Empire: World History - 402. The Norman Conquests: The Real Story of 1066 (Part 2)

Episode Date: October 7, 2026

Who was William the Conqueror? Who was Harold Godwinson? Who was Harald Hardrada? And how did these three rivals change the course of English history forever? In Episode 2 of this series, Anita Anand and William Dalrymple are joined by Marc Morris, author of The Norman Conquest and The Anglo-Saxons, to discuss the road to the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Join the Empire Club: Unlock the full Empire experience – with bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to miniseries and live show tickets, exclusive book discounts, a members-only newsletter, and access to our private Discord chatroom. Sign up directly at ⁠empirepoduk.com⁠. Email: [e-mail] Instagram: @empirepoduk Blue Sky: @empirepoduk X: @empirepoduk Assistant Producer: Imogen Marriott Editor: Bruno Di Castri Social Producer: Charlie Johnson Producer: Anouska Lewis Executive Producer: Dom Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Empire with me Anita Arnden and me, William Derrimple. And joining us for the next episode is the historian who has probably done more than anyone else to put 1066 back in the hands of general readers. The great Mark Morris, author of the Anglo-Saxons and the Norman Conquest, but also biographer of later English kings like King John and Edward I. Mark, welcome to Empire. Very nice to meet you. Thank you very much for inviting me. Mark, you know, with all the huge crowds going to see it, for those who think they're looking at a gospel truth account of what happened in 1066, you would sound a note of caution, wouldn't you? Yes. I think most people would realize they're being told one version of a story, you know, any historical sources to some extent propaganda with a small P. I think the thing with the biotapestry that people can run away with the idea of if they are not corrected is that this is our only source.

or perhaps even the most important source for 1066, when it is just one of dozens of sources. The biotapestry has certain obvious strengths, most obviously. It's a pictorial source without compare. So the biotapestry gives us loads of stuff, incidental stuff, for the most part, that other sources, written sources do not. So it tells us about haircuts and clothes and facial hair, you know, in some sense, quite peripheral things, but it's still nice to have them. Moustaches? Moustaches. Whether William had a moustache or Howard had a moustache.

this crucial information. But it is absolutely unique in that it gives us a visual window onto that lost world. But at the same time, we have lots of other very rich written sources, biographies of the Godwinsons, a biography of William the Conqueror, year by year, blow by blow accounts of the action written by well-informed monks. So biotapstery, hugely important, but only one source for this crucial period. Now, Mark, you just mentioned there the name Godwinson. And this is going to be one of the crucial elements of the story today.

Tell us who Godwin was and who his sons were. Godwin, he sort of comes from nowhere at the start of the 11th century. So he is, we don't know for certain who his father was. So he starts his career as a powerful fane, which is to say the century or so later you'd be calling him a knight. Pre-conquest, he's a fain. So he's a powerful landowner, but not of the highest rank, sort of middling ranks. And by dint of serving King Knut, who is the chap who invades England 50 years before the Norman conquest in 1016, he rises to the very top ranks of English society. So he's made Earl of Wessex, which basically means he's in charge of what had been the former kingdom of Wessex.

And he's Knut's right-hand man. So King Knut, once he's taken over in 1016, he soon after becomes King of Denmark and then he's invading other Scandinavian countries. So he has a Scandinavian empire to attend to. And a lot of the time, he's not in England. So he needs a regent, if you like, to rule England for him. And that man is Godwin. And does he side with the Viking element of Knoot's entourage, or is he sympathetic to the English? I think in order to get on with Knoot, you have to be sympathetic to the Scandinavian side of things.

So whilst, you know, we're in the main text that we have about Godwin and his sons, in the background. He comes across his entirely sympathetic and a sort of champion of English liberty in English causes. If you wanted to put it in very anti-Godwin terms, to begin with, he is a Scandinavian collaborator. So he's someone who, after Knewt takes over, left, right and centre, people are having their heads chopped off for not collaborating with Knew. But Godwin in advance has been on Knewt's side. So he's, if you like, you know, more sympathetically, he sees which ways the wind is blowing after sort of 20 years of Viking assaults on England. He sees the the House of Wessex is running out of steam and credibility,

and so he sides with the winners. I've got two questions. But the first is that, you know, in television representations of this period, it is represented as being a really fractious relationship between father and son. You know, Godwin was a, you know, sort of bone-crunching, lushe character, and his son was slightly embarrassed by him. I mean, is that based in anything that's real? And then I have another question.

When you say television representations as if there are many competing for our attention, you're talking about King and Conquer, last year's King and Conqueror. I didn't make it past episode one of that. I liked it. Did you? Oh, really? Did it annoy your brain? Is that why you couldn't go further with it? Yes, it was, yes, it was like being punched in the face for about an hour.

So no, I didn't get past episode one, but that was enough to make me throw my hands up in despair. No, I mean, the thing is, most of what we know, if not. everything, what we know about the Godwins, is based on a tract written in 1065, 1066, so the very end of Anglo-Saxon England, it's interrupted this tract by the conquest. But it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a life of Edward, the Godwin, the confessor. It's, it's, it's called the life of King Edward who rests at Westminster. But I'll be referring to it a lot if this is the road we're going there. And it starts off as a justification for the Godwins taking over England. So Godwin himself is

portrayed as the Pater Familias, like the father of the nation, if you like. He is the embodiment of Englishness and, you know, standing up for England. And so he's heroic. And then his sons are even more heroic. And of the sons who that tract is interested in, there's Tostig, who is a younger brother, who's very heroic. And then there's Harold, who we'll get onto, who is basically a superhero. And we're going to get into all of that. But, okay, so you've ruled out the primacy of King and Conquest, Fine. What about the kind of history books that kids are taught? Because, you know, these hands are bleeding from making Motten Bailey castles. But in teaching children at school, it is always suggested that the Normans came in 1066, like some kind of alien invasion. You know, like the mothership comes and beams them down. And there are no Normans in England until that point in time. Is that right? It's not strictly true. I mean, I say as a general point there, in my experience of going into schools and looking at books written for children, they are done extremely well and conscientiously and they're up to speed with all the latest research. So, you know, unlike people who have to churn out screenplays, BBC. It's drama. You have dramatic licence. But goodness me, there was a lot. Anyway, back to the Normans arriving in their spaceships. They are, as I'm sure we'll emphasise, there are huge differences between the way the Anglo-C Saxons or the English did things and the way the Normans did things. But there is a, there is

