Gone Medieval - Bayeux Tapestry

Episode Date: October 16, 2021

The Bayeux Tapestry is one of the world’s most prominent pieces of medieval art. Depicting the 11th-century invasion and occupation of England, the tapestry tells a story through detailed embroidery. But what can we learn about the Norman Conquest and the people being it through this skilful art? In this episode, Matt is joined by David Musgrove. David helps us explore the lavish narrative behind the embroidery and the circumstances behind it.David Musgrove is the co-author of The Story of The Bayeux Tapestry: Unravelling the Norman Conquest, published by Thames and Hudson Ltd. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval from History Hit. I'm Matt Lewis. The Battle of Hastings is seen as one of those seismic moments in history, particularly in England, though its impact was felt much more widely over the centuries that followed too. One of the most charismatic sources of the medieval period is the Bayer Tapestry, a set of images that tell the story of William I's

Conquest of England. I'm delighted to be joined today by Dave Musgrove, whose new book, The Story of the Bayer Tapestry, Unravelling the Norman Conquest, written along with Michael Lewis, who is no relation, takes a fresh look at this fascinating source. Thank you very much for joining us today, Dave. Hey, Matt, how you do? I'm fantastic, thank you. So what can you tell us, first off, about the Bayer Tapestry as an object? What do we know about when it's made and who it's made by. Right. Okay. So the first thing to say is we know very little about when it was made, why it was made, who made it, or where it was made. We can make educated guesses about all of that, but we don't actually know anything. What we do know is what it is like as a physical object now. We know it's

about 70 metres or 200 foot long. It's about half a meter wide or high, depending on how you look at it. It's composed of nine separate panels, which were stitched together. and its linen panels upon which woolen thread has been stitched into it. So it's not actually a tapestry in the technical definition of a tapestry is in fact an embroidery. The reason why it's called a tapestry goes back to the early 18th century when a French monk and antiquarian by the name of Bernard de Montfusson published a load of engravings of it. It was basically not really very well known at that point until he started doing some stuff

and he described it as a tapestry, and ever since then, people have called it a tapestry. But it ain't properly a tapestry, it's an embroidery. Probably too late for us to change it to the Bayer embroidery now. Well, people do say that it should be called the Canterbury embroidery, for reasons which we can come back to. But yeah, no, I think the Bayer Tapestry is the name that's stuck, and that's the one we should probably retain. And we know that it is in Bayer. It currently resides in Bayer, a lovely little town in Normandy, which has a very nice medieval cathedral, also famous for lots of World War II activity and is a great place to visit.

And right now you can go to the museum in Byr and you can wander around and you can see the tapestry there. Though there is a lot of conversation and one of the reasons why Michael Lewis and I wrote the book is that a few years ago, the idea of the tapestry being loaned to Britain where Britain was mooted. And that was essentially because the museum where the tapestry is stored is going to undergo restaurants. it's going to be changed, it's going to be redeveloped, basically. And so there will be an opportunity at some point in the next few years when the tapestry goes off display for it to be potentially moved. We can come back to that if you want to chat about the possibilities of that actually happening.

So we know where it is right now, and we know what it is like physically, and just to describe what it actually shows, it's kind of a free part thing. So you've got a central freeze, a central panel, which is a cartoon type. It shows the flow of the events leading up to the Battle of Hastings. So it starts in around 1064, and then there's a long prelude to the battle, and then the Battle of Hastings itself is shown in considerable detail. And then above and below this main cartoon freeze, there are borders, the upper and lower borders, and those borders.

There's sort of lots of curious animals in them, sort of natural animals and fantastical beasts, and there's also some sort of vignettes in there of scenes. Whether those scenes kind of relate to what's going on in the main action is much debated, but they add quite a lot of interest to what goes on. And then alongside that, there are some very sparse Latin inscriptions or titularly little captions that explain what's happening in the action. But they are very brief, very terse and quite enigmatic. They say things like Hick Harold Maray Navigavit

would mean something like Here Harold sailed the sea. So that's the level of detail you get. And there's quite a few of them, but they're very basic, and leave kind of a lot of room for understanding. And crucially, there's no dates given anywhere. It never says when things are happening, and it never says there's not, unfortunately, a little thing that says this tapestry was made by Bob.

