2
The murder of his own wife’s son did very little for King Harold’s popularity. He was already widely hated throughout England and the cruel execution of Alfred only served to compound the problem.1 However, there was someone who hated King Harold far more than the citizens of England: his half-brother Harthacnut.
Harthacnut expected to be king of England upon King Cnut’s death in 1035, according to his father’s verbal wishes, but Harold was in the right place at the right time and took the throne for himself rather than being his brother’s regent. In 1039 after finally signing a treaty with King Magnus of Norway, Harthacnut turned his attention to deposing his brother Harold and claiming the throne of England for himself. He had prepared a large invasion fleet in Denmark and his mother Emma was drumming up support for him in Flanders. All the invasion preparations turned out to be quite unnecessary when in March 1040 King Harold died and messengers came to Harthacnut asking him to be the next king of England. Even though he had won back the Crown, his hatred of Harold had not been extinguished. He openly displayed his disgust for his brother by dumping his dead corpse in the River Thames, which was a terribly undignified ending for a king. 2
If the citizens of England were looking forward to the return of the rightful king after the deposition of the usurping brother, they were about to be utterly disappointed. Harthacnut didn’t exactly have a soft touch, he was more of a bull in a china shop, and his reign ended up being an utter failure.3 As the new king of England, he set about punishing all the people he believed to be involved in his stepbrother Alfred’s murder. Next, he quadrupled taxes on his people which caused the people of Worcester to rise up in rebellion against their king. Harthacnut’s not-so-subtle response was to lay waste to the town, killing the citizens, and burning down their houses.4
With his kingdom seemingly out of control and on the brink of collapse, the unmarried and childless King Harthacnut invited his half-brother, Edward, to come to England and help him hold the kingdom. It was quite possible that Harthacnut knew he had a fatal illness, and having fathered no children, had no heir.5 It seems that his invitation to Edward was a clear attempt to bring him into the fold of royal government in preparation to take it over himself one day. Harthacnut’s decision to bring Edward to England was a prudent choice because just one year later, King Harthacnut dropped dead at a wedding feast on Easter Sunday 1043.
On 3 April 1043 at Winchester Cathedral, Edward the Confessor was crowned King of England and the English monarchy was back in the hands of a descendent of King Alfred the Great. Edward the Confessor reigned for twenty-six years, longer than any other of King Alfred’s descendants. While Edward was a much more capable ruler than his half-brothers, he didn’t exactly set the world on fire. He was known mostly for his monkish piousness but was also described by some chroniclers as weird and weak.6 He was likely a somber guy due to the circumstances of his upbringing. He had lived in exile most of his life and his own mother abandoned him to marry his father’s enemy, so it’s no doubt this affected his personality.
The two main focuses of Edward the Confessor’s reign were fighting off Viking invasions and trying to gain the support of the powerful Godwins of England, former allies of the hated King Harthacnut. Earl Godwin had only been in his early twenties when he rose to power as a close companion and adviser to King Cnut, Harthacnut’s father. King Cnut often left Godwin in control of England while he was abroad on business. Since Godwin was the most powerful man in England and held virtually all the power in northern England, it was imperative for Edward to win him to his side.
The first order of business in this endeavor was to settle the matter of the murder of Edward’s brother, Alfred, which Godwin had been accused of participating in. Edward gave his forgiveness to Godwin and from that point the two sides were reconciled. They sealed their new alliance with a marriage. On 23 January 1045, Edward married Earl Godwin’s daughter Edith. But the peace wouldn’t last for long. Godwin was an overmighty lord and King Edward struggled to keep in under submission.
Trouble between the men came to a head in the fall of 1051 when Godwin refused King Edward’s command to harry the towns of Kent and Dover after their people attacked the king’s brother-in-law, Count Eustace of Boulogne, and killed nineteen of his men. After Godwin’s refusal, Edward called a special council meeting in London to address the issue, and probably intended to put Godwin on trial but sensing the danger, Godwin was a no-show. As punishment, King Edward stripped the family of all their earldoms, exiled them, and sent his own wife Edith, Earl Godwin’s daughter, to a nunnery.