contact between these two societies, of course, prior to 1066, not least because they're only 60 miles of water apart. And the main point of contact is that when Canute takes over, or rather when the Vikings take over in the mid-10-10-15, 10-15, we have a chat called Edward at the time, later Edward the Confessor, one of the younger sons of Ethelred the Unready. They've been kings since forever. And he and his younger siblings end up in exile in Normandy. And his mum is Norman. And his mum, a very important point. Thank you for reminding me. Yes. So Ethelred the Unready had been married twice as the point. He'd been married once to an English woman called Elf Kifu, who's very nondescript, Elfifu, to pronounce it properly. But nonetheless, they have six

sons, that first marriage. And he marries again to a Norman woman, the sister of the Duke of Normandy called Emma of Normandy. And she gives Ethelred more children to. sons and a daughter, they survive the Danish takeover by fleeing to Normandy. So Edward, who will eventually become King of England in 1042 when Knute's sons die out, Edward spends a quarter of a century in Norman exile, which means that when he comes to England to become king in 1041, 1042, he is effectively a Frankish prince, all his adult life, and he's now well into middle age. he's only known Francia, Normandy. And, of course, when he arrives in England,

sorry to round that point off, he brings with him friends, attendants, you know, a cohort of people who are then his close advisers as King of England. So whilst he is taking advice from the Godwins and he is, well, I'm sure we'll come on to, fraternising very closely with the Godwin family, his background, his upbringing,

and his tight inner circle are from the continent. But, Mark, what I suppose I'm trying to get out is the idea that it isn't a sort of of two worlds which have never met before. Emma of Normandy is already in the court. The rebuilding of Westminster Abbey has done, it's always said copying Jumiers, is that true? Yes, that's true.

But, I mean, with questions about the Norman conquest, you know, since they've been, since, you know, teachers have been setting them as essay questions for students, the question is always, how much was their actual change and how much stayed the same? And these arguments are kind of generational,

and they tend to go, you know, revisionist, counter revisionist, I'm quite strongly on the side of it was an enormous amount of change, probably the greatest change that England ever experiences so far to date. But that said, you know, if you're going to take, you know, I know it's a reductio ad absurdum, but if you're going to say, was it comparable to an alien invasion? No, clearly. They're human beings. They're Christians. They have the same kinds of, you know, technology attitude. But in lots of very crucial ways, which is why it causes so much change down the line, they are quite different for societies.

that are so close together. Okay. Well, I mean, ad absurdium is what we do here on Empire. But can we talk about Edward for a bit longer? Because in the tapestry, you know, he's the man of the big hands. You know, he's got very, very long, freakishly long fingers. And a good beard, too. And a very good beard.

I think he's the, I'm not the only beard, but he's the only main character that's got a beard. Right. Okay. Well, thank you. That's also very important. Yeah. But he is, I mean, by and large, a sort of a blank space in the middle of the story.

You know, he's the confess. We're told he's, you know, very close to God, almost saintly. But there must be more, and you must know it. So tell us more about Edward. I know a bit. I mean, again, in terms of the tapestry, it's not his story. And he's the person who sort of sets the ball rolling. The story of the tapestry is Harold's story.

We'll come on to him. But that's the parable of Harold, the downfall of Harold. Edward the Confessor, well, we've said he's born in England around the turn of the first millennium, a couple of years into the 11th century. In his early teens, he's whisked out the country and ends up in Normandy. And then he comes back in his early 40s to become king. So by background, he is effectively Norman slash French. In terms of his piety does seem to have been pretty pious.

Often sometimes people will say, oh, that's just something that was cooked up after the conquest. If he's pious and if he's almost a holy fool, then he's absolved of any responsibility for the cataclysm that is the conquest. There are plenty of pre-conquest sources that indicate that he, you know, to borrow Father Ted, like to know, looked to know prey. But he is not a holy fool or a simpleton. And if you look at the pre-conquest sources that aren't trying to spin him, he behaves like a kind of typical mid-11th century warrior king. So when there are Viking, not attempts at conquest, but when there are Scandinavia menaces to his kingdom in its early years, in the early years of his reign,

He is going down to Kent mustering a fleet at Sandwich and sailing out to sea with his, you know, huskals, with his, you know, retainers, to ward off Scandinavian attack. So he's, you know, in many respects, just, you know, a typical figure rather than a typical one as he's presented in later sources. So, and one follow up with that is that, you know, you already said he was close to the Godwins. But there is the story that his brother, Alfred, who comes back to England from exile in Normandy, is intercepted, followers massacred, Alfred himself so brutally blinded that he dies from the wounds. And the man widely blamed for doing that to Edward's brother, Edward the confessor's brother, is Godwin. Yeah. And as you say story, I mean, this is, we can vouch for this because this is told in all our pre-conquest sources, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which is perhaps the most. sober, although written with an agenda like all of them. Yeah, this actually happened. I mean,

it's immediately after Knewit's death, so Knewit dies in 1035. And there is a sense of, well, you know, who should we have? And there's clearly some support in England still. But, well, we should restore the old royal dynasty of Wessex that goes all the way back to Alfred the Great and beyond. But Knoot has sons. And so there is an extended period of time, six or seven years, where there is this succession dispute. And in the process of that dispute, yes, Edward's younger brother, Alfred does get bumped off and his tendons are either scalped or killed or sold into slavery. So this is the point, a very important point, is Edward has good reason to loathe Godwin. That's a promising plot sort of set up.