There's nothing to accredit it either. So there's lots of stuff there that we don't know, but what we do know is the basic details about it. And there's been loads and loads of research on it, telling you, you know, that really has helped us to understand precisely what it is. It was actually only recently that they realized, that there was nine panels rather than eight. So there's been loads of research and lots of interesting research still to be carried out. So it's a very exciting document. In answer to the

questions about where it's made, so where it was made most scholars, not all scholars, but most scholars would say that it was made in Canterbury in Kent. That's my observation earlier, that it could be the Canterbury embroidery. The logic for that is that there are both stylistic and content-based similarities between what you see in the tapestry and what we know existed in illuminated manuscripts that we know were in the monastic libraries in Canterbury at the time. Documents such as the Utrecht Sultor, the old English hexatuc, and a document called Junius 11 as well. So stylistically, there are a lot of things that are very similar and there are actual scenes which appear to have kind of been taken from these manuscripts, like the old English Hesachshachuk.

is basically the biblical story, the early biblical story, and kind of being transposed and dropped into the biotapestry in a completely different environment. So you can kind of think, whoever created the tapestry had sight of these documents. And obviously they didn't have photocopies and things like that in the day. So that also suggests sort of geographical proximity as well. We also know that in England, the English seamstresses were well known.

They were famous for being very good at their art. And so there's a good case for saying that it was made in Canterbury. Other people say that's not true, and that is conjecture. that it's a theory. Added into that is the likely person who was responsible for it, the patron. Now, again, this is much discussed and debated. My view and my co-author's view, Michael's view, is that it was most likely Odo of Bayot. Now, Odo was William the First, William the Conqueror's half-brother. He was the bishop of Bayer, and after 1066, after the conquest, he soon became the Earl of Kent, where Canterbury is. He was an important man, but the tapestry

sort of shows him as considerably more important in the events of the conquest than the other written documents suggest. He appears in more prominent positions. He's kind of shown as a counsellor in advance of William's conquest. He's shown an important feast before the battle, and he's shown in the battle himself sort of encouraging the troops. He's actually named them. The other sources don't give him that much of a place in the story. So it kind of feels like he's being bigged up in this tapestry. There's some curious figures who appear in the tapestry, people by the names of Wadard, Churold and Vietal, who we don't really know who they are, but some historians have suggested that those people were actually retainers of

Odo, and so it's kind of like that's the reason why they get in there. So the arguments do get a little bit circular here, but if Odo was behind the tapestry, then, and he was in charge of Kent, Canterbury, then it kind of adds weight to the idea that it was made in Canterbury. So we've got probably made in Canterbury, probably made by English seamstresses, probably made under the direction or patronage of Bishop Odo. And in terms of when it was made, again, much dispute. Obviously, it needs to be made after 1066, though one thing that we haven't talked about is the end of the tapestry is missing, so we don't actually know at what point it finally concludes. But definitely made after 1066. Some people would say it was made like straight away after 1066. Others say it was

quite a long time afterwards. Our view is that it was made in the 1070s and actually it was made for the consecration of Bayeer Cathedral, so back to Odo, Odo being in charge of Bayer, and that was consecrated in 1077. So the view would be that was made to some point in the 1070s and it was made for display in the cathedral on the occasion of the consecration. But again, other people would have differing views on that and like I said, it's all theories. So it's perhaps meant as a bit of propaganda on Odo's behalf, as you say, it bigs up his part in what happened in 1066 and just before, and then he's having this perhaps installed his cathedral at Bayer when it's being consecrated, sorry, and so it's very much telling a version of the Norman conquest with Odo placed

much more front and centre than he was, which would kind of lend credibility to the idea that he was involved in commissioning or patronising it. But the Bayer Tapestry does tell a very particular story, which is unsurprisingly a Norman one. But what does it say about the lead-up to the Norman invasion? Does it seek to provide some kind of justification for William's actions in invading England? Yeah, so that's the key thing. I think a lot of people, you know, we've all seen the biotapstri. I'm sure all the listeners to your show will have seen the biotapstery or at least seen images of it. You can't write a book about the Norman conquest or about medieval history generally without using an image from the tapestry. And I think there's a sense that actually just shows

the Battle of Hastings, but it doesn't. It's only really the last third of the tapestry that's dedicated to the battle. The first two thirds are the run-up to it. I'll just super quickly summarize it. So it starts off in 1064. Like I said, there's no date, but we can work out that it must be around 1064. With the old King of England, Edward the Confessor, talking to Harold, Earl Harold, Harold Goddwinson, who at that time is leading Earl in England, the main man below the king. They're having some sort of conversation and then Harold goes off on a trip He goes down to a place called Bosom on the South Coast

