§ 5. The Burial of Harold. October–December, 1066

The fight was now over; night had closed in, and those among the English host who had not fallen around their King had left the field under cover of the darkness. William now returned to the hill, where all resistance had long ceased. He looked around, we are told, on the dead and dying thousands, not without a feeling of pity that so many men had fallen, even as a sacrifice to his own fancied right.^[1463] But the victory was truly his own; in the old phrase of our Chroniclers, the Frenchmen had possession of the place of slaughter.^[1464] A place of slaughter indeed it was, where, from morn till twilight, the axe and javelin of England, the lance and bow of Normandy, had done their deadly work at the bidding of the two mightiest captains upon earth. Dead and dying men were heaped around, and nowhere were they heaped so thickly as around the fallen Standard of England. There, where the flower of England’s nobility and soldiery lay stretched in death,^[1465] there, where the banner of the Fighting Man now lay beaten to the ground, the Conqueror knelt, he gave his thanks to God, and bade his own banner be planted as the sign of the victory which he had won. He bade the dead be swept aside; the ducal tent was pitched in this, as it were, the innermost sanctuary of the Conquest, and meat and drink were brought for his repast in the midst of the ghastly trophies of his prowess. In vain did Walter Giffard warn him of the rashness of such an act. Many of the English who lay around were not dead; many were only slightly wounded; they would rise and escape in the night, or they would seek to have their revenge, well pleased to sell their lives at the price of the life of a Norman.^[1466] But the strong heart of William feared not; God had guarded him thus far, and he trusted in God to guard him still. Then he took off his armour; his shield and helmet were seen to be dinted with many heavy blows, but the person of the Conqueror was unhurt.^[1467] He was hailed by the loud applause of his troops, likening him to Roland and Oliver and all the heroes of old. Again he returned thanks to God, again he thanked his faithful followers, and sat down to eat and drink among the dead.^[1468]