Well, yes. It's a foreshadowing, as I say, in dramas on the television. Before we dive into the whole Godwin story, can we just, you've written a book about the Agnes-Exters and you love them as much as I do. Can we put pay here and now to this notion that the Anglo-Saxons work sort of backward and more sort of hopeless than the Normans who are the future? Yeah. Anglo-Saxon England is in fact super sophisticated. The art is absolutely gorgeous. Yeah.

And it's well-run and well-administered. Yeah. I mean, this is now the accepted way of looking at Anglo-Saxon England since I don't know the past 60 years at least. It was once upon a time, you know, they were regarded as. you know, somehow behind the curve. Funny d'adies. Yes. But no, I suppose the important thing to say about Anglo-Saxon England is that it's

precociously united as kingdoms go. So lots of the rest of Europe, Frankia, for example, what we think of nowadays as France is fragmented into, you know, half a dozen smaller polities. And even those polities are quite fractured. Whereas England, you have one king, one coin that runs throughout the entire kingdom. And England is pretty much the same size as it is now, roughly speaking. and it is precociously kind of unified as well as being united. The question, Mark, whether Cumbria and Yorkshire are part of England at this point, are they?

Yorkshire would be Cumbria not. So if you think of England going up as far as at least the River Tees. And to some extent further, sort of, you know, Durham, but there is debatable land beyond Yorkshire and up as far as the Firth of Fourth. Okay. But yeah, anyway, so it's united. It has one king, one coin, one religion, etc. It has, it's subdivided into shires. The shires have boroughs or burrs.

So very, very unified, very, very rich. It's the only kingdom, only polity in Europe, which has a land-based tax with assessors going round, you know, able to sort of collect silver in the king's name. And so therefore very desirable, very, as a prize for people wanting to invade it. At the same time, when it comes to things like military technology, slightly behind the curve, or at least when they do military stuff, they're doing things in the Scandinavian way, not least because they've been fighting Scandinavians for 200 years and they've been conquered by the Scandinavians 50 years before 1066. So the revolutions that are happening on the more

chaotic continent like castles, cavalry, etc. Crossbows that we get onto, the Anglo-Saxons are probably regarding those as a bit kind of like, ah, you know, they're a bit newfangled, we don't need those yet. So it's up to speed in every single way, far more sophisticated in lots of ways like, as you say, art, but when it comes to military technology, slightly behind the curve. Well, I mean, let's go back to Edward the Confessor, because, you know, the great pickle of 1066, as I like to think of it. Good title for in my next book, actually. Yes, I know. I know. The great pickle. The great pickle of 1066 is, I mean, it's down to the fact that he doesn't have a child of his own. And so, you know, there's this almighty mess of who's going to inherit. Now,

there is a theory that he doesn't have a child because murdering Godwin, who's bumped off his little brother, you know, he doesn't want to have a Godwin grandson. He's married into this family and he doesn't want one of those. Is that true or is he just senile and old and can't have a child? Well, he's not senile and old when he's in his early 40s. I mean, God help me, if that's true, God help the pair of us chaps. But I suppose the crucial thing to say is, as I do believe, if you're going to run with that, this is quite an old-fashioned view because it's said at the time. And of course, historians like nothing better than saying, oh, well, if this source says this, but we can't believe that. So if the question is reduced to, Edward didn't have any kids, was that spiting his father-in-law, was that deliberate?

Or was it just unlucky in that, you know, some couples that don't have children, even today, infertility, you know, can, um, affect a marriage. I think given the fact that we have contemporary sources saying he was so pious, he didn't want to consummate his marriage with Godwin's daughter Edith. But I think given the fact that, as you've said, you've reminded me, Godwin murdered Edward's brother. Godwin, if not personally, was involved in the doing to death of his younger brother. And the problem is for Edward that Godwin is also instrumental in bringing Edward back as king in 1041. So that's the problem that Edward has is initially he's a stranger coming into this country he hasn't been in for 25 years and the most powerful man in the kingdom the kingmaker if you like is godwin so what's he going to do

he's got for the first several years of his reign you can see him making nice with godwin and the godwin's sons and indeed godwin's daughter because what he does either out of choice or is obliged to do is not only does he very quickly marry godwin's daughter edith he also promotes godwin's sons, the Godwinsons, Harold, Tostig, and the other ones, as an older one called Svein, who dies before his father. But they are all promoted to Earldoms. So the Godwin family is married to Edward and advanced to the highest rank of the aristocracy. Now, historians will differ on this. Some people say, well, these were just the most deserving candidates. Or this family has him over a barrel. He has no power block of his own. And as soon as he gets the ability

to go against the Godwins, he does so. In 1051, he turns against them, banishes them, sends them into exile, sends his wife, who he hasn't had any children with, to a nunnery. That's not a good sign. But to me, I mean, I personally hate it when historians, you know, play amateur psychologists, but that's exactly what I'm going to do. To me, it's a story that makes perfect sense as traditionally told, i.e., he's been driven into exile by Scandinavians, who have murdered all his older half-brothers, we haven't got time to mention, but Knewt does for all his older half-brothers. And then the chief collaborator with the Scandinavians, Godwin, he does for Edward's younger brother, full brother, Alfred. So he has no reason to make nice with

this chap other than this is the way I get back into power. And as soon as he's got the ability to turn the tables on him, he does. Now, so to me it makes psychologically, it makes perfect sense. And therefore, it would make sense for Edward to spite Godwin by saying, I'll marry your daughter, but you can't, you can't force me to procreate with her. And ultimately, you know, this is why the question is unknowable. It's like saying, did they have, you're saying, did they have sex or not? Well, very hard to determine, even at the space of a few months, never mind a millennium, you know. But there was certainly people at the time that thought that God, that Edward had preserved the, you know, the holiness of his reputation by not