And then he gets in a boat, crosses the channel And after some mishaps Ends up at the Court of Duke William in Normandy As an honoured guest or perhaps as a captive guest And then he goes on a military campaign with William To Brittany William's troops are basically attacking the Breton count there Harold is shown performing heroically

He's shown as a militarily powerful man. That campaign is a success. William's troops defeat the Bretons. William then gives Harold some arms, some arms and armour. Harold is then shown swearing an oath, and then Harold quickly legs it back to England. Then Edward the Confessor dies. His burial, his death is shown in Westminster Abbey.

Harold then quickly becomes king. William hears about this, assembles a fleet and an army, and then his finally his ships cross the channel, and at that point we then get to the battle itself. So we show all this stuff prior to the Battle of Hastings. In all of that, I've mentioned Harold quite a few times and maybe William not so many times. So certainly the first third or so is really it's all about Harold, it seems.

And then William comes in and then you kind of get this sort of dual story with Harold and William as the two guys. Harold is set up as a sort of a man of power, a man not to be dismissed, and William is also set up as a sort of a sort of militarily potent figure. But Harold is always sort of shown in the context of William. He's kind of a foil to him in a way. All the stuff that I've described to you, all those events, that's the very basics that are shown. And as I'm saying earlier, the tapestry is very enigmatic in what it tells us.

It doesn't tell us very much. So you are then left to interpret what those things are all about. So we don't know what Oath Harold actually swore to William, for instance. It doesn't say what he actually set. But all of that is essentially set up to picture Harold as a man who perjures himself, who goes against his word, and then that gives William the right to invade. And that whole period is showing a justification for William's eventual invasion fleet. So that's the sort of the context of what's happening there. And I guess we need to sort of drill into that a bit more to try and understand it. Yeah, I think particularly, as you say, it doesn't tell us what it is that Harold swears to William while he's in Normandy. It doesn't tell us what it is that Edward the

confessor says on his deathbed when he's presumably making some settlement of how he wants the country to be ruled after he's gone. And for a piece of, effectively, Norman propaganda, it's quite odd that they're not more specific about exactly what they're claiming that Harold swore to William and exactly what they're claiming William wanted to happen to the kingdom, because their whole assertion was that Edward the Confessor had left England to William the Conqueror and that Harold had gone over there and sworn to support William as King and then purged himself against that. But without explicitly telling us what those oaths were or what those conversations were, it surely leaves room for us to doubt what the Normans were trying to say.

I mean, that is one of the key things about the taffrey. The most excited things is just it's enigmaticness. It's the most enigmatic thing that you can imagine, to be honest. It's very strange that it isn't more candid about what's being shown. So as you said, the Oaf Scene. So the Oaf Scene is a really pivotal scene in the tapestry. And what you get is you get King Harold sort of contorting himself, physically contorting himself between two reliquary boxes, so two sacred boxes of relics. And he's sort of resting his arms across to touch these two reliquaries. And William is sat there watching on and like there's a lot of people watching on. Actually, that scene is sort of notable for eyes looking and a lot of pointing. And the tapestry is really good for pointing. If you're interested in

pointing, if you're a fan of pointing, it's really good. Is that the moments where it's telling us to make sure you look at this? This is an important bit. Exactly, exactly. And there's another thing is Anglo-Saxon art is big on hands. Hands are quite big and prominent in Anglo-Saxon art. So the hands are big and large and pointing. And you know that you need to be looking at stuff. And you can also follow the eyes of the characters. You know that you should be looking where they are looking and everyone's looking at Harold. So this oath, Actually, by the way, the tapestry says that the oath is made in Bayer, or at least it doesn't actually say that, but the Oaf Scene follows a scene in Bayer. So you kind of can assume that the Tapestry is telling you this Oaf was made in Bayer.