Earl Godwin would not be deterred. He spent his time in exile planning a rebellion against King Edward. In the spring of 1052 Godwin attempted to invade England, however, the English coast was heavily guarded by the king’s men and a storm forced Godwin to abort. He was back with another invasion attempt in August 1053 and this time King Edward was forced to reconcile and restore the Godwin’s earldoms rather than face a new civil war. Edward also restored his wife Edith and took her back in. Despite this difficulty, Edward and Edith had a seemingly happy marriage and a cordial relationship, although they remained childless. It’s no wonder since all the chroniclers of that time wrote about how their relationship had more of a father and daughter dynamic than that of a husband and wife.7 In all actuality, he was probably too devout to his religion to give his wife a child. Plus, there was a big age difference. Edward was 42 when they were married and Edith was only 20, so it’s not surprising that the pious Edward took on a fatherly role towards her.
The combined trouble with Godwin and the lack of children from his marriage with Edith made Edward for the first time seriously consider who he should name as his heir to the throne of England. There were several contenders including Edgar Ætheling, grandson of Edmund Ironside (King Edmund II), but he was a young child and had lived his life in exile. He certainly wouldn’t be a strong enough king to ward off the aggression of the powerful Godwins. Then there was a Godwin himself: Harold, son of Earl Godwin. Harold was the earl of Essex and some favoured him since he was English, but Edward found him unacceptable. Then there were two foreigners: King Sweyn of Denmark and King Harald Hardrada of Norway, but no Englishmen wanted to be ruled by Scandinavians. Lastly there was Duke William of Normandy, a cousin of King Edward’s, therefore, a contender with royal English blood in his very veins.
Born in 1027 or 1028, William was the illegitimate son of Edward the Confessor’s cousin, Duke Robert of Normandy, and Herleva, a local girl in town whose father was a tanner.8 The pregnancy was probably unintentional as the two were only around 17 years old at the time and had vast distance between their social standings. In fact, shortly after the birth of their son William, Herleva was married off to a modest lord near Paris and with him she bore two sons who would also rise to power: Odo of Bayeux and Robert, Earl of Kent and Count of Mortain. Even though William was technically a bastard, his father Robert had no other sons, so he named William as his successor to the duchy of Normandy. The Normans didn’t get hung up on legitimacy as much as the English did when it came to succession and inheritances.
In 1034 Duke Robert shocked his Norman magnates when he announced he would be going to Jerusalem on pilgrimage. The journey to the Holy Lands was fraught with peril and he was also endangering his Norman nobles by withdrawing his personal protection for the next few years. His noblemen were right to be worried: on his journey home from Jerusalem he died from a sudden illness, leaving his 7-year-old son as the new duke of Normandy.
Normandy was a very dangerous and unsettled place, especially now that a child was at the reigns. Fortunately, Robert left William a strong support system to help protect him and help rule during his minority. Unfortunately, these men became the targets of feuding aristocracy families and all died mysteriously or by outright murder in the early years of William’s reign. The environment was so dangerous that his uncle Walter slept in his chamber at night and on more than one occasion had to whisk the boy away to safety to avoid assassination attempts.9 The effect that this must have had on a child’s psychology is difficult to understand but it would certainly shape his character and strengthen his resolve to put Normandy in order.
In 1046 William was 18 years old and ready to end his minority, meaning he was ready to take the reins and rule over Normandy in his own right. Later that year he faced his first huge crisis when his own cousin, Guy of Burgundy, rebelled against him and tried to take the duchy of Normandy from him. It was only with the help of his overlord, King Henry I of France, that William was able to put down the rebellion at the Battle of Val-ès-Dunes. However, Guy would spend the next four years taunting William with little skirmishes until finally in 1050 William captured Guy and exiled him from the duchy.
William learned from his experiences with his cousin Guy and determined to rule his duchy proactively instead of reactively. From 1051 on he quickly emerged as a powerful force in Normandy and throughout the whole of France. He launched offensive campaigns to take back control of towns and fortresses that had been captured from him while he was still a young, ineffective ruler. In the autumn of 1051, he entered into a dispute with the count of Anjou which resulted in William capturing the towns of Domfront and Alençon, two vitally important strongholds in southern Normandy. It was from these campaigns that William received his reputation as being a fierce and cruel warrior, laying waste to the towns and unmercifully torturing and killing its inhabitants.10
In the fall of 1051, William’s newfound reputation as a power player got the attention of King Edward who had recently fallen out with the Godwins. Edward invited his cousin to England for a visit and it was during this visit that King Edward apparently promised to name William as his heir, which would make him king of England upon Edward’s death.11 It really wasn’t Edward’s throne to give away because in England it was not yet customary for the current king to select a successor. Instead, the decision was made by the Witan or Witenagemot, a group of archbishops, bishops, earls, abbots, and other high officials.12 Whether Edward really promised William the throne is undocumented and many chroniclers have written that Edward also promised the throne to many others, including King Harald Haldrada of Norway. Nevertheless, William whole-heartedly believed that he would be Edward’s heir and would be the next king of England. In fact, for the next fifteen years William went around advertising the fact and let it be known everywhere that Edward had selected him as heir to the English throne.
