Our knowledge of the last fifteen years of Anglo-Saxon England is clouded, as the sophistication of our sources fails to keep pace with the complexity of events. What was recorded tended either to be too brief, as with the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, or too verbose, as with the contemporary ‘Life’ of Edward the Confessor. The three surviving versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, maintained in at least three different locations, become extremely patchy, in some years recording few events, in others none at all. The so-called ‘Life of Edward’ (the Vita Edwardi), composed in the 1060s, either shortly before or shortly after the Norman Conquest, was the work of a Flemish monk hoping to please Queen Edith, writing in an obscure and poetic Latin which would be difficult to construe, even if the manuscript itself had survived intact, which it has not. These fragments can be supplemented by sources from across the Channel. But with the continental sources we have to be even more cautious. Virtually everything written about Edward’s reign by foreign chroniclers was set down after the great cataclysm of 1066, on the whole to justify the Norman Conquest of England. It has to be read as propaganda rather than truth. Selecting which items of information to believe, and which to reject, becomes as difficult for the historian of late Anglo-Saxon England as it would be for a modern intelligence officer to construe the political development of China using nothing but official press bulletins.
Amidst the shadows, the outline of certain great events can be discerned. Firstly, although Earl Godwin himself died within a year of his return to England, on Easter Monday 1053 (as legend proclaimed it choking on a piece of bread after having challenged God to strike him dead should he have lied about his role in the death of Edward’s brother Alfred), his power lived on, now invested in two of his sons, Harold who succeeded him as Earl of Wessex, and Tostig, promoted, apparently as the King’s favourite, as Earl of Northumbria. Harold fought a series of prestigious and successful campaigns against the Welsh. Having killed the Welsh King, whose head was sent in tribute to King Edward, Harold then married the Welshman’s widow, repeating a feat already associated with the Danish conqueror Cnut and in the process allying himself to another of the great aristocratic families of England, that of Leofric of Mercia. Tostig fared less well in his attempts to impose royal rule and royal taxation on the far north. In 1065, there was a violent rebellion against him. Tostig appealed for assistance from the English court, but then found himself sidelined, as he saw it betrayed by his brother Harold. Edward’s own promise to suppress the rebels came to nothing. Tostig was left without an earldom but with a burning sense of personal grievance against his own family. Edward’s own authority during these closing years of his life is very hard to assess. Certainly it was he who made earls and who continued to rule, in name at least. It was Edward who commissioned the rebuilding of the church of Westminster, intended as a monastic foundation, pledged in penance, so it was said, for his failure to fulfil a vow to make a pilgrimage to Rome. King Cnut had visited Rome, as probably had both Harold and Tostig. Was Edward’s failure here an indication that the King himself was effectively a prisoner within his own court, able to hunt, to feast, to receive tribute, but in all practical respects eclipsed by his brother-in-law, Earl Harold?
Lacking positive initiatives, Edward seems chiefly to have exercised his authority through passive resistance, above all perhaps through his failure to nominate a publicly recognized successor to the throne. Edward the Exile, the son of Edmund Ironside, was invited back to England from his refuge in Hungary, but died in 1057, only a few days after his return. Some have suspected the Godwins of poisoning him. Edward the Exile left a son, Edgar the Aetheling, a mere boy, perhaps, five or six years old, now brought up at court, living in what appears to have been close contact with the King, but without any real power and without lands. There was certainly no official proclamation that Edgar was to be regarded as Edward’s heir. On the contrary, contacts were maintained with Eustace of Boulogne, Edward’s brother-in-law, and with Edward’s mother’s family in northern France. At no point was any one of these kinsmen promoted as Edward’s clear and undisputed successor.
In 1051, at the height of his authority and with the Godwins exiled, Edward is said, according to one version of the Anglo-Saxon chronicle, to have received a man named ‘Count William’ from overseas, generally identified as William, Duke of Normandy, great-nephew of Emma, Edward the Confessor’s mother. Many historians have supposed that this visit by William in 1051 formed part of William’s own bid for the English throne. Contemporary Norman chroniclers, although they mention no visit by William to England, claim that specific promises were made to William in respect to the throne, not only by King Edward but by Harold. One such Norman version of events, famously shown on the Bayeux Tapestry, implies that, at some time in the 1060s, perhaps shortly before Edward’s death, Harold crossed to France and there was persuaded to take oaths to William, sworn on the holy relics of Bayeux Cathedral, no doubt promising to recognize William as Edward’s heir.
The problem with all of these stories is that they date from after 1066, when the Normans had not only scooped the jackpot but were in a position to rewrite the history of recent events, if necessary burying the truth in order that their own actions might be justified. Even the story of Count William’s crossing to England in 1051 is open to dispute. Did the Anglo-Saxon chronicler intend to imply here that William was specifically offered the throne? If so, why did he not mention the fact? Why do none of the Norman sources written immediately after 1066 refer to any visit paid by William to England before the Conquest, especially when we bear in mind the very great incentive that such writers would have had to include something so significant and supportive of Norman claims? Could it be that William of Normandy came to England in 1051 not to receive a promise of the English throne but to render homage to his elder and richer cousin, the newly empowered King Edward, for his own lands in northern France?
Certainly, William’s rule over Normandy was especially insecure at the time, with his enemies gearing up towards a great rebellion. Might it even have been another ‘Count William’, not William of Normandy, who made the visit? In 1051, there was at least one other northern French aristocrat, William, Count of Arques, William of Normand’s uncle, who might have had an incentive to visit the English court. William of Arques was either already in rebellion or about to rebel against his nephew, William of Normandy, and would in 1051 be forced to seek exile in the territory of another of the players, Eustace of Boulogne. In some ways, William of Arques fits the bill for the 1051 visit to England even better than William of Normandy.
As this suggests, we have very little idea of the reality over which all of the chroniclers, English and Norman, were so keen to varnish. What we do know is that, from the 1050s onwards, the various dukes, counts and lords of northern France began to occupy a more significant place in English history than had previously been the case. It is time therefore that we turn our attention from Anglo-Saxon England to events on the other side of the Channel, and in particular to the rise of one northern French dynasty: the dukes of Normandy.