No other documentary sources say that. So that's another reason why we make that argument that it was made for the consecration of Bayer Cathedral. I should mention that earlier. So the other documentary sources would say that Harold was making an oath to support Williams' claim to the throne. William's claim to the throne is based on the fact that in 1051 Edward the Confessor was having a lot of trouble with the Godwin's, the Godwin family, Harold's father particularly. And apparently William may have gone over to England

and there may have been sort of an offer made by Edward the Confessor to William. Now, that's much contested and debated. But that's kind of where the logic of his claim goes. And so they would say, the other documentary sources would say that in this Overseen, in 1064, 1065, Harold is basically saying that he will support William claim to the throne. And when you look at the tapestry, you can kind of physically see the man is contorted. It looks as if he is, you know, being pulled in two directions in the tapestry. It looks as if he's really conflicted. So it's interesting. But the tapestry does not say anything about what

this oaf is. It just says he makes a sacred oath. And then, yeah, on the deathbed of Edward the confessor, again, you get this scene with the king dying and various characters around him. and other sources would have the king saying that Edward commends his wife, Edith, who was actually Harold's sister, and all the kingdom to Harold's protection, which is interesting. And it doesn't show that in the tapestry either. So the tapestry is basically fundamentally enigmatic. It doesn't get off the fence. It doesn't explain what's going on.

And that's very interesting. It sort of allows the viewer to take a view to make their own impressions of what it's showing. There are some theories that, like, the tapestry was designed. to have an interlocutor to someone explaining what was going on. So someone sort of using the captions as kind of bullet points, like a PowerPoint presentation saying, you know, this is like an Aid Memo. Well, the ones we've seen this, then I need to talk about this.

That's possible. Or it could be that it was designed to just allow space for both victorious Normans and defeated English to be able to look at the tapestry and kind of not have to feel like they were struggling to be part of the story, if you see what I mean. It's interesting that it depends, when you think the tapestry was made as to what sort of the political geography of England was at the time. There was a series of rebellions against William's rule. You've just written a fascinating feature

for BBC History magazine about Harold the Wake and his rebellions, which everyone should have a look at. And so like the balance of power and the Williams' attitude to his vanquished subjects sort of changes a bit over time. So it depends on how you think about. But yeah, so it basically allows the viewer to make their own view. But it also allows you to build up a sense that Harold is an important man and it's by his own actions that he's kind of delivering his downfall. And that's quite important for the way the story plays out. Hi, I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb. And in my podcast, not just the Tudors, we talk about everything from sex to spying,

wardrobes to witch trials. Not in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. Subscribe from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. I think one thing that you pointed out there was that Harold is portrayed in the tapestry as almost a heroic figure alongside William. So he's a warrior, he's a pious man. And in many ways, are we meant to walk away from it feeling like Harold was Williams equal rather than being the villain of the piece, if you like? And if so, why do you think the tapestry is concerned to portray Harold in kind of a positive light? Yeah, again, so that goes back.

So if we assume it's made in Canterbury, then there's a very basic level there. that if it's made by English seamstresses, then perhaps they sort of would have some sort of control over what goes in. Now, that's a bit of a difficult argument to follow through on, because clearly the tapestry was going to be shown to people. So if you like sneak in lots of subterfuge and secret messages, which is one of the theories about the tapestry's like, you know, actually there's an underlying anti-Norman propaganda threat. I think that's a little bit hard to demonstrate because that would sort of, you know, go quite badly when the Great and the Good saw the actual tapestry. But I think it is, the tapestry is, the tapestry is,

trying to get across a basic idea that the Norman conquest, the whole story boils down to a clash between two men, between Earl Harold, who then becomes King Harold, and Duke William, who then becomes King William. And to position them as men of power, authority, honour to an extent. I mean, Harold, as you say, is shown, he's actually shown rescuing some of William's soldiers from the River Cunon just below Mont Saint-Michel in this Breton campaign. So he's a man who's brave. He's a good man in that sense. But he's a man who, sort of, you know, by his own actions, brings about his downfall. It's very much a two-horse thing. It's William versus Harold. And that's the tapestry sort of just plows on in that line. And it feels like it's

important to whoever's making the tapestry to have that sense that it's just these two guys and those are the two characters. I mean, Odo, as we said, appears, but he's not part of the actual discussion at the throne of England. But the tapestry's whole shtick is to make it between these two two men of equals, a worthy opponent for King William to defeat and then to be able to take over the throne. So part of the idea of building Harold up is that it makes William's conquest even more impressive because actually Harold wasn't just this weak, ineffectual ruler that William pushed out of the way. He was an incredibly strong and powerful man that William defeated. Therefore, William must be all the better for it.