The Normans watched upon the hill all night.^[1469] On the morrow of that fearful Sabbath, the morning light of the day of Christian worship first showed the full horrors of the scene. The first duty was the burial of the dead. The Duke went over the ground in person, superintending the funeral rites of the slain of his own army.^[1470] Nor was he, either by temper or by policy, disposed to treat the vanquished or their kinsfolk with needless cruelty or insult. The women of the surrounding country came to the camp, praying for the bodies of their husbands, sons, and brothers, and, by William’s express order, they were allowed to remove them for burial to the neighbouring towns and minsters.^[1471] The bodies of Ælfwig and his monks were among |Ælfwig and his monks.| the first to be recognized by the monastic garb beneath their harness. We hear nothing of the disposal of their bodies, but we know that their presence in the fight was not forgotten by the Conqueror.^[1472] We hear nothing of the place of burial of Godric or Thurkill or even of that of Gyrth and Leofwine. We may suppose that the bodies of the two Earls were borne away to some church on one of the many estates held by their house within the South-Saxon land.^[1473] |Harold’s body not forthcoming.| But there was still one corpse which was not forthcoming, one corpse for which, when found, the stern policy of the victor decreed a harsher fate. Wives and sisters had borne away the bodies of Thegns and churls,^[1474] but there was neither wife nor sister to claim the mangled corpse of the Emperor of Britain. One widowed Lady sat in her palace at Winchester, weeping for the fate of Tostig, perhaps waiting for the coming of William.^[1475] And where was the other, the daughter of Ælfgar, the wife of Harold, the bride who, as William deemed, had usurped the place which was designed for his own child? Are we to deem that she had chosen to cast in her lot rather with her recreant brothers than with her dauntless husband?^[1476] Or was it rather that she bore within her a future hope of England, one to whom men might fondly look as an Ætheling born of a crowned King and his Lady, a son of Harold and Ealdgyth, a grandson alike of Ælfgar and of Godwine?^[1477] All that we know is that, at that moment, the wife of Harold was far away, perhaps already on her journey, under the care of Eadwine and Morkere, to seek safety within the distant walls of Chester.^[1478] But there were still those who loved the fallen hero; there were those who clave to him in life, and who in death would not forsake him. There was the widowed mother, bereaved of so many valiant sons; there were the bedesmen who had tasted of his bounty, and the woman who had loved him with a true, if an unlawful love. It was from the holy house of Waltham that men |Osgod and Æthelric come from Waltham.| came to do the last duty to the dead of Senlac. Two of the Canons of Harold’s minster, Osgod and Æthelric the Childmaster, had followed the march of the English host. They came, either through the mere instinct of affection or, as was told in the legends of their house, made fearful of coming evil through the mysterious warning which the Holy Hood had given to the King.^[1479] They followed their Founder to the hill of slaughter; but they themselves joined not in the fight; they stood afar off that they might see the end.^[1480] With them, it may be, had come the now aged Danish princess, Gytha, the widow of Godwine, the mother of the three heroes who had died |Gytha asks for Harold’s body.| beneath the fallen Standard. She came to the Duke and craved the body of her royal son. Three sons of hers had fallen by his hand or the hand of his followers; let the Conqueror grant one at least of the three to be honoured with solemn and royal rites. Harold’s weight in gold should be the price of his burial within the walls of his own minster.^[1481] But in the case of his great rival the Conqueror was inexorable. His soul was indeed too lofty to be moved by petty spite towards an enemy who could |William commands that he shall be buried on the seashore.| no longer harm him. But his policy bade him to brand the perjurer, the usurper, the excommunicate of the Church, the despiser of the holy relics, with the solemn judgement of a minister of righteous vengeance. The proffered bribe had as little weight with him as it had with the Homeric Achilleus.^[1482] He whose insatiable ambition had caused the slaughter of so many men should not himself receive the honours of solemn burial. He was not indeed to be left to dogs and vultures; but he who had guarded the shore while living should guard it still in death.^[1483] A cairn on the South-Saxon shore, raised high upon the rocks of Hastings, should be the only memorial of the usurper.^[1484] |The body found by Eadgyth Swanneshals.| But the royal corpse was still unrecognized; it had been thrown aside among the other bodies which lay around the Standard, when the ground was cleared for William’s midnight meal. Who could undertake to find one single body in such an Aceldama? Who could undertake to recognize a form mangled and mutilated by the base malignity of unworthy foes? Ealdgyth was far away; Gytha could not be asked to take upon her such an office. The two faithful priests did their best, and failed in the attempt.^[1485] There was one alone who could be trusted for the mournful duty; one who knew him, alas, too well; one who had loved the man and not the King, and whose love, it may be, had been sacrificed to the duty or the policy of the ruler. The proud daughter of Ealdormen, the widow of two Kings, had left him to his fate; it was one of humbler rank, whose love had brought him not crowns or earldoms, but who had been the well-beloved of his less exalted days, who was called on to do the last bidding of affection upon earth. His former mistress, Eadgyth of the Swan’s Neck, was brought to the spot by Osgod and Æthelric, and was bidden to search for Harold amid the slain.^[1486] Her eye at last recognized the disfigured corpse, not by its mangled features, but by marks which his faithful priests, perhaps even his mother, knew not.^[1487] The body thus found awaited the bidding of the Conqueror. |Honours shown to the body.| William had no mind for simple insult beyond what the stern bidding of his policy dictated. Christian burial was refused; yet William could show to the corpse of Harold honours not less marked than Kleomenês had |It is buried on the shore by William Malet.| shown to the corpse of Lydiadas.^[1488] The mangled limbs were wrapped in a purple robe, and the body was borne to William’s camp by the sea-shore.^[1489] The charge of this unhallowed yet honourable burial was entrusted by the Duke to the willing hands of one of his own chiefs, who was at least not the personal foe of Harold or of England. By the care of William Malet, a name again to appear in our history, the body of Harold the son of Godwine was buried beneath a heap of stones upon the rocks of Sussex.^[1490]

Thus far we have the certain guidance of contemporary writers. Harold died on Senlac and was buried on the heights of Hastings. But there are two other tales, the evidence for which I shall discuss elsewhere,^[1491] but whose substance I cannot here pass by. One indeed, with some doubt as to the details, I do not hesitate to accept, as resting on amply sufficient, though not on strictly contemporary, evidence. The other is a mere romance, food for the comparative mythologist rather than for the historian, and valuable only as illustrating a certain ever-recurring |Legend of Harold’s escape.| tendency of the human mind. This is the well-known tale, according to which Harold did not die in the great battle. He escaped, we are told, and lived for a longer or a shorter time, according to different accounts, devoting his latter days, according to the most celebrated version, to a life of penance.^[1492] The King, so the story runs, was found half dead by some of the women who came to tend the wounded. He was then carried to Winchester by two men of middling rank, Thegns of the lowest class or churls of the highest.^[1493] There he was nursed for two years, not by his royal sister, but by a Saracen woman skilled in |His later adventures.| surgery. He then went into the kindred lands of Saxony and Denmark,^[1494] to ask help for England from her continental brethren. No such help however was forthcoming, and after a long series of adventures, Harold |His seclusion and death at Chester.| forsook the world and became a recluse in a cell attached to Saint John’s minster at Chester, the minster which had once witnessed the homage done to Eadgar the Peaceful by all the Under-kings of Britain.^[1495] There he died at a great age, having only in his last moments revealed to those around him that the lowly anchorite was no other than the native King of conquered England.

