bayeux oughta know
Or, Harold Godwinson and an excuse to enjoy some Anglo-Saxon names.
Hi friends!
As you all know by now, my process for choosing a dirtbag to feature is deeply unscientific. Sometimes it’s someone I personally hate. Sometimes it’s a wacky story I’ve just learned about. This week, I chose our dirtbag almost entirely because there are so many good visual aids. I’m a simple person: I see a big-ass tapestry with pantsless dudes, I open up Substack.
That’s right, we’re going way back to look at…
Harold Godwinson, the Fuckup of Hastings!
If all you know about the Battle of Hastings is this old Family Guy clip, no worries, I intend to provide the bare minimum of background needed to follow the story and nothing else. I did one hour of research for this newsletter and wrote it while consuming an unconscionable amount of iced coffee. Early Medievalists in the audience, I’m sorry.
(As an aside, the comment section on that video is a spectacular 50-50 split of “lol” and “actually if you consult the chronicles of William of Malmesbury, I think you’ll find—” Truly remarkable cross-section.)
Harold Godwinson was born in roughly 1020 in Wessex, which at the time was a kingdom in Great Britain and not just the fake place Colin Firth is allegedly lord of in Shakespeare in Love.
Harold Godwinson’s father—named, sensibly, Godwin—was a powerful dude in Wessex and a big supporter of King Edward the Confessor. By “big supporter” I mean “powerful guy who changed sides about a dozen times and then straight-up murdered at least two other kings so Eddie Prays-a-Lot could rule,” but such is life in the early 11th century. No one becomes powerful without a few strategic murders.
Aside: the early 11th century was also when everybody had a badass adjective attached to their first name so I can tell them apart. The backstory of all these king murders includes two guys named Sweyn Forkbeard and Harold Harefoot, and bless the Anglo-Saxons for that. I was looking up King Louis XVIII earlier this morning for unrelated reasons and truly believe if we’d named him King Louis Spoonmustache more people would study history.
Anyway. Back on topic. In about 1045, Harold Godwinson’s younger sister Edith married King Edward the Confessor, presumably as a thank-you to their dad for all the previous king-murder. This made Harold, as brother-in-law to the king, a big deal. He got an earldom and pursued the favorite pastime of Anglo-Saxons in the 11th century: fighting the Vikings.
I’m not gonna get into the Vikings of it all. Please accept this gif instead of any research into the 11th century Viking wars. It’s all I have.
More interestingly, about this time, Harold also got scandalously married! He hooked up with a lady named Edith around 1045, and they got what my sources cryptically refer to as “Danish married.” I tried to figure out what this means and immediately got tangled in ancient Germanic and ecclesiastical law, so I will choose to assume it means they served small handheld pastries instead of a wedding cake at the reception. Helpfully, history differentiates between the two Ediths in this story by calling Harold’s wife “Edith the Fair,” or, as I will refer to her, “Hot Edith.”
In 1047, Harold’s older brother Swyen abducted a nun, which then as now was frowned upon. Edward the Confessor reallocated some of Swyen’s lands to Harold and Hot Edith, making them even more powerful and important than before. Swyen didn’t love this and started murdering their other brothers to take land back.
All this to say that by the time Godwin died in 1053, all the other Godwinson brothers except for Harold were either dead or busy murdering each other. So Harold took on the family business and became the Earl of Wessex, the second-most-powerful person in England after the king.
Fuck-Ups in France
In about 1064, Harold turned up in Northern France for an audience with the Norman Duke William II. Historians aren’t entirely sure what he was doing here, but about one thing they’re generally in agreement: this was a fucking bad idea and it went very badly.
First, Harold’s ship capsized on the way there, which is not a great omen for a voyage.
But once he got on land, things continued being shitty. For one thing, Duke William apparently heard from somebody who heard from somebody else that Harold had come to promise him the throne of England after Edward the Confessor died. To which Harold presumably replied:
But Duke William wasn’t taking no for an answer. He coerced Harold into fighting on his side in some French skirmishes, presumably so they could become best friends and cement the whole “path to the throne of England” thing.