Yeah, exactly, though, is very interesting that Sir Tapestry doesn't show quite a lot of the story. And it doesn't show a bit where Harold did demonstrate great military effectiveness at the Battle of Stanford Bridge, which will probably come on and talk about in a minute. But yeah, it definitely feels like it's showing that, you know, this guy was someone worth beating and you ought to bear that in mind. And I think that sort of plays back into that sense that the tapestry is there to allow both sides of the story to take something from it. Going back to what I said, I don't think it means that there has to be secret messages, but I think it just means that both sides of the story

need to be able to take something from what they can see. And if you were a supporter of Harold, then you can kind of celebrate that when you look at the tapestry. You can see it in the way that you want to see it. Did you think it might have been a little bit of an effort not to upset the English too much, to give them their Jews as having taken part in what was a really big head-on clash between two Titans?

Yeah, very much so. and I think it allows that space for people to make their own interpretations. And, you know, there's some bits of it which do follow quite closely a sort of a pro-godwin interpretation of events, the life of King Edward, the confessor, a documentary source, which seems to be very similar in certain bits. So it feels like there is the sense that the kind of the English view is allowed to come through within the tapestry. But of course, it is eventually, in essence, a depiction of the conquest of England by

William the Congress. It does celebrate that as well. But it celebrates it in a muted and slightly understated way in some ways. It's not a great victory tapestry. It's something a little different to that. Cheering the opposition off the pitch at the end of a football match, you've just won, something like that? Yeah, maybe, maybe, yeah. It's an interesting illusion, yeah.

You mentioned the Battle of Stamford Bridge there, and the action that takes place in the north of England before the conquest is one of the big glaring emissions from the Bayer Tapestry. So why do you think that all of that was left out altogether? Yeah, okay. So to quickly summarise that, so we've got the invasion in the north just before the Battle of Hastings itself, and I'm sure listeners know, Harold Hardrada, the famous and fearsome Norwegian king,

joined forces with King Harold of England's estranged brother Tosti, and they'd invaded with an army, got to York in the north. They defeated the northern English earls, Edwin and Morkar, Battle of Fulford on 20th September, and then on 25th September, this is all 1066, King Harold of England takes his forces up there and comprehensively defeats Hardrada and Tosti at Stanford Bridge. Hardrada and Tosti both die, and their army is essentially decimated. There's hardly any of them get back to their ships to get away, apparently. And that's a pretty big thing. Hardrada was,

you know, a notable military figure. And Harold defeats him and defeats him. And he's a defeats him comprehensively. But that's not shown. That is not shown in the story. And you could, you know, that's, if you want to look at it in the way of building up Harold as a great military figure, it's kind of surprising that maybe that's, would have been a good thing to show that he'd been able to defeat one of the great figures of the 11th century from a military perspective. Yeah, because it would almost create this three-way thing in 1066 where you've got these three incredible military leaders in William, Harold of England and Harold Hardrada, and William could have portrayed himself as coming out on top of all three of those, rather than

just him and Harold. But the thing is, it's a very southern-centric story, the tapestry. It takes no interest in the north whatsoever. It's all about what's happening in southern England and across the channel in Normandy. And that probably is a reflection of the interests of the patron and the people designing it. Perhaps they just didn't really care about the North at all. Perhaps it was just like not at all in their sphere of interest. But also, for me, importantly, to bring Hardrida into the story, it complicates matters. It means you need to, explain a third figure. It goes against this dualistic man-against man thing that I mentioned. The key thing is, is that for the tapestry to work for William, it needs to be showing that Harold

was a valid and rightful figure in himself, but that William's claim was correct because Harold had perjured himself. And it's just like, that's the simple line that you need to take. So if you introduce other contenders to the throne with perhaps equally valid claims, and that slightly dilutes the power of that message for William. So you need to just keep it simple. And, you know, that sort of follows modern politics in a way to get a simple message and keep hammering at home. You know, I'm not going to compare it to Brexit.