sullying himself by having sex with this woman or any woman. And then in 1053, Godwin dies. And very quickly Harold steps into his shoes. Tell us all about that. Yeah, so Godwin shuffles off for 10 feet. He goes in quite a dramatic way. And this is even the most sober source, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which is telegraphic in its brevity, says he suffered some kind of seizure and couldn't walk or speak, something to that effect. And so he must have some kind of stroke. He's probably into his 50s at this point, if not older. And so he's seized by this and he dies a few days later. He's well provided, as we've already indicated, with sons. His eldest son, Svane, dies before him. But he's, so he's, he's, he's, he's, still got five younger sons, the most prominent of whom are Harold, who we've already mentioned,

who's the second oldest, now the oldest survivor, and tossed it. And as I say, the pro-Godwin source, the life of King Edward, at this point sort of says, but, you know, the whole nation, it says, was plunged into mourning at the death of their beloved father Godwin. But they were consoled and relieved and were to that effect by the fact they had Harold, who was even better. And, you know, there was a page after page of he was the most modest, he was the most valiant, he was the most truthful, he was the most noble, etc, etc. What do we know about Harold beyond that? He's Earl of East Anglia, this is prior to his father's dead. Now, he now steps into his father's shoes as Earl of Wessex.

I think probably you'll have to tease the detail out of me beyond that because I might be anticipating some of your later questions. Well, okay, we're going to take a break now and William and I are going to combine our teasing capabilities back with you after that. this break. Struggle between Britain and Russia. We assess Prime Minister. With high confidence, it was Russian. Holding the Russians accountable is World War III. They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people.

Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself, you want to play or not? You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing! We would need to understand the Polarie. policy context. All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today and disseminated into an operation order, or Fraggo. A Fragor that says to kill the president of Russia. Yes.

New from Goldhanger. Who is going to be able to pull this off? Goldor are you? Sergeant Tom McDuff, Duffy! An audio drama journey like no other. Men like Duffy, they are our most valuable weapons. devised as a technically rigorous geopolitical action thriller. We have two times friendly key. Where Britain plays its strongest hand. He's the best. Against its strongest foe.

Bear Hunt. Available now wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. Okay, so we have left you with a picture of the very capable Harold Godwinson. He's got two eyes at this point. That's very important to know. And he's got the House of Godwin at the height of its power. is however, doesn't take long, does it mark, for the House of Godwin to start ripping itself

apart? Well, just to sort of finesse that question a bit, the Godwin since go on to have even more power. So you could possibly argue that when Godwin dies, they have a bit of a wobble. But what happens in the next five or six years is they get even more earldoms. So they've been reduced to one when Godwin dies because Harold takes over from his father as Earl of Wessex. Tostig gets Northumbola. Tostig gets Northumbria, which is, you know, a third of the kingdom. But also we've got younger brothers, Leifoyne and Goerth, they get East Anglia, and they get another more nondescript earldom in the sort of southeast midlands.

So there is only one earldom, admittedly a big one, Mercia, which isn't in the hands of the Godwin family by the end of the 1050s. So England is close to becoming a one-party state under the Godwins. The part of your question that I wanted that we would get to is, yes, it does go rather badly wrong when we get into the 1060s. when the two eldest brothers fall out. So this is, not the two elders, but the eldest one, Harold, and we're not sure what the running order is, but one of his younger brothers, Tostig, the Earl of Northumbria, have a huge spat. And it's because there is a rebellion in Northumbria.

In 1065, Northumbria erupts. And although, again, our pro-godwin sources say, Tostig had been governing it very vigorously, and it ponds all the blame, sort of by implication on the Northumbrians. Even the pro-godwin source says Tostick, perhaps a little bit too zealous when it comes to dealing with brigands. He's clearly tried to rule Northumbria with an iron rod and it massively backfires.

And he, just let's not forget, is a southerner. He's sent up to a world that is much more Viking. It's the ex-day law. I do say at some point in my book, the only thing that's Scandinavian about Tostick is his name. Okay, so he's got Scandinavian-leaning parents. In fact, his mother is Scandinavian. He's got a pro-Sandinavian father in Godwin, but he's a southerner.

And he comes up, and he basically, if you want to, again, be sympathetic, he tries to rule the north in a sort of, in a way that a southerner would, you know, expecting it to behave like the South, which it doesn't. So he ends up sort of like, you know, murdering people, and they end up murdering his people. So he gets very bloody very quickly. And in 1065, the North erupts, and you can see it as a fairly well-coordinated anti-Godwin alliance,

because the Godwins have gone into Wales in the early 1060s, the Welsh joined the Northumbrian rebels. the son of the old Earl of Mercia, now the new Earl of Mercia, we don't need to get into this detail, but the Earls of Mercia, the family of the Earls of Mercia, back the rebels, and the rebels make one of those sons, Moore Carr, who is a Mercian, they say, well, we'll have him as our new Earl of Northumbria.

Having had this one party state in the 1050s, in the mid-1060s, there is an anti-Godwin pushback, which sets brother against brother. Because when these, and this is a really serious big rebellion, So they come south, they take York, and then they move into the Midlands. And they're far down south as Nottingham and Oxford. And they are doing what armies do in this period is that they're taking people in slaves and leading them away roped and chained back to the north in order to live lives of slaves.

So it's all very, very violent, bloody stuff. And Harold seems to decide that the only way his family is going to survive this onslaught is to cut a deal with this anti-Godwin alliance. And what they want is they want shot of not tostic. And what Harold obliging does say, well, you know, have to strike some kind of peace. And Tostick is clearly furious. Tostick clearly thinks... His brother has shafted him.

Yeah. My brother should have backed me and we should have gone to war with these guys. You know, there should have been a South versus North War or Godwin versus all their enemies war. Instead, Harold, perhaps with one eye on the future, because this is the autumn of 1065. At this point, Edward the confessor, is into his early 60s. Very rare to get kings living into their early 60s in this period and ailing not at all well. So, you know, it's a question of the balance of power for Harold. And he seems to decide that brotherhood be damned, I'm going to side with this other party and sends his brother into exile.

