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

THE DOGS OF WAR ARE LET LOOSE

January 1066 AD. Harold was now Harold II of England. Perhaps the most prized kingdom in all of Christendom. However not all was well. This event again brought the clouds of war over England for it was seen that he was a ‘non-royal.’ His qualifi-cation to reign was not seen as complete. There had been a precedent in France of a non-royal personage, Hugh Capet, becoming King; yet this had been strongly resented by the nobility, whose pride, common ideas, and sentiments were increasingly giving the law to Western Europe. Every aspiring Thegn who heard the news of Harold’s elevation was conscious of an affront, and also of the wide ranges open to ability and the sword. Moreover, the entire structure of the feudal world rested upon the sanctity of oaths. Against the breakers of oaths the whole power of both chivalry and the Church were combined with a blasting force. It was a further misfortune for Harold that Stigand, the Archbishop of Canterbury, had himself received the word from a schismatic Pope, that Rome would not recognise Harold as King. It must be under-stood that the European Catholic Feudal system saw Harold as a usurper – and a breaker of oaths.

At this very moment the Almighty, reaching down from his heavenly sphere, made an ambiguous gesture. The tailed comet or “hairy star” which appeared at the time of Harold’s coronation is now identified by astronomers as Halley’s Comet, which had been pounced upon by both the Normans, William the Bastard, and Rome to signify the Almighty’s anger at the sacrilegious upstart, Harold, by the Norman propaganda machine.

June 1066 AD. The two rival projects of invasion were speedily prepared. The first was from Scandinavia. The successors of the former king Canute in Norway deter-mined to revive their claim of English sovereignty. An expedition was already being organised when Tostig, Harold’s exiled and revengeful half-brother, ousted from his Earldom of Northumbria, arrived with full accounts of the crisis in England and the weak state of its defences. King Harald Hardrada set forth to conquer the English crown. He sailed at first to the Orkneys; gathering recruits from the Scottish isles and from the Isle of Man. Combining forces with the treacherous Tostig he headed to-wards the northeast coast of England with a large fleet and army in the late summer of 1066 AD.