But, you know, Brexit's a complicated thing, and that was boiled down into simple messages. So maybe you can sort of take some sort of a modern parallel from that sort of thing. And do you think there was also an effort not to diminish William's achievement by pointing out that Harold had already fought this battle was perhaps with a depleted, tired army himself. And so William, you know, caught Harold on a bad day and made the most of it,

because that would diminish William's victory at Hastings. Yeah, I do think that a bit. My co-author, Professor Michael Lerz, doesn't quite hold with that, because I think you have to accept that Harold would have used the northern third, the northern forces, and then would probably have relied on a southern third down in Hastings. So perhaps he would have been able to draw on separate bodies of troops. And perhaps, you know, yes, there would have been a big jubes. journey up and down for Harold and his housecars, his main troops, but perhaps they weren't

of the whole force, might not have been quite as tired as you might have expected. But it's, yeah, it's interesting that that line isn't pursued. And someone else who you point out is conspicuous by their absence, but kind of looms large over the whole story without appearing there, and perhaps this plays into the idea of not complicating the matter as well, is Edgar Etheling, so the man who could have been king of England when Harold became king, who was briefly proclaimed king in the wake of Hastings, and yet he appears nowhere in the tapestry whatsoever. He's utterly unmentioned.

Can you tell us a little bit about Edgar and how he comes to be in the position he's in and then maybe why you think he's missing from the tapestry? Yeah, so Edgar I find absolutely fascinating. And when we're working on this book, there's so much to say about what is in the tapestry, but I just found what's missing to be really interesting. So we just talked about those battles,

that's interesting that they're not in there. But the omission of Edgar, I find absolutely fascinating and it plays into the story quite nicely. So Edgar, who's Edgar? So we need to go back 50 years from Hastings to 1016 when you've had King Effelred, the unready on the throne. Famously unready, but unready means ill-advised. He was ill-advised quite often in the way that he dealt with the Danish incursions that were the subplot to his entire reign. he suffered from lots of attacks from Danish forces. And in 1013, the Danish king, Spain and his son Knutte came over, and they did very well,

and Eiffelred had to flee, and then he comes back, and then Bain dies in 1014, Efflerod dies in 1016, and Effelred's son, Edmund Ironside and Knut are left to fight it out. They have a battle. Knoot basically wins, but then Knut and Edmund Ironside agreed to share the rule of England, or so it seems something like that. But then Edmund Ironside dies soon after this agreement is made, and Knut rules England solely for a couple of decades, and then his son's rule for a few more years, and then eventually Edward the Confessor takes the afraid Edward, the Confessor, was the son of Effelred the Unready, and after all this happened in 1016, he fled

to Normandy, where his mother had family. His mother was part of the Norman Ducal family. Ironside had a son as well. Edward, who fled east. He went to the Royal Court of Hungary eventually. And he had a son there called Edgar, Edgar Ethling. And they basically lived in Hungary until the 1050s. And Edward the Confessor, he married, he married Edith, as we talked about, but he did not have a child. He didn't have an heir. So after a time, they realised that the closest person in blood lineage to Edward the Confessor, who could take on the line, was in Hungary. So they sent out a party at some point in the 1050s to go and basically tell Edward and Edgar to come home, to come back to England and meet Edward the Confessor. And they duly did. Edward sadly died almost immediately after he got back to

English shores, but Edgar survived. He was a boy, only five or so. But after a time, he was given the title, Ethling or Frownworthy by Edward the Confessor. So I think that by the 1060s, you can fairly reasonably say that Edward, and probably the Witten that the body of noble counsellors to the English king had set their stall out that Edgar was going to be the acknowledged successor to Edward the Confessor. And Tom Licence has written an interesting biography recently of Edward's professor, and he makes the point that this sort of the blood lineage was important, and that most kings did have the royal blood in them going back over the last few centuries. So it's an obvious point, but it's an important point.

So this guy, Edgar, in the 1060s, was there as a clear and obvious successor, but he was a boy. He was young. And none of this is shown in the tapestry. And as you said, after the Battle of Hastings, and there's nothing to suggest that Edgar was actually at the battle. We don't know, but he might have been. He would have been quite young. Some people did come out, the Bishop of London and various people did come out to say that Edgar should take over as it should be the king.