We should quickly say that before he goes, he is mentioned on my favourite sundial, which we've talked about with Eleanor before, the Kirkdale Sundale, where Orm's son of Gamble rebuilds the sweet little church of Kirkdale. one of my favourite valleys in Yorkshire. And this is the last thing before he gets sent into exile, isn't it? I'm afraid I haven't seen that, Sondola. I have heard of it. Oh, it's the most beautiful little valley just below the North Yorkshire Wars. Well worth of visit. You really do feel yourself catapulted back in Douglas Saxon England.

It's my sort of image of what Douglas Saxon would be. Lovely. We've talked about also the men of the Godwin family quite a lot. The women often get left out. Are they worth talking about? What are they up to? Tell me. Absolutely.

Absolutely. And I'd just like to say in my defence, had you asked me about them, I would have talked about them until you physically stopped me. Okay. But I'm glad you have now. The glory is yours, Mark. Yes, okay. So one of them, we didn't mention much about it, is Edward the confessor's mother, Emma of Normandy. Because, I mean, she has a tract written about her, justifying her behaviour in the 1030s. The other thing to say is, in terms of the Godwins, I've already said, Edward is married to Godwin's daughter. I think there may be more than one daughter,

but she's the only one that's called it only prominence because she, of course, becomes Queen of England by Dint of marrying Edward the Confessor. She is the person who commissions that very pro-godwin source, the life of King Edward. And the reason she probably commissions it prior to the conquest is to justify the thing I just got up to, which is the impending Godwin takeover.

So to recap, Edward the Confessor, very old, into his 60s, ailing, no kids, okay? and not just no kids, but the rest of his family's been wiped out in the last 50 years. His older brothers, his half-brothers have been killed by Knew, his full brother been done in by the Godwins. There's this desperate search in the 1050s to find other members of the House of Wessex who was scattered to the four winds across Europe 50 years earlier. That gives him a great nephew who might be a potential heir. But to take it back to Edith, Edith is commissioning this tract, this pro-godwin tract,

almost certainly to justify her family's takeover when Edward finally dies. Because, you know, why else is she bigging up these men as, you know, supermen who are noble and born to rule? Edith herself emerges very, very well from that tract. So she has, again, several pages saying as how accomplished she was. Of course, the sort of things that you might take with a pinch of sort, she was so beautiful and graceful, et cetera. But she's very well educated. She spoke three or four languages. She was the one, and this is where it gets quite telling,

she was the one we're told who manages the sort of ceremonial of courts, and she was the one dressing Edward. And he might really have preferred drabber clothes, but she was always kind of kitting him out in cloth of gold and all his finery. And there's a sense of even though this is what Edith wanted to say, that her hired pen is saying she was the one who was stage managing this show. Once the Godwins have forcibly returned from exile and more or less put Edward back in his box,

It's Tostig and Harold, who are governing the kingdom on Edward's behalf. And Edith, who's kind of keeping a watchful eye over him at court and making sure he's well presented. But he is, at least in my reading of it, and I'm not alone in this, is Edward is really a sort of almost reduced to a cipher or a puppet ruler in the last decade of his reign. It's the Godwins who are running the show, and he is kind of giving the nod to things. He's allowed to appoint a bishop once in a while or consecrate a new, or be part of a privy. Yeah, yeah, that sort of thing. He can do the pious stuff, but when it comes to the important stuff like going to war with Wales, he doesn't get a mention in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. It's like it's the story of Harold and Tostick. So this is the situation when Edward the Confessor finally does die at the start of January 1066. And he is buried in his new Abbey Churchill, Westminster, consecrated only days before. And this is a scene that we see very clearly in the Bay of Tapestry. There he is being laid out ready for his burial. and within a day, Harold is crowned king. Which I think, again, I go to town on this somewhere in my book,

but I think is an inherently suspicious thing. Wouldn't be within a year or so, because what they do in France is you are not considered king until the holy oil they pour on your head, the unction or the act of unction. The holy oil is poured on your head during your coronation, and that is what makes you king. In Anglo-Saxon, England, that wasn't considered to be the case.

You are king in Anglo-Saxon in England the minute the nobles say you're king. So you're sworn in. And so, you know, in the case of Edward, Edward the confessor himself is a great example of this point. So his predecessor half-brother, half the connute, dies in June 1042. And we're told by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Edward was sworn in immediately. But Edward is not crowned until Easter. Edward the confessor waits nine months until he has his car. Presumably because as a pious chap, he wants to be crowned on the holiest day of the Christian calendar, Easter Sunday.

What happens in Harold's case? So that's the normal way of doing things in England. Coronation is just confirmation. Do it whenever you like. What Harold does, as as you said, Edward the confessor dies on the 5th of January. He's buried on the 6th of January. And that same day, Harold is crowned. Now, that is what you do if you have no claim to the throne whatsoever. So what's he got going for him? He's very, very powerful. He's the head of the most powerful family in England. Does he have a blood claim?

No. He is the brother-in-law of the dead king. No blood claim whatsoever. They are a part of a new family, the Godwins. They're incredibly powerful, but they have risen from dust in the space of two generations. No blood claim. The other thing you can say is, I was nominated. The king in his dying moments, which again, we see on the biotapestry and we read about in other sources,

is Edward in his dying moments changes his mind. We haven't actually talked about that, but I'm sure we'll get back to it. But Edward in his dying moments is supposed to have nominated Harold. So you can say he was nominated, and various sources say that. And the thing to do, if you still think that's still a bit shaky, is you say, well, I've been crowned and an anointed now. You can't, there's a line in Shakespeare, like, you know,

not all the water in the rude sea or something can wash away the oil from an anointed king. So, yeah, that to me is inherently suspicious and suggests to me that, you know, there were plenty of people saying, well, what about the King's great nephew? You know, what about young Edgar Etheling here? Surely he has the best blood claim and people like, schum, shum, stum, you know, don't upset Harold. Okay, so don't upset Harold. Harold's unseemly haste to grab the crowd. There is also the other matter, and we ought to do this as a flashback, because we haven't done this chronologically. did Harold promise William make an oath to William sometime before, that he would not do this?

