Battles of English History. George Hereford Brooke
the coronation of the living hero. Harold's position was a difficult one even at home, besides the danger from over seas. The earldom of Mercia, the whole centre of England, was ruled by Edwin, third in succession of a family which had been permanently hostile to the house of Godwine. Northumbria was in the hands of his younger brother Morcar, who had replaced Harold's brother Tostig, against whose tyrannous rule the men of Northumbria had revolted. The young earls were in every way contemptible, feeble in action, narrow-minded, selfish, short-sighted. They saw no reason why Harold should be preferred to themselves, and in their hatred of him lost sight of their own true interests. They dallied with the thought that England might once more be divided into separate kingdoms for their benefit, being ignorant or reckless enough to imagine that they would be able to withstand the Norman if he, through their inactivity, succeeded in conquering Wessex. For the time Harold's personal influence won over the Northumbrians, and the two earls acquiesced in his rule, and were only too glad of his assistance against the Northmen: but when the final stress came not a man whom Edwin and Morcar could control was found by the king's side.
William the Norman had absolutely no claim to the crown of England: his ambition saw an opportunity, and his unscrupulous skill made a string of baseless pretexts look sufficiently plausible to be accepted by those who wished to believe in them. He said that he was the nearest of kin to the late king, which was false; he was a distant cousin, but only through Edward's Norman mother, and so was in no way descended from the English royal house. As reasonably might the king of France have claimed the crown of the Stuarts, on the ground that the wife of Charles I. was a French princess. He said that Edward the Confessor had promised him the succession; and it is most probable that Edward, whose education had been Norman and whose sympathies were not English, had encouraged him, years before, to hope for it. But the king of England had no right to bequeath the crown; and whatever influence a dying king's recommendation might have, had been exerted in favour of Harold. He said that Harold had done him homage, and sworn2 solemnly to recognise him as king after Edward's death; but nothing that Harold might have done could bind England. The crown of England was elective, freely so in form: and the only limitation which custom imposed, or which could be pretended to have legal force, confined the choice to members of a single family to which William did not belong.
Nevertheless William succeeded in making this farrago of insolent irrelevancy deceive those whom he was interested in persuading, by the aid of a policy even more unscrupulous and far-reaching than his own. In the eleventh century clearness of thought was rare; men were capable of grasping the idea of kindred, without understanding that not every form of kindred could give rights of inheritance. No one in England, except the handful of Norman settlers, would listen for a moment to William's pretensions: but in Europe generally the notions of hereditary right, and of the sacredness of royal blood, had gained a firmer hold, though fortunately for William they were still vague. It seemed as if a duke of Normandy must needs have a better claim to a vacant throne than any mere subject. Most important of all, William obtained the aid of the Church to condemn Harold for perjury. England had always been too independent to please the papacy; and Hildebrand, afterwards the greatest of popes as Gregory VII., who already swayed the papal policy, saw the value of the opportunity. To denounce Harold as having forfeited the crown by his perjury, to grant the solemn blessing of the Church to William's mission of pure conquest, would, if William succeeded, be a great step towards establishing the papal claim to make and unmake kings at will, to be supreme temporally as well as spiritually. William could thus appeal for aid to the superstition as well as to the cupidity of all the adventurers of western Europe, as the popes did later for the crusades. It was indeed the first, the most successful, and perhaps the most wicked of all crusades.
William lost no time in solemnly demanding the crown of England as his by right, and formally calling on Harold to fulfil his oath; of course he expected the curt refusal which he received. It was no part of his policy to conceal his purpose: rather he hoped to awaken superstitious terrors in the minds of the English, and give them time to grow. His preparations however took many months, and when he was ready, contrary winds delayed the passage of the Channel for many weeks more, to his great advantage. Harold got together a large fleet to guard the Channel, and called out the fyrd of the southern counties to defend the coast. But a body of men serving without pay is hard to keep together, and the imperfect resources of the age made it difficult to feed them. In September, when the summer was over, and no Norman expedition had appeared, Harold was obliged to disband his army, and let the fleet go back to London. Almost immediately he received the news that another and to all appearance more formidable enemy was on the point of invading England in the north.