Support of him very quickly dissipated when William showed that he was basically militarily onipotent by that point. But there was this other player in the story and this other rightful claimant to the throne, you could say, if you're looking at it from a royal lineus perspective, who's not shown at all. And there's a very obvious reason for that. It's not really in the interests of William and whoever's, designing the tapestry sort of to support William's claim, to introduce this idea that there is actually a true rightful claimant. That very much goes against this idea of a William coming in, defeating a perjurer, defeating someone who's gone against his own word, and having that rightful claim, if there is to the side,

someone who hasn't perjured himself and is the closest blood relative to the king. So you can see why he's not included. But it's got repercussions for our understanding of the conquest, I think, which I'm sure we'll come to in a second. So do you think maybe Harold Hardrida and Edgar Etheling are both missing because there's no easy way to debase their claim? So Harold has this charge of perjury laid against him, which allows William to say, this is the reason why I'm the rightful king and he perjured himself before God. But there's nothing like that that he can say about Harold Hardrada and Edgar Etheling to immediately undermine their claim.

So you'd have to deal with it in a more direct kind of way, which would be perhaps. uncomfortable or long-winded, maybe even if you're doing it in pictorial form, so it's easier just to forget that they ever existed and deal with Harold? Exactly, and to make it very much that Williams defeating one man, who's by his own actions, has basically made himself fallible. And just on Hardrada, there's a really interesting new bit of research that's come up, that Hardrida could potentially have been related to Edgar Effling by marriage, his uncle by marriage, because of what was going on in the Hungarian Royal Court. So there is even an idea that he might have been coming over in support of Edgar, which would further have complicated things and made

it even less fruitful for Hardrida to be included in the tapestry, because that would really complicate matters and make it difficult to explain what's going on. But yeah, so I think the basic thing is the tapestry is trying to keep it as simple as it can and make it this dual head-to-head clash between these two guys. And I guess the one thing that Edgar's story has over Hardradas as well is that it continues after Hastings, so Hardrida is at least dead before you get to Hastings and isn't an issue, but Edgar is still around, and, you know, his career continues long after Hastings and is interspersed with various moments of rebellion. So he is a more difficult figure to deal with than Harold, maybe. Yeah, Edgar's life is fascinating. Someone needs

to write a full good biography of him. Maybe you, Matt. Do you know what, I'd love to be. He's so fascinating, and for a figure to be sat there lined up to be king in the midst of all of this going on, and then he has this weird relationship, I think, with William the Conqueror, where he keeps rebelling and William sort of keeps patting him on the top of the head and saying, never mind, Ed, carry on. It's just such an odd, you know, it feels like anybody else would have been executed by William the Conquer the first time, but Edgar seems to get away with it endlessly. It's weird, isn't it? That needs further investigations.

So, as he said, yeah, he initially acknowledged as a king by some people, and that goes away quickly, but then he gets involved in rebellions, rebellions which lead to the harrying of the north essentially. Then he goes away to the Scottish court for a bit, and he's surprisingly allowed to return to Williams Court in the 1070s. He makes friends with Robert Kurtos. He gets involved in all sorts of Anglo-Scottish politics and intrigues and towing and throwing over there.

He goes on crusade at the end of the 11th century. He seems to be fighting with Kurtos again in 1106 at the Battle of Tonguebray. And we don't know when he dies exactly, but he seems to have lived a very long life and perhaps might have been alive into the 11-20s, maybe even longer. So he had quite a life, and he was involved in a lot of stuff. And it's very surprising that he managed to live this charmed life. Maybe William just felt that he couldn't, with legitimacy, get rid of him without causing a massive stink.

And maybe he just felt it was better to push him gently aside, which is what the tapestry does, doesn't mention him, pushes him to one side, so you don't need to think about him. But that's the really interesting thing about what the tapestry does, I think, is that basically, because it's so good, because it's so powerful, because its images speak to us still. Even, you know, in 2D format, when we have all the amazing stuff that we have today to visualize stuff, the tapestry's images still speak to us. And you can see emotion, you can see they have power. There's one scene where there's a woman leading away her son from a burning building just before the battle. of Hastings. And you can look at that. It's got power. It's got emotional impact and it still speaks to us. And so the tapestry itself kind of dominates our understanding of the Battle of Hastings. We've got all these other great sources, William, Poitier, William, Zumier, E Admer. They're great, but you have to read them. They're in Latin. They're a bit difficult, clearly. The tapestry,

you can just look at it and you can take something from it, which is why it still sort of dominates what we see, what we understand. And because it dominates what we see and understand, its message has carried through. And I think most people tend to see the Battle of Hastings and Normal Congress as a clash between Harold and William. And it was to an extent. But other things happen. I think most people probably know about Hardrada and what went on in the north.

