Historic Revelations at the Edith Festival
A couple of years ago, HIP published DAVID DENNIS’ article on the life of ‘Edith the Swan Neck’. He introduces another Edith Festival coming to Hastings soon.
Everyone loves a mystery, and this is a big one. Since 2022 I have been researching the controversial claims in historian B.W. Flint’s book: Edith the Fair – The Visionary of Walsingham (Gracewing, 2006). Edith the Fair (c.1025-c.1086), popularly known as Edith Swan Neck, or Edith the Graceful Swan will be celebrated in the Edith Festival, White Rock Hotel, Hastings 19 October 2024, 12.30 – 7pm. Roman Catholic historian Bill Flint’s book puts forward his personal theory that Danish woman Edith the Fair was a visionary who in 1061, was spirited to Nazareth to the site of the Annunciation, where Archangel Gabriel had revealed to Mary that God was going to make her pregnant in a sinless conception. The Walsingham visionary saw the original small wooden house that Our Lady was in and made a replica of it in Norfolk so that pilgrims did not have to travel to the Holy Land to see it. Flint therefore says that the founder of England’s greatest Marian Shrine at Walsingham in Norfolk was Earl Harold’s wife, Edith the Fair.
My research thus far does not support his theories. Every medieval historian does their best to assess often incomplete primary sources and rather than say nothing, they put forward ideas that others may test. My conclusion is that Flint has made too many errors. However, thereis another possibility that will meet the facts and reveal the planning behind the vision story.
Flint’s key aim was to show that a multi-versed poem or song by an unknown composer, known as the Pynson Ballad, was written just after 1086, the year that William the Conqueror left England only to die in Normandy a year later. The unique copy of the ballad at Cambridge University is so called because it bears the printer’s mark of Richard Pynson who was official state printer to Kings Henry VII and VIII. Pynson was born in Normandy, went to the University of Paris, came to England and was naturalised as English, took over the print works of well-known printer William de Machlinia and went into competition with another famous medieval printer, Wynkyn de Worde.
Flint, who passed away in 2014, was an honourable man. He was the Research Fellow for the Maryvale Institute (Birmingham) and the Parish Catechist at St Mary-on-Quay, Bristol. He aimed to show that much of the history concerning Edith that is advocated to us by noted English historians is wrong. His ideas have caused changes to many websites, especially Wikipedia. But is he right? For example, he states that Harold and Edith were married in an English Christian ceremony, not one involving Danish handfasting (more danico) i.e. according to Danish custom. He claims that Edith was the daughter of the notorious Jomsviking Thorkell the Tall (before 986-c.1039), whose drunken warriors chained up the Archbishop of Canterbury, dragged him around southern England, then beat him to death with a cattle bone. Extraordinarily, he claims that Edith was called ‘Rychold’, not Edith, Edeva or Edeva puella, as she is certainly known in the Domesday Book as the owner of lands in other parts of England, (Cambridgeshire for example). He claims that even though the Pynson Ballad mentions that the visionary of 1061 was a ‘widow’ in two separate verses, the ballad writer only wrote this because King Harold was killed in 1066. Most telling for me is the claim by Flint that ‘Harold’s brothers fled to Ireland’ whereas fans of the Battle of Hastings know full well that one of his brothers, Sweyn, died on the way back from Jerusalem, one, Wulfnoth, was kept as a hostage in Normandy, another, Tostig, was killed at the Battle of Stamford Bridge and the others, Gyrth and Leofwine were killed by storming Norman knights while standing fast to the last with Harold around the ‘The Fighting Man Banner’ (Feohtend Mann/ Fíghtandi Maðr), at so-called Senlac, wherever that was.
Most importantly, Bill Flint claims that the Walsingham Shrine authorities, and the Professor of Medieval History at Bristol University, Dr J. C. Dickinson (1911-1984) made a huge mistake in claiming that the visionary of Walsingham was not Edith the Fair but instead was a woman called Richeldis de Favareches (the rich and fair woman of Favareches in Normandy).
Dr Henrietta Leyser, Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at St Peter’s College, Oxford University, says flatly that Favareches does not appear in the Domesday Book of 1086 at all, even in the Norfolk part of it. However, she confirms that a rich landowning woman called Richeldis de Favareches does appear in the financial records of the Norfolk Pipe Roll for 1130/1, exactly one hundred years after the specified date in the Pynson Ballad.
So why does verse 1 of the Pynson Ballad say 1061 and verse 14 state that the ballad was written ‘four hundred years or more’ after the vision in 1061? Why does the ballad mention King Edward the Confessor as being alive when the vision occurred? Who wrote the Ballad that Pynson printed? Why does the author of the book, The History and Spirituality of Walsingham, Carmelite Sister Elizabeth Ruth Obbard say, when dismissing Flint’s theory – ‘Serious historians do not countenance 1061 as factual?’ Why the great difference between Flint’s view and the view of the Walsingham Shrine authorities? Where might all the other copies of the Pynson Ballad be hiding? All will be revealed by me at the Edith Festival – so don’t delay – book today!
White Rock Hotel Hastings sea front
19th October 2024
13.00 to 14.30 – Professor Christopher Scull FSA – Rendlesham and the East Anglian Kingdom
15.00 to 16.30 – David EP Dennis AFRHS – The History of Old Winchelsea – and the Mystery of Edith the Fair and Pynson Ballad
17.00 to 18.30 – Dr James Wright FSA – Historic Building Mythbusting
Book via Eventbrite or friendsofedith.org.uk
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Hi – am in England too late to come but have an interest in this topic. Would love to hear more.
We lived in Cambridge for a few years and started digging into theories of her identity. Have made a few connections but are fanciful. I also had trouble swallowing Mr Flint’s leaps.
Your gracious words about the author in this piece gladdened my heart. All ideas are stepping stones to discovery.
Wish I could have attended your festival.
C