Back in Normandy William had a lot of other things to worry about rather than the English throne. He faced another major challenge in early 1054 when the king, Henry I of France, formed an alliance with William’s enemy, the count of Anjou, thus breaking William’s own alliance with France. William must have felt that his very duchy was under the threat of extinction with Henry I’s invasion. The new French alliance launched a two-pronged coordinated invasion of Normandy and William responded swiftly. He split his considerable army into two forces, himself leading men west to face the king of France. William sent his most trusted magnates east to battle the French forces led by his own brother, Odo, in what would become known as the Battle of Mortemer. After several hours of intense fighting, the French forces fell into disarray and were soundly slaughtered by the Normans. When news of the French army’s defeat at Mortemer reached King Henry I in western France, he simply surrendered and withdrew his troops. But the king wasn’t done challenging William just yet. He launched another joint invasion with the count of Anjou in August 1057, but was decimated by William’s troops at the Battle of Varaville and forced to surrender.
The importance of William’s victories in the early years of his adult reign cannot be understated. Not only did he successfully beat the king of France and save his duchy from French rule, he also cemented his position as a fierce and courageous military commander.13 Nearly all the Norman magnates flocked to his side at this time. It was wise to hitch your future to a powerful man in charge command of his kingdom and he was evidently rising to this stature in the eyes of Normans. They saw in William a new, powerful ruler who could lead their duchy to great prosperity, wealth, and prestige. In fact, it was probably around this time that William began promising Norman barons substantial lands in England if they supported him. Their backing would be an essential component of his success in the conquest of England in 1066.
By 1060, Normandy was a stabilised duchy with an exciting young leader whose star was on the rise. Now that William had defeated all his challengers, he could turn his attention to building up Normandy as an elite French duchy and a prominent European player. Under William, the cities of Rouen and Caen were restored and glorified beyond their previous majesty in the days before the Viking invasions. He continued to expand the feudal system which in turn led to a larger, more organised army because his land magnates could call up their fiefs for required service to the king’s Norman army. He was also somewhat responsible for the revival of Roman Catholicism in Normandy. William rebuilt the monasteries that had been torn down by the Vikings and reinstated religious houses across his duchy which he subsequently endowed generously. In addition, he sat on many religious councils and even had the power to pass judgement on matters up for discussion and debate.
William’s prestige was further increased in 1051 or 1052 when he married Matilda, daughter of Baldwin V, Count of Flanders. William was well-known as a bastard, but Matilda was highly born with impeccable royal lineage. She was descended from both Charlemagne and King Alfred the Great, plus her grandfather and uncle had been kings of France. There is a legend that Matilda initially spurred William’s overtures at marriage and thereafter an enraged William pulled her off her horse and beat her in front of her father. Apparently, Matilda was turned on by this show of strength and she actually then agreed to marry him.14 This scandalous story is likely untrue, but it is possible the story was based on her deep disappointment at being betrothed to a bastard rather than a man of noble and legitimate birth. In either case, William and Matilda had a long and fruitful marriage. He trusted her to be regent in Normandy when he was away and he was said to be completely faithful to her. Together they had ten children that survived into adulthood, including two future kings of England, William II and Henry I.
No doubt the rising influence of Duke William in Normandy was viewed as a threat by the powerful Godwins of England. The family patriarch, Earl Godwin, had died in 1054 after suffering a stroke at Easter dinner and was succeeded by his son Harold who became the earl of Wessex and the king’s lieutenant. The Godwin’s did not want William to ascend the throne so they put forth a number of other claimants as Edward’s heir but ultimately had to stand down and beg forgiveness from the king for overreaching. However, Harold was ambitious and would not be deterred by this minor setback. By this time, he may have had designs of his own on the throne of England.
In 1064, King Edward sent Harold Godwin to Normandy on a royal mission to treat with Duke William. On Harold’s voyage across the English Channel, his ship was blown off course and he was forced to come ashore at Ponthieu instead of Normandy where he was taken prisoner by Count Guy. William came to his rescue, negotiated for his release, and welcomed him with great pomp and circumstance at Rouen. Harold became William’s special guest for several months in which time they became close acquaintances and even friends. William took Harold on campaign in Brittany, promised to give him Dover in England when he became king, and even promised one of his daughters in marriage to Harold. Harold then swore an oath to William to support his right to inherit the kingdom of England on Edward the Confessor’s death.15 Whether or not Harold really took the oath has been debated by historians for many years. It seems most likely that he did pledge fealty to William and it may have been forced to do so in order to be allowed to leave Normandy. The other strong possibility is that the two men hatched a plan in which Harold would rule England as William’s regent because he would undoubtedly spend a lot of time in his native Normandy.