But I think Edgar is very much under the radar. And the fact that there was this other guy is completely overlooked. And the biotapestry has done its job over almost a millennia now of effectively writing Edgar out of the story. because we look at the tapestry and we think that is the best source for the Norman conquest. And so it sounds like ultimately

the Bayer Tapestry worked. If we think it was probably a piece of propaganda prepared to explain the reasoning for the Norman Conquest of England and to paint a very certain specific picture of the flow of events, as well as missing out

some of the key things it didn't really want us to think about. As you say, given that it dominates our thoughts and understandings and imagery of the Battle of Hastings, it sounds like it's something that even a thousand years later has worked and is still working. Yeah, absolutely. So if we look back and say, okay, so Odo Beyer had this made to big himself up a bit,

but also clearly to tell a story which would have appealed to William and validated William's claim to the throne, and Odo would have wanted to make William feel good about his role and the tapestry to be a right reflection of the way that he saw the conquest going. Then the tapestry has done exactly that. It's like, you know, We have this sense that Williams' claim was valid because Harold had perjured himself, and that's kind of the Norman view of events, but the tapestry doesn't fight against that. It allows a bit of space for interpretation, but it doesn't fight against that, but it does not introduce any elements of complexity into the story, and that's what we miss. And so the tapestry has, yeah, it's absolutely done its job.

It's still doing its job, unless people pick up Michael Lurson-Myers' book, and we get a bit of a kickback for Edgar. Which, of course, I thoroughly recommend. Is there any likelihood of it still coming over to England? Do we know if it will? Well, I mean, that's very interesting. So if you look at the Bayer Museum website, they sort of talk about the museum being redeveloped and reopened in 2025,

2026. So that does present a bit of a window for something to happen. Lots of complexities, lots of issues, not least the fragility of the tapestry. It is almost a thousand years old. And it's been through quite a lot. So it's not been pristine nick. So there's a question mark over there as to whether it can travel,

and that's still very much being discussed, I believe. I haven't spoken to the curator for a bit of the museum, but I think it's still a conversation that's going on, and I think there is a window of opportunity for it to come over. It's a question of whether that is deemed to be in the best interest of the tapestry. But if it did come over, then they would be able to do lots of conservation work on it. If it went to the British Museum, for instance, they have facilities for doing that sort of thing. Lots of research.

I'm looking at the back of the tap. Tapestry, no doubt, would be an interesting thing. There's will have been some work done on that, but to review it from the rear would be useful. And so we would be able to learn a lot more about it. And if it was displayed in Britain at some point in the next few years, then it would be undoubtedly the biggest historical blockbuster exhibition for decades, generations probably, bigger than the Teuton-Karmoon one, I would imagine. And it would really revitalise interest in medieval history, in the Norman Conquest, and maybe even in Edgar. Absolutely. It would seem like a fantastic opportunity if it does make its way over here. But then I feel like at a thousand years old, it's so venerable that perhaps we should make the effort to go and see it if it's not safe for it to travel.

I mean, everyone should go to Bayo. It's a beautiful place to visit and you can see some of the sites that are associated. You can also go to Reading. Redding has a replica of the tapestry, which is worth looking at as well. So if you can't make it as far as bio, then Redding is a good second bet. But yeah, if you're allowed to travel and you feel so inclined, then go to bio. It's a beautiful place to look at. Thank you so much, Dave, for sharing those insights with us. If you'd like to learn more about the Bayer Tapestry, do grab a copy of Dave and Michael's book, The Story of the Bayer Tapestry, Unravelling the Norman Conquest. And if you'd like to know a little bit more about the Battle of Hastings itself, there's a brilliant explainer episode of Dan Snow's history hit that will sate your thirst for more knowledge of the battle. You can join Dr Kat Jarman on Tuesday for another brand new episode of Gone Medieval.

Don't forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and tell all your friends and family that you've gone medieval. But I better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis, and we've just gone medieval with history hit.