This is the story of the biotapestry. This is where the tapestry comes into its own. And there are other written sources, but the tapestry is a kind of powerful outboard motor for this part of the story. So a year or so, in 1065, probably the summer before the rebellion in the north kicks off, which sets the Godwin family at Loggerheads, Harold goes to see. William or goes to the continent and ends up in William's power. And the problem here is that the sources at the time say different things and people have been reinterpreting those sources for the past 900 odd years. So I'll just give you my reading of it. I go with Eadma of Canterbury, who's

incredibly well informed on this, lots of very convincing specific detail in his account. He says that Harold went to get the hostages back. And this again, this takes us even further back in time. So when the god, when the godwins were sent into exile in 1051, William the conqueror, This is where he really enters the story, as fans of King and Conqueror will recall. He crosses the channel in 1051 and has some kind of conversation with Edward the Confessor. This is where we're told, by later sources, Edward promises him the English succession, William. At that point, William has acquired two of the younger Godwinsons as hostages. One is a son, Wolfriff or Wolf something, and the other one is Hakon, one of his nephews.

But the point is, William has two Godwin hostages. Now, if Harold is indeed thinking about taking the throne in 1065, it's a source of enormous shame for a man this powerful, who's got the country otherwise wrapped up around his finger, that two of his close kinsmen are being held hostage by a foreign duke. And one of the things we're told that incidentally, in the source is describing his trip to see William, is that he goes laden with treasure and jewels and things.

So I think Harold goes thinking, I will buy this guy out. I will just say, I want my kinsman back, you're not getting the crown, but you can have all the money you can eat type thing. And what William does is he sort of turns it to his own advantage. He gives him one, he doesn't give him his brother back, he gives him his nephew back,

and he says, I want you to back me. We're agreed now, right, that when Edward dies, I will become king and you will back me. And there's a strong possibility into debt in all the sources, including the tapestry, that this oath is obtained under duress. This we see in great detail in the tapestry. I mean, this is many, many panels.

It's the whole point of the tapestry. I mean, if you've got 10 seconds, I mean, the point of the tapestry is Harold is a great man. We begin with Harold talking to Edmund and then it's the story of Harold's trip to Normandy. And we see him hawking, and we do all manner of stuff. We are very importantly, when he goes to,

into Brittany on the Brittany campaign, we see him heroically rescuing Normans from the quick sounds of the River Coonnell. Pulling them up. Yeah, hooking them up. So he is like a superman character. He is, it's a kind of, it's a Shakespearean-star tragedy. He's like Macbeth.

He's noble and everything at the start, but then, you know, fate dangles the thing in front of him, you two could be king. And the crucial thing in the middle of the tapestry is, where does he swear in the tapestry's version of fence? He swears on the relics of Bayeer Cathedral. It's in Bayeur. Not in no other source, but it's in Bayeer. And the implication is, and then he goes on to perjure himself.

He goes home as soon as ever the confessor dies in the subsequent scene, he assumes the kingship, thus demonstrating the enormous folly of, you know, swearing an oath on the relics, the powerful relics of Bio Cathedral, because God then brings him down to sort of skip to the end of the story, which we'll get to. So the Bayotapestry is the downfall of Earl Harold. That's the story. And it's, I guess, no coincidence, and it's William's brother, who is the bishop of Beio. Is that right? Odo. Odo. Odo. And it is, it will be Odo eventually who commissions this piece of beautiful propaganda as well. Is the best theory as far as I'm concerned.

I mean, you know, having seen the tapestry, nothing about it can be said for certain. But in terms of inferring things from its content and its style and whatnot and where it ends up, it's a story commissioned by Odo or at least for Odo, telling the story of the downfall of this great Anglo-Saxonel. And the false oath at Bayo, I mean, front and centre. Yeah, absolutely, right in the centre.

So it seems to be made for a local audience in Bayo. So like in a good drama, set up William the Conqueror. We've set up the Godwins. But there's another player who pops up at this point. We haven't mentioned him yet. This is Harold Sigurdson or Harold Hadrado. Tell us about him because he suddenly enters the picture stage left quite unexpectedly with Tostig. He does, but I mean, I'm just sort of thinking here in terms of like script coordinator. Lots of people will say, Oh, 1066, the year of three battles, the year of three kings, three contenders or whatever, as if, and there were dramas made about this some years ago, as if as soon as Edward the Confessor dies, everybody knew that there was going to be people coming at this from all angles. So William the Conqueror, they knew about. You know, William of Normandy, he's going to have a pop, surely. So we're going to go with Harold. But there's another Scandinavian Harold, Harold Hardrador, as you say, King of Noid. And he might invade. No evidence for that whatsoever at the start of 1066. No source mentions Hardrada until the autumn of that year.

So you say comes crashing out of left field, absolutely, but not until the end of August. Tell us who he is, Mark, though, because he has an extraordinary backstory. He does, and some of it may well be true. Because the thing about Harold Hardrida is, who is he? He is the king of Norway, and he's been king of Norway since the 1040s. And the reason I can't remember all of his backstory is because the fullest sources for it are written. in the early 13th century. That's your period, Mark.

It is. But I tend, when I do 13th century stuff, I like to deal with 13th century administrative sources, not 13th century sources that are talking about events 150 years earlier. Because, you know, however well remembered those sagas are as they're passed down from one generation to the next, they are very greatly improved in the telling. And where you can check that 13th century narrative

against the 11th century record, almost always it's contradicted by the contemporary record. So what we know about, in very broad terms, you can say, yes, well, he was born towards the start of the 11th century, and this is just from memory from those sagas. He has great adventures serving in the Byzantine court, the court of the emperors in the east. He fights in Sicily and Anatolia. Yeah, he fights all over the Mediterranean. Of course, he's one, he's amassing money and he's also amassing reputation as this Viking

Vahire at large. So he brings all this experience and wealth back and makes himself king of Norway in the mid-1040s. And then he's sort of, you know, throwing his way around in Scandinavia. What seems to bring him into the picture is, as Williams already said, the disgruntled Earl Tostig, former Earl of Northumbria, the chap who was exiled in the autumn of 1065. And he has been trotting round, if not all of Europe, then the bits that are adjacent to Britain thinking who's going to help me get back into power? Who's going to help me bring down my bastard brother, you know, who's driven me into exile?