Which, wildly, is more or less what happened! Harold famously rescued some of Duke William’s soldiers from quicksand, and after several more successful victories, Harold swore his allegiance to Duke William and promised to help him become king after Edward’s death.
*Points Aggressively at Tapestry*
In 1065, King Edward the Confessor fell into a coma and died without naming his successor, because of course he fucking did. Harold sailed back to England to deal with the whole Death of a King business, only to find that King Edward had placed Harold temporarily in charge of the country until a successor could be found.
And the best successor Harold found to the throne of England was…
Can you guess?
Yes, obviously, it was Harold.
King Edward died on January 5, 1066, and by January 6 Harold Godwinson had already held his own coronation in Westminster Abbey, with the swiftness only a true dirtbag can manage.
Harold got to business with all the usual kingly shit. He cast coins with his face on them. He fought the Vikings more. He killed his brother, whimsically named Tostig. Business as usual.
Except! Over in Normandy, Duke William was watching this sequence of events and getting increasingly grumpy. I imagine the conversation they shouted across the English Channel going something like this:
William: Bro! What did you literally just say about me being king?
Harold: Oh. Uh. I thought you’d forget that after the quicksand thing. Wasn’t that badass? Who even knew there was quicksand in France?
William: Fuck the quicksand! You said you’d make me king!
Harold, nervously: Uh. No I didn’t?
William, gesturing energetically at the Bayeux Tapestry: WE LITERALLY HAVE HAND-WOVEN RECEIPTS EXPLAINING THAT YOU DID.
Harold, realizing that Norman propaganda is gonna make him a villain for the rest of forever: That guy could be anybody. It doesn’t even look like me.
William: What part of “HAROLD SACRAMENTUM FECIT WILLIAM DUC” is unclear, you fuck?
That’s Gotta (Ha)sting
All this to say, by September 1066, there was no question what Duke William wanted: to stab the new King Harold II directly in the face.
So he got his army together, brought them to the shores of Normandy, had everyone take off their pants apparently, and sailed over to England to give Harold a piece of his fucking mind.
When they arrived, all hell broke loose in a fight we now remember as the Battle of Hastings. Which was bloody and violent for everyone, but apparently especially for the horses.
King Harold was extremely good at murdering his own brothers, but not so great at fighting Duke William, and after about nine hours of fighting, he got his ass handed to him by the Normans.
There’s some debate about which of the dead tapestry people pictured above is Harold, but most people choose to believe it’s the guy with the silly mustache who got shot directly through the eye. The fact that we don’t refer to him as Harold Got-Shot-In-The-Eye frankly flies in the face of everything I know about Anglo-Saxon history.
Anyway, Hot Edith probably reclaimed Harold’s body and buried him somewhere history forgot. Other possibilities include that William threw his body off a cliff, or that Harold in fact did not die but instead ran away and became a monk. Who’s to say.
Duke William was crowned as King William I of England, aka William the Conqueror. This changed the course of English history, bringing in French influence and paving the way for English-French rivalries like the Hundred Years’ War and Brexit. It’s mostly thanks to William that English spelling is so fucked up, which I assume is why he’s also called William the Bastard. William also put down several insurrections during his time as king, including one by his son, Robert Curthose. (Frankly, I think William deserves it, for naming his kid the equivalent of Bob Grumpysocks.)
There you go. We’re all experts in Anglo-Saxon history now. Nothing else you need to know. You’re welcome.
Until next time, friends, be well, and if you’re going to lie to someone, make sure they don’t have three dozen tapestry-weavers on site making receipts,
-Allison
BRB nominating this newsletter for an award based on the strength of this line alone:
“…abducted a nun, which then as now was frowned upon.”
Also those poor horsies. RIP horsies
This might be your best yet? I literally LOL'd my way through the entire thing.