That this tale is a mere legend I have not the slightest doubt. But that such a tale should arise is by no means wonderful. It was indeed almost a matter of course. Whatever might be the feeling among Earls and Prelates who had other objects, popular English feeling would be for a while unwilling to believe in the death of the true national hero. Harold was expected to return, just as Baldwin of Constantinople, as Sebastian of Portugal, as many other princes in the like case, were expected to return. The really strange thing is that we do not hear of any false Harolds, as we hear of false Baldwins and false Sebastians.^[1496] The cause may be that the later hopes of England gradually drifted away into other directions, towards a restoration of Eadgar or a deliverance by the arms of Swend. Still, as long as resistance to the Norman lasted, rumours that Harold lived, that he would again appear to lead his countrymen, would be rife within the walls of Exeter and within the Camp of Refuge. But Harold came not. Where then, if living, did he hide himself? Why did he not join the patriot bands of Hereward and Waltheof? Why did not the Standard of the Fighting Man once more float over an English host, and the Holy Rood of Waltham again resound as the war-cry of a happier field than Senlac? That Harold lived and yet was not in arms against the invader, could be explained in one way only. He had betaken himself to a life of penitence; by prayer and scourge and fasting he was wiping out the great sin of his life, his fatal oath |The tale appeals to the feelings of the age| to the Norman. In our eyes such a self-consecration on Harold’s part would seem a weak forsaking of an obvious duty. It would not seem so in the eyes of an age which recognized its highest type of holiness in Eadward. The character of a patriot King was indeed honourable, but the character of an ascetic penitent was more honourable |and even to one vein of feeling at Waltham.| still. The tale would appeal to a certain vein of feeling in Englishmen generally. It would even appeal to a certain vein of local piety among Harold’s own bedesmen at Waltham. On the one hand it upset every local tradition, and deprived Waltham of its most cherished treasure. But on the other hand, it magnified in a certain way both the Founder and the foundation, and it went far to raise the church of Harold to a level with the church of Eadward. It was something to be founded by the last native King; it was something to be the last resting-place of his body; but it was something higher still to be founded by one who was no mere King or lawgiver or conqueror, but whose deeds of penance had won him a place in the roll of eremites and saints.

But of all this history knows nothing. In her pages Harold died, without a shadow of doubt, on the hill of Senlac, on the day of Saint Calixtus. Florence tells the true tale, in words speaking straight from the depths of England’s grief—“Heu, ipsemet cecidit crepusculi tempore.” In that Twilight of the Gods, when right and wrong went forth to battle, and when wrong for a moment had the victory, the brightest light of Teutonic England sank, and sank for ever. The son of Godwine died, as such King and hero should die, helm on head and battle-axe in hand, striking the last blow for his Crown and people, with the Holy Rood of Waltham the last cry rising from his lips and ringing in his ears. Disabled by the Norman arrow, cut down by the Norman sword, he died beneath the Standard of England, side by side with his brothers in blood and valour. His lifeless and mangled relics were all that was left either for the scoffs of enemies or for the reverence of friends. What the first resting-place of those relics was we have already seen, but need we hold that the first resting-place of those relics was also the last?

This brings us to the other story to which I have already alluded, and which, in its main outline, I am prepared to accept. This is that the body of Harold, first buried under the cairn by Hastings, was afterwards translated to his own minster at Waltham. That Waltham always professed to be the burying-place of Harold—that a tomb bearing his name was shown there down to the Dissolution of the Abbey—that fragments of it remained in the middle of the seventeenth century^[1497]—are facts beyond dispute. But these local traditions would not, under the circumstances, be of themselves enough to lead us to accept a local claim which at first sight seems to be opposed to the witness of contemporary writers. But a little examination will show that the two stories, the story of the cairn-burial and the story of the burial at Waltham, are not really contradictory. And there is a mass of evidence of all but the highest kind in support of the claim of Waltham to have at last sheltered |His body translated from the shore to Waltham. December, 1066?| the bones of its Founder. I then accept the view that the body of Harold, like the body of Waltheof ten years later, was removed from a lowlier resting-place to a more honourable one, in short from unhallowed to hallowed ground. Waltheof was first buried on the scene of his martyrdom by Winchester, and was afterwards removed for more solemn burial in the Abbey of Crowland.^[1498] Such I believe to have been the case with Harold also. This view reconciles the main facts as stated by all our authorities, and it falls in with all the circumstances of the case. With our feelings we might wish that the body of Harold had tarried for ever under its South-Saxon cairn. In William’s own words, no worthier place of burial could be his than the shore which he had guarded. But even modern feelings would be revolted at such a burial of any hero of our own time. And in those days the religious feeling of Harold’s friends and bedesmen would never be satisfied till their King and Founder slept in a spot where all the rites of the Church could be offered around him by the hands of those who were nourished by his bounty. Nor was it at all unlikely that William should relent, and should allow such honours to be paid to the memory of his fallen rival. The first harsh order exactly fell in with the policy of the first moment of victory. But, even before the end of the great year, a time came when William might well be disposed to listen to milder counsels. When the Conqueror had become the chosen and anointed King of the English, he honestly strove for a moment to make his rule as acceptable as might be to his English subjects. In those milder days of his earlier rule, it would quite fall in with William’s policy to yield to any petition, either from Gytha or from the brotherhood at Waltham, praying for the removal of Harold’s body from its unhallowed resting-place. He had then no motive for harshness. The Crown was safe upon his own head; he was the acknowledged successor of Eadward, and he could now afford to be generous to the memory of the intruder of a moment.