And so, you know, by some accounts, you know, some of them later, but some people think he goes to see William in the first instance. Other people, you know, think he goes to see the King of Denmark. But what he the person he certainly gets into bed with, metaphorically speaking, is Harold Hardrada, king of Norway. And in the sagas, the very detailed but unreliable or not necessarily reliable sagas that have. He is the pebble that starts the avalanche. He is the person that puts the idea into the head of Hardrada that says, look at all everything you've accomplished. What better way to round off

your career than to take England? And with me at your side, because the English love me is the line he goes, it will be yours for the taking. He convinces Hardrada that there's sufficient sympathy, even hunger for a Scandinavian style takeover in England, that it will be absolutely a cakewalk. They'll just go in, take York, advance south and, you know, kick out my treacherous brother Harold. Mark, how far could we possibly believe that? Is it possible that in the north, at least, there are people who are still speaking some sort of Scandinavian tongue, at least alongside their other languages, who do yearn for the great days of the longships and that sort of thing? Or is it just Harold and Drad are coming to invade? But even if they do, I mean,

they'd be doing it for their Norwegian side and not for Tostick, who I think Mark's already said, they didn't think much of this southerner, this soft southerner who's, you know, sort of pushing us around in the north. They didn't like it. As I get older, I kind of think that most people, when they ask these things, just be like, whatever keeps me alive and mine alive, I don't care as long as I don't have to get slaughtered in a battle, you know. And I think, yes, there are probably people that if they don't think of themselves, if they're not Norse speaking, their father or their grandfather or the grandmother might have been Norse speaking. But there's certainly, the crucial thing to say is they're very, very lightly tied to southern England.

Okay. So in terms of like being ruled by Edward the Confessor, Edward the Confessor, I think goes to York once. I'm struggling to remember now. But, you know, if you look at the itinerary of these kings, who were originally, of course, kings of Wessex. know, kings of, say, southern England, they never seen in the north. The only time that the people in that part of the world ever get to see the king is his face on a coin, you know, on a silver penny. And I think that's kind of the way they like it.

The way they like it is, well, yeah, we have an Aaldeman or we have an Earl of York. And he's notionally appointed by the King of England. But we get on with our own business. And I think this is why they kicked against Toste, because he was trying to pull them more tightly into, you know, southern England. Okay. So I think, in terms of hardrada, I think, you know, if they just said, you know, well, you know, we'll let you do your own thing, you know, you'll go back to the way it was,

possibly there would have been support, whether they actually embraced the idea of more blood and thunder from this Viking legend. I suspect most people would have to say, you're all right, thank you very much. Yeah, yeah. We're busy doing other things. Look, you know, the Norwegians do land in Yorkshire with Tostig. and they do defeat the Northern Earls, Edwin and Morkar at Fulford, on the 20th of September. York opens its gates.

Now, this is a moment of existential threat for Harold. And so his response is one of the great forced marches in English history. He's in London. He gathers whatever he can, covers the best part of 200 miles and a handful of days, which is an extraordinary feed. Doesn't even stop at the Watford Gat services. No, and that's important because, you know, These men are getting tired. On the 25th September he appears at Stanford Bridge,

a place the Norwegian army did not believe he could reach. Take us to Stamford Bridge and what happens next. Okay. Well, just to sort of just go over very quickly the ground you've just covered in a slightly more detail. This is, again, part of my point that the Norwegian invasion was not expected. Because if it was, why is Harold in the South? When you look at Harold's preparations, and his preparations begin in May, 1066, when he sort of, you know, he sees that things are starting to move on the continent.

He arrays all his army and all his fleet along the South Coast. And he himself is on the Isle of Wight and they wait there from one week to the next month after month until they get to early September when he disbands that force because he can't keep it together any longer. But all of his manpower, all of his naval power is concentrated on the South Coast in anticipation of a Norman invasion. As far as we're aware, nothing is devoted to the North. And then having disbanded that army because we're told,

he can't keep it together any longer and he's hoping that, you know, the prevailing winds will keep the Normans away, etc. And it's getting too late in the season, blah, blah, blah. He's told within days of having made that decision, you know, a second army that you didn't know about is my sort of bracketed thing, has invaded Yorkshire. So you're right. He rushes up. I don't think it's quite as legendary as later sources, more later interpretations make out. It depends how quickly he gets troops together. But he dispans that army on the 8th of September. And as you say, Stanford Bridges Fort on the 25th. So he's got about 10 days. And it's unclear from the sources whether he's actually marching an army or putting an army together on the hoof as he goes.

So having people meet him at various points and sending out riders to round up more men. The crucial thing that is clear from the sources is that he moves sufficiently fast that he surprises his brother and Hardrada, the Norwegian army, who have camped themselves. So as you say, they took York immediately after their landing. They made some kind of kind of deal with the citizens of York that, okay, you're our guys now, and in a few days time we march south. But they weren't anticipating that Harry would have rushed up that fast. And we should just quickly remind people that until very recently, York had been a Viking capital, the people like Eric Bloodax and all these other guys have been there.

Admittedly, Eric Bloodax, he dies, like 10, 954. So it's a bit like you say, of course, the Morris's, until quite recently, had been Irishmen. It's like, well, my great, great grandfather came over in 1902 or something. You know, yes, people's identity. It's 100, 100 or more years. But I take your point. I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to trivialise it. It was just, you know.

