In our previous article we discussed how the year 1066, the most important year in English history, features extensively on our London walks.
We left Harold Godwinson, having been sent on a mission by another confessor, ending up shipwrecked and being handed over to William, Duke of Normandy as a prisoner.
However, it seems that William and Harold got on famously, and William even treated Harold as an honoured guest.
There have been claims that Harold promised to marry one of William’s daughters, and it has even been suggested that William would retire to bed early and leave his wife Matilda, alone with Harold, in order that she might use her womanly charms to win Harold over to the Norman cause.
What we don’t know is just how Harold really felt. It’s possible, he did simply pay lip service to William, all too aware that he was effectively will use prisoner. It is of course also possible that Harold was genuinely charmed by his Norman host.
Either way Harold accompanied William on a campaign in Brittany, and when a month later, they returned to Bayeux, William suggested that Harold swear an oath of the fealty to him.
This oath would be crucial to William’s later claim to the throne of England, and historians are still divided over whether or not it was actually made and, more importantly, what exactly how swore to.
Oaths were taken deadly serious in 1066 and the later Norman propagandists maintained that the oath was made over a chest full of holy relics, which William had cunningly covered with a cloth to disguise from Harold the fact that he was undertaking a holy oath.
debate rages over what Harold promised. According to the Anglo-Saxons, Harold merely swore to be Williams man in Normandy, but made no commitment with regards to the succession to the English throne.
The Normans, however, maintained that Harold vowed to advance and to defend William’s right to the throne of England.
whichever, Harold returned to England, and it would be another two years before, in 1066, the supposed oath would be used by William to justify his invasion of England.
Those, just brifly, are the events that led up to the Norman Conquest of 1066. We go in to a lot of detail about this in our various London walks, such as The London Story and The Westminster Story.
