THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS AND THE BEGINNINGS OF ANGLO-NORMAN ENGLAND

THE AFTERMATH

William rode back to that corpse strewn and blood soaked field to survey the scene of his victory. Poitiers recalls how the Duke was moved to pity to see so many English-men lying dead on the hilltop. The bodies of Gyrth and Leofwine were found near Harold. The 12th century (De Inventione S. Crucis) of Waltham Abbey carries the story that the King’s body at first could not be identified, possibly because the arrow wound had caused too great a disfigurement or because of the subsequent mutilation at the hands of his Norman enemies. But in order to find the King, they sent for Edith Swan Neck, Harold’s beautiful wife ‘in the Danish manner’, who knew marks on his body that only she, his lover, would have recognized. Edith, who tradition relates was waiting by the Watch Oak on the southwestern slopes of Caldbec Hill, was brought to that bloodstained field and carried out her last duty to her lover. She found Harold’s body among the blood-soaked and mutilated corpses on that Senlac Ridge. It is said that she recognised a tattoo across his chest. It said simply ENGLAND.

The last true native English King’s corpse was carried to William’s camp and there handed over to the half-English knight William Malet for burial. Harold’s mother, Gytha, offered its weight in gold but the Duke refused to release it to her, considering it unseemly to receive such a gift. Moreover he felt that Harold should not be buried as his mother wished when so many lay un interred because of his avarice. (That’s a good one coming from a Norman!!) The Normans said in jest? That Harold should be buried so that he could continue to guard the shore he had tried so hard to defend. It is noteworthy that already in Malmesbury’s account there appears the story that Wil-liam, refusing payment, allowed Gytha to bury the body at Harold’s church of Waltham Holy Cross in Essex. Wace agrees, but mentions no names; in his time Waltham was a royal abbey under Henry II’s patronage. Inevitably stories arose that King Harold had escaped from the battle, having further adventures until he died a hermit at Chester, but that would have gone against the ways of Harold the man.

On Sunday 15 October the day was given over to burial of the Norman dead. Those English men or women who came to the field were permitted to take friends or rela-tives away, but many were left on that bloody ridge in the same way as at Stamford Bridge, where Orderic reported seeing piles of bones some 70 years after the Battle. The chronicler Jumieges mentions that loot was taken at the field of Hastings and the Bayeux Tapestry shows that this had already begun during the battle; the lower bor-ders, though somewhat restored, illustrate figures stripping the dead of their mail. The Duke may have given orders for the construction on Caldbec Hill of a Mountjoy, or victory cairn of stones, since the area still bears the name.