But within memory had been a Viking kingdom. And there's every reason to believe that the language is quite different up there, that it's still very Scandinavian, that a lot of the people on the land of Scandinavian blood. I'm entirely sympathetic to your point, William, that there was. He's sympathetic, but he doesn't believe it. No, no, no. I just, when people say, until.

recently and it's 110 years. And I'm sympathetic to your chronology. Can I just say I'm very sympathetic to your put down? I was very funny. Okay. In the nicest possible way, that's not within living memory. But whether the citizens of you have their arms twisted or broken off to tell you're fighting with us now or whether they rush to him like a Scandinavian North speaking

savior, our sources do not divulge. But anyway, the point is Harold Godwinson, the king of England, he rushes up and catches them unawares, is clear from all the sources. And they have in the meantime, the Scandinavians, the Norwegians, they have left York to go to Stanford Bridge, as you say, which is about seven miles to the northeast of York. For reasons that are not entirely clear, probably to sort of take oaths of loyalty from the surrounding landowners. But they have left themselves very exposed. brilliantly we have a this is said by the the north saga king harold saga but it's confirmed it's one of those happy occasions where it's confirmed by a contemporary source it was a hot day probably a day like now in in in september in england in 20 plus degrees and they because it was hot they decided not to wear their

armour so they're not wearing their male shirts and they're only going to sort of take the they take the oaths of loyalty from these you know local bigwigs so why would they need their armour they just go with their swords and what and when harold discovers this he does this is robbery where he's doing a forced march. He gets his army up really early, marches them from Tadcaster all the way through York, straight out to Stamford Bridge, and catches them unawares, falls upon them, and wins a famous victory. I mean, I can't go into much more detail than that, because again, saga sources, page after page after page about what happened, contemporary sources, one paragraph. And all we're told is it's incredibly bloody. And the

Vikings have the worse of it by far. Acts against axe. Acts against axe and it's the life of King Edward that says something like the Humber, you know, filled with Viking gore or something, the ooze awash with, you know, awash red. The ooze oozed with blood. Ouse is red, yes, something like that. But the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, I think it says, it says that they arrived in, I can't remember the precise number, it's, say, 240 ships, and they went home with only 60. Some kind of ratio like that. So it's a very sanguinary battle, especially for the Vikings, but almost it has to be that, you know, cannot be like Shakespeare's Henry's.

the fifth, whether they say how many Englishmen died but five and 20, you know, it has to be that thousands of Englishmen also fell in that conflict. And that takes us up, that is the 25th of September. Now, to anticipate your next question. Three days later. Yes. So what happens, what's been going on in Normandy, Mark? Meanwhile, that's San Valé Silsong. Yes. So William has spent all that time, he's spent the entire summer, getting his army together and of course his fleet, he's got to get them across the channel, but building boats, borrowing boats, buying boats,

you know, and putting together not just this huge army, but an armada as well. And the wind has been against him. He's been wanting to sail since at least late August, and the wind has been blowing in the wrong direction. And this, again, historians will say, well, that's just any old excuse.

If you do as much medieval history as I have, you know that people are constantly frustrated and delayed, even really, really important news, cannot get across the channel or the Irish sea for weeks on end if the wind is blowing against you or if it's just too wintry to say it. And that's just if you know we need to get a messenger across. If you're trying to get an army across, you have to wait until, you know, you're not going to get smashed to pieces. So it gets to late September and suddenly round about the time that the Battle of Stamford Bridges for, or a day or so later, the wind suddenly, fortuitously from William's point of view,

changes direction. And there's a wonderful source called The Song of the Battle of Hastings, the Carmen, which it's not very well informed on lots of things, but it seems to have immensely well-informed detail on the point of embarkation. And it talks about how the knights suddenly run to the ships and all the infantry run to the mass like a flock of, you know, seabirds suddenly going to their nests. And all the, all the wine and the food suddenly being, you know, put on board. as again, as you see on the tapestry. The tapestry is fantastic at this. It's really into the logistics, building the ships,

loading the wine, little special carts full of wine that you can see going and go. Yeah, sort of the ropes and the way in which buckets are carried up. It's marvelous. And it doesn't. It's very good on the detail of the tapestry, but as I say, the Carmen, the song gives the absolute, it's absolute light motif at this point is the frantic nature of it.

It's absolutely kind of like, we're on. You know, we've been waiting for a month. and what if the wind changes back the other way? So all of a sudden it's go, go, go, go, go. So they sail across the channel on the night of the 27th, 28th of September and arrive on the coast of Sussex at a place called Pevensey, again, shown on the tapestry, on the morning of the 28th of September. If you think about the time it takes news to travel, okay,

so you can get across the channel in 24 hours, but you can't get from Pevensey to York in a few hours. So if you think about it, Harold breaks off his defences. He lets his army go in early September. Harold dispans his army in early September. William knows that a day or so later. Okay, so William knows that the South Coast is undefended, which is why he's so desperate to get across the channel and so incredibly frustrated that the wind is against him. Harold goes north and fights the Battle of Stamford Bridge on the 25th. William sets sail two days later. William cannot know which Harold

he's going to fight. That's the really interesting bit. He does not know the outcome of that clash. He won't know until a few days after he's landed on the 27th, 28th, probably, you know, third, fifth, fourth, fifth of October, someone, some sympathetic messenger comes to him and says, you should know that Harold Goldbenson has won that clash in the north and is advancing south to confront you, you know? So if you're having second thoughts about this, now's a good time to get back on your boats. But it's that moment of uncertainty that in the minds of all these protagonists who we can kind of assume, oh, they all knew what was going on. on. William set sail into the unknown, not knowing which Harold is going to have to fight.

Which I think is a really good point to leave it. Mark, you're going to come back with us when we tell the story of the longest day, the death of a king, the destruction of an entire ruling class. There's a lot to talk about. Thanks very much for being with us. Till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnan. And goodbye from me, William Duremberg. And it's goodbye from me, Mark Morris. Thank you.