Conquest History to be Rewritten?
HUGH SULLIVAN
King Harold wasn’t shot in the eye at the famous battle of 1066, he was hacked to death with lances and swords. And many researchers claim that the fighting didn’t take place on the slope adjacent to Battle Abbey but on a different site – possibly at Crowhurst, or at Caldbec Hill, a mile to the north.
Now a historian at the University of East Anglia (UEA) has come up with another myth-busting twist to the accepted version. Harold’s army, having just defeated a Viking invasion force led by Harald Hardrada at Stamford Bridge in Yorkshire, did NOT march back on foot to Sussex to oppose Duke William’s Normans, they sailed back down the east coast in a fleet of ships based in London.
Tom Licence, graduate (with a double-starred first) of Magdalene College, Cambridge and now Professor of Mediaeval History and Literature at UEA, points out that multiple contemporary writers described Harold sending “hundreds of ships” to block Duke William after the Norman landing. But there is no reason to believe, according to the professor, that the English king had none remaining to support his campaign against Harold Hardrada, and there is no source of evidence for a forced march.
“The idea of a heroic march is a Victorian invention that has shaped our understanding, or misunderstanding, of 1066 for far too long,” Prof Licence has concluded. In the eleventh century a journey of that length would have been faster and safer to accomplish by sea than over land. “Only a mad general would have sent all his men on foot in this way if ship transports were available.”
A local HIP reader Paul Minter has raised another challenge to the conventional history. He suggests that the population of Hastings, then a peninsular stretching between what is now Hastings Old Town to the western side of Bexhill, may have taken William’s side in 1066, enjoying better relations at the time with people on the coast of Normandy than with the rulers of southern England.
That might explain why William landed with no resistance and obtained (as the Bayeux Tapestry depicts) supplies of food locally. The destruction of local crops and houses may, Mr Minter argues, have been perpetrated by Harold as a defensive tactic rather than by the invaders.
Prof Licence was due to present his findings on Monday of this week in a talk to a conference at Oxford University on The Maritime and Political World of 1066.
We hope you have enjoyed reading this article. The future of our volunteer led, non-profit publication would be far more secure with the aid of a small donation. You can also support local journalism by becoming a friend of HIP. It only takes a minute and we would be very grateful.
Which side Hastings we’re on in the Battle of Hastings 1066 is really important, as I believe it was the deciding element of the whole invasion. Anyone who would like to discuss this further, I live in Bexhill.