NOTE U. p. 259. The Embassies exchanged between William and Harold

The different statements as to Harold’s oath naturally lead to statements equally different as to the messages which, after Harold’s election, were exchanged between him and William. Whatever Harold had promised, that William demanded, and whatever William demanded, that Harold refused. We thus get a set of statements differing exactly as the other set of statements differ. I have already had occasion to refer incidentally to several of them. I will now try to put them together in order.

Of the purely Norman authorities, the Tapestry is silent. William of Poitiers does not directly speak of any messages between the rivals till after William’s landing in England (128–131; see above, p. 430). But there is a passage further on which seems to imply an earlier message. This is when the Archdeacon breaks forth into that wonderful panegyric on his master (145) which follows his account of William’s coronation;

“Hic [Willelmus] ne Heraldum vellet occubuisse. Immò voluit patris Godwini potentiam illi ampliare, et natam suam, Imperatoris thalamo dignissimam, in matrimonium, ut fuerat pollicitus, tradere.”

This clearly implies that an offer of the Earldom of the West-Saxons, perhaps of something greater, together with the hand of William’s daughter, had been twice made by William to Harold. The first time is of course at the taking of the oath; the second time must be in some message sent before the expedition. For the messages exchanged after William’s landing are given at length, and they contain no such terms. And an offer of William’s daughter could then at least have been nothing but sheer mockery. By that time, at all events, Harold was married to Ealdgyth.

William of Jumièges (vii. 31) has an account which exactly agrees with the implied narrative of William of Poitiers. The Duke, as soon as he hears the news of Harold’s election, sends messengers to remind him to keep his oath. The terms of the oath, according to him, were that William should be King, Harold having half the Kingdom and William’s daughter. His words are,

“Ad quem [Heraldum] Dux protinùs legatos direxit, hortans ut ab hâc insaniâ resipisceret, et fidem quam juramento spoponderat condignâ subjectione servaret. At ille non solùm hoc audire contempsit, verùm omnem Anglorum gentem ab illo infideliter avertit.”

He then goes on with the account of Gruffydd and Ealdgyth which I quoted in vol. ii. p. 630.

Orderic does not mention the message. The Roman de Rou (vv. 11066–11075) speaks of several messages;

Here the terms of William’s messages are not given, but they may be inferred from the terms of Harold’s answer. These terms, and also the mention of more messages than one, seem on the whole to fall in with the account given by Eadmer and Simeon, which I have already mentioned (see above, p. 671). Harold there makes this answer, of which I do not fully understand the clause about the castle and well of Dover;

“Soror mea, quam juxta condictum expetis, mortua est. Quod si corpus ejus, quale nunc est, vult Comes habere, mittam, ne judicer sacramentum violâsse quod feci. Castellum Dofris et in eo puteum aquæ, licet nesciam cui, ut vobis convenit, explevi.”

He then goes on with the passages which I have already quoted (pp. 262, 264), in which Harold declares his inability either to decline the Kingdom which was offered to him or to marry a foreign woman without the consent of the Witan. William then sends a second message (see above, p. 260), of which the tone is greatly lowered. He now only asks that, if Harold will do nothing else that he has promised to do, he will at least marry his daughter. “Alioquin,” he continues, “se promissam regni successionem armis sibi vindicaturum proculdubiò sciret. At ipse [Haroldus] nec illud quidem se facere velle, nec hoc formidare respondit.”

It will be easily seen how completely this agrees with the account in the Roman de Rou, except in the prominence given to the engagement about Harold’s sister, which Wace does not mention at all. The statement about her death seems to me to bear the stamp of genuineness, as it is not a thing which anybody would take the trouble to invent. And it has sometimes struck me that this explains the statement of William of Malmesbury, where he makes Harold say that the daughter of William whom he had promised to marry was dead (see above, p. 660). In this statement he stands quite alone, and it seems not unlikely that he confounded the two marriage engagements, and that the death of William’s daughter is really a reproduction of the death of Harold’s sister. The rest of William of Malmesbury’s story, and the constitutional doctrine put into the mouth of Harold, I have mentioned already in the text and notes. See above, pp. 262–265.

The version of the Hyde writer I have already given at p. 692.

In Benoît’s account (36732–36757) the Kingdom alone is dwelt upon. He had mentioned the marriage (36622 et seqq.), but he seems to look on the marriage of Adeliza as something volunteered by William after the oath, not as part of the oath itself.

I do not know that there is any need to quote the accounts of any later writer.