ In France, at this period, an absurd custom prevailed of shaving the back of the head. The men of Normandy and Ponthieu accordingly appear as if they had caps stuck upon the front of their heads, leaving the back part naked. All this seems to prove that, at the time of the Conquest, it was not customary either in England or France for men to cover the head, except for defensive purposes in the day of battle.
The Saxons are uniformly represented with mustaches; the French are not. King Edward always appears with a beard. ”

“ William, when he wishes to show himself in order to contradict the rumour that he has been killed, is obliged to lift his helmet almost off his head. And yet Wace, who lived at the period just subsequent to the Conquest, writes as though Harold’s helmet was provided with a ventaille. He says, “Harold was sorely wounded in his eye by the arrow, and suffered grievous pain from the blow. An armed man came in the throng of the battle and struck him on the ventaille of his helmet, and beat him to the ground.” ”

“ William of Malmesbury tells us that the Saxon clergy were not fond of any distinctive dress.
In the whole course of the Tapestry only three females are presented to our view—Ælfgyva, a mourning relative by the dying bed of the Confessor, and a woman forced by the flames from her dwelling at Hastings. This circumstance surely proves the modesty and retiring habits of the Saxon and Norman ladies.
As our ladies are scarce, let us pay them minute attention. The dress of the Saxon women varied very little during the long period that elapsed between the eighth and the end of the eleventh century ”