Tostig, Harold's brother, who had been driven out by his Northumbrian subjects, and whom Harold's justice had refused to support against them, thought he saw his opportunity for revenge and restoration. Whether he suggested to Harold Hardrada, king of Norway, that he should attempt to seize the English throne, or whether Hardrada had already thought of it as a fitting crown to his career of warlike adventure, is not clear. Certainly they united in the last, the greatest and the most disastrous of the Viking expeditions. With a fleet of several hundred ships, manned it is said by half the fighting population of his kingdom, Harold Hardrada crossed to the Orkneys, and drawing contingents from thence and from Scotland, sailed down the Northumbrian coast, plundering and destroying. Entering the Humber, he went up the Ouse as far as Riccall, some ten miles south of York, and leaving his ships there under a guard, marched upon York. Morcar the earl of Northumbria had so far made no attempt at resistance, but he had gathered the fyrd of his earldom, and perhaps of his brother's also, for the two earls moved together from York to meet the invaders. On September 20 a battle took place at Fulford, only two miles from York, in which the earls, after a severe struggle, were decisively defeated. The city surrendered, and the Northmen withdrew to Stamford Bridge on the Derwent, eight miles east of York, to await the collecting of hostages in token of the submission of the whole earldom. King Harold, on hearing the news of his namesake's expedition, had hastily gathered what forces he could, and marched with all speed northwards. On the morning of September 25 he reached York, which had only surrendered the day before, and without halting went in search of the enemy.
Harold Hardrada's camp was pitched on the eastern side of the Derwent – the locality is still known as the Battle Flats – but some of his men were on the western bank, keeping no watch, and in no way prepared for battle. The road from York rises slightly most of the way, and then descends a mile or two to the Derwent: hence Harold's approach was not seen until he was near at hand. The Northmen on the western bank resisted as long as they could, but were driven over the river. One man, we are told by his enemies, defended the bridge with his single arm for some time, until he was killed by a thrust from below. Then the English crossed the Derwent, and the real struggle began.
The Northmen were drawn up, according to their usual tactics when standing on the defensive, in a continuous ring, their shields interlocking. In the centre rose their standard, the black raven, significantly known as the Landwaster, the gigantic form of the last of the Vikings towering beside it. Their weapon of offence was the long two-handed sword, though how they managed to wield it, and yet maintain the continuity of the shield wall, is rather difficult to understand.
According to the famous saga of Snorro Sturleson, the English king made one last effort for peace before beginning the final onset. His face concealed by his helmet, he rode across with a few of his thegns to the enemy, and offered his brother forgiveness and the restoration of his earldom if he would return to his allegiance. "And what," replied Tostig, "shall be given to king Harold of Norway?" "Seven feet of land for a grave, or as much more as he needs, since he is taller than other men." "Then go back, and tell king Harold of England to prepare for battle: it shall never be said in Norway that I brought their king over to England, and then deserted him." The story is too true to the spirit of the age not to be told; but authority for it there is none, any more than for the words of the champions in Homer. The saga was written so long after the event that it had been quite forgotten how the English of that day fought: they are described as consisting entirely of horsemen and archers, after the fashion prevalent two centuries and more later. Nothing on the contrary is more certain than that at Stamford Bridge there were few or none of either arm. The battle was fought and won mainly by king Harold's housecarls, armed with the Danish axe.
It needs little imagination
The famous story of Harold having sworn unconsciously on all the relics in Normandy, is told by the Norman writers in many different forms, more or less inconsistent with each other, and some of them demonstrably incorrect; and it is impossible to discover the truth. That William accused Harold of perjury all over Europe, and that no answer was attempted, is evidence that something of the sort had happened. As Professor Freeman points out, the absolute silence of all the English chroniclers implies that they did not know how to meet the accusation. Harold must have taken some such oath, under some form of coercion, and so have given his enemy an advantage; but obviously it would have been a greater crime to keep such an oath than to break it. Obviously too, on any version of the story that is not self-refuted, William's conduct was far more dishonourable than Harold's.