Things appeared to be set right with the two men but the turn of event in England would change everything. In the fall of 1065, Harold’s superiority in England was seriously diminished when there was a major rebellion in northern England against his brother, Tostig, Earl of Northumbria. Tostig was hated for the usual reasons: high taxes, oppressive rule, cruel treatment, unlawful murder, and jealousy of his great wealth and power. The rebels overcame Tostig’s guards, ransacked his treasury, and killed at least 200 of his men, including many of Godwin’s supporters in the north. Tostig’s inability the thwart the rebellion caused the leaders of Yorkshire to send for help from Morcar, the younger brother of the earl of Mercia, and they quickly elected him the new earl of Northumbria.
Harold met the rebels at Northampton and negotiated on behalf of King Edward but the rebels would not surrender unless the king agreed to exile Tostig. The king refused and both sides were at a stalemate. An armed military conflict was now inevitable but so few men turned up to serve in the king’s army that Harold had no choice but to surrender. King Edward’s submission to the rebels shortly before Christmas 1065 seriously degraded royal authority. This rebellion also did much to destroy the political stability that England had been experiencing under the reign of King Edward the Confessor.
After the disastrous rebellion, there was a huge event the king was keenly looking forward to: the dedication of the new church at Westminster, one of Edward’s building projects, scheduled for 28 December 1065. Even though it was his crowning glory, King Edward did not attend the ceremony because he had fallen seriously ill and taken to his bed. He experienced a quick decline in his health during the preceding months and the northern rebellion had drained him physically, emotionally, and spiritually. He took to his bedchamber on 26 December 1065 and never recovered. He died on 5 January 1066, surrounded by his wife and his closest councillors, including Harold Godwin.
On his deathbed, one would have expected King Edward to confirm William of Normandy as his successor to the English throne, however, he did no such thing. In fact, the words he spoke on his deathbed were interpreted as the selection of Harold Godwin. In the Vita chronicle, Edward’s last words to Harold were reported to be ‘I also commend to you those men who have left their native land for love of me and served me faithfully. Take an oath of fealty from them if they wish, and protect and retain them; or send them with your safe conduct across the Channel to their own homes with all they have acquired in my service.’16 Nowhere in that statement did Edward say Harold should be king. In contrast, it sounds like he wanted Harold to be regent of England. He’s basically asking Harold to protect the English people and take an oath of fealty from them if he felt it was necessary for the purpose of political stability until such time as William of Normandy could arrive in England.
We don’t know exactly what transpired on Edward’s deathbed and if he did command Harold to be his heir but there is one thing for certain. The Godwins did not want to be ruled by a foreigner and give up any of their power, so Harold took William’s vague deathbed statement and ran with it, literally. He immediately went to the Witan and told them Edward had named him as his heir. The Witan then appointed him as the next king of England and he was quickly coronated the next day. If he had been really confident that he was Edward’s lawful heir and would be widely accepted instead of Duke William of Normandy, he would not have had such a hasty coronation. Harold Godwin was quite well-liked in England and the citizens probably preferred him to a Norman any day of the week, so they went along with Harold’s coronation quite willingly.
It took several days for the news of Edward’s death and Harold’s coronation to travel from the island of England across the Channel to France and to the duchy of Normandy, home of Duke William. William must have been utterly shocked by this sudden turn of events because he was for so long confident that he would be King Edward’s heir. He felt a special sense of betrayal that his new friend Harold pulled off a coup of this magnitude. He had no reason to believe that Harold would usurp the crown from him until this very minute when he received the devastating news.
Within days William fired off an angry letter to Harold demanding that he renounce the throne.17 Harold flatly refused, arguing that the Witan had lawfully chosen him as the next king of England and William was out of luck. This was an absolute outrage to William. He had quite naively believed that the English citizens would rise up in his favour and supplant King Harold but much to his surprise that didn’t happen. William was far too proud a man to back down and play dead to Harold, so he resolved himself to take what he believed was rightly his by force. Within a month, William and his councillors began planning what would become the most important and transformative event in English history – the Norman conquest.