Then it was, as I believe, that the body of Harold was translated from the cairn on the hill of Hastings |and later translation.| to a worthier tomb in his own minster at Waltham. There the King and Founder was buried in the place of honour by the high altar. A later change in the fabric, probably an enlargement of the choir, caused a further translation of his body. On that occasion our local informant, a subject of the Norman Henry, saw and handled |Destruction of his tomb. c. 1540.| the bones of Harold.^[1499] For his tomb we now seek in vain, as we seek in vain for the tombs of most of the noblest heroes of our land. The devastation of the sixteenth century, the brutal indifference of the eighteenth, have swept over Hyde and Glastonbury and Waltham and Crowland and Evesham, and in their destroyed or ruined choirs no memory is left of Ælfred and Eadgar and Harold and Waltheof and Simon of Montfort. But what the men of his own time could do they did; the simple and pathetic tale of the local historian shows us how the fallen King was lamented by those who had known and loved him, and how his memory lived among those who shared his bounty without having seen his face. Their affection clave to him in life, their reverence followed him in death; they braved the wrath of the Conqueror on his behalf; they bore him first to his humble and unhallowed tomb, and then translated him to a more fitting resting-place within the walls of the noble fabric which his own bounty had reared.

Thus was the last native King of the English borne to his last home in his own minster. Once only since |The body of Edward the First at Waltham. 1307.| that day has Waltham seen a royal corpse, but then it was one which was worthy to rest even by the side of Harold. Two hundred and forty years after the fight of Senlac, the body of the great Edward was borne with all royal honours to a temporary resting-place in the church of Waltham.^[1501] Harold was translated to Waltham from a nameless tomb by the sea-shore; Edward was translated from Waltham to a still more glorious resting-place beneath the soaring vault of the apse of Westminster. |Comparison of Harold and Edward.| But for a while the two heroes lay side by side—the last and the first of English Kings, between whom none deserved the English name or could claim honour or gratitude from the English nation. The one was the last King who reigned purely by the will of the people, without any claim either of conquest or of hereditary right. The other was the first King who reigned purely as the son of his father, the first who succeeded without competitor or interregnum. But each alike, as none between them did, deserved the love and trust of the people over whom they reigned. With Harold our native kingship ends; the Dragon of Wessex gives place to the Leopards of Normandy; the Crown, the laws, the liberties, the very tongue of Englishmen, seem all fallen never to rise again. In Edward the line of English Kings begins once more. After two hundred years of foreign rule, we have again a King bearing an English name and an English heart—the first to give us back our ancient laws under new shapes, the first, and for so long the last, to see that the Empire of his mighty namesake^[1502] was a worthier prize than shadowy dreams of dominion beyond the sea. All between them were Normans or Angevins, careless of England and her people. Another and a brighter æra opens, as the lawgiver of England, the conqueror of Wales and Scotland, seems like an old Bretwalda or West-Saxon Basileus seated once more upon the throne of Cerdic and of Æthelstan. The conqueror of Gruffydd might welcome a kindred soul in the conqueror of Llywelyn; the victor of Stamfordbridge might hail his peer in the victor of Falkirk; the King with whom England fell might greet his first true successor in the King with whom she rose again. Such were the men who met in death within the now vanished choir of Waltham. And in the whole course of English history we hardly come across a scene which speaks more deeply to the heart, than when the first founder of our later greatness was laid by the side of the last kingly champion of our earliest freedom—when the body of the great Edward was laid, if only for a short space, by the side of Harold the son of Godwine.