Was King Harold slain by a Norman arrow that pierced his eye? Charles H. Gibbs-Smith adduces a powerful argument for correcting the traditional story.
Harold Rex Interfectus Est: "King Harold is killed". Scene from the Bayeux Tapestry depicting the Battle of Hastings and the death of Harold.Harold, king of England, was killed in the fourth and last phase of the Norman attack at the Battle of Hastings in the late afternoon of October 14th, 1066. This last attack was a combined-forces assault of infantry and cavalry, with archers giving covering fire.
The earliest description of Harold’s death occurs in the Gesta Normannorum Ducum by William of Jumièges, written in or about the year 1070, in which he says “Harold himself... fell covered with deadly wounds.” Later, between the years 1099 and 1102, Baudri, Abbot of Bourgueil, wrote a poem describing a piece of embroidery in which there was shown a scene of Harold’s death in battle, where—says Baudri—the King is killed by being struck in the eye by an arrow.
It is more than probable that the embroidery described was the Bayeux Tapestry—which is as a matter of fact, an embroidery—and that the arrow-in-the-eye story started with a mis-reading of the very scene in the Tapestry that is now used as evidence of the story’s truth. Baudri was the first to say that Harold was killed by an arrow in the eye.
This story is not met with again until it appeared in William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Regum, which was completed in 1125. We know that he had earlier procured “some histories of foreign nations,” so the arrow-in-the-eye story was probably acquired along with them, since no English source of earlier date carries it.
The Bayeux Tapestry was commissioned by Bishop Odo of Bayeux, who saw his cathedral in that city dedicated in 1077. The Tapestry was probably embroidered in England by English workers, and certainly to a Norman brief. Odo was created Earl of Kent by William the Conqueror, but in 1082 he fell from power.
So the Tapestry may be dated between 1066 and 1082, with a strong probability that it was ready for the new cathedral in 1077. The Tapestry seeks to show that Harold was a perjurer and blasphemer, and that William had every justification for invading England, the two men acting as the principals in the drama.
Pictorially, the Tapestry is divided into a large number of clearly defined scenes; the divisions between the scenes may be stylized trees or buildings, or they may be naturally distinct groupings of figures. When the vigorous series of battle scenes are reached, these are just as clearly divided; but there are no dividing objects, some of the scenes standing on their own, and some slightly overlapping their neighbours. This has the effect of both demarcating the scenes yet keeping an overall continuity in the battle pictures.
Thus, there is a scene of an Englishman being struck by a Norman (who has slid forward from his saddle), which overlaps the Norman on foot about to kill the unarmed Englishman, which in turn overlaps the hind-legs of the horse in another scene, which shows a mounted Norman attacking four Englishmen (facing left) in what we may call the “fight-for-the-standards” scene: here the first Englishman lies dead across one of the two dragon standards, the second Englishman defends himself with shield and spear, the third holds the second standard, and the fourth has been hit by an arrow.
This last Englishman, who is not pictorially singled out in any way, grasps the arrow in his right hand, an arrow whose target is not certain: the man’s head is thrown back, and the arrow ends slightly above the end of, and parallel to, the “nasal” of the conical helmet, and may just as well have been meant to have struck up his nose or in his cheek, as in his eye. This arrow-struck figure overlaps the hind-legs of the Norman’s horse in yet another scene, where the Norman is striking down an Englishman who drops his great battle-axe as he falls. The next scene, with which we are not concerned, starts immediately after, with a group of defending Englishmen facing right.
Starting over the horse’s head in the “fight-for-the-standards” scene, and ending above the stricken Englishman in the next scene, is the embroidered inscription Hic Harold Rex Inter-fectus Est (Here King Harold has been killed). Owing to the large size of the inscriptions in the Tapestry they often start or finish above part of a scene they do not apply to; this is due to the short length of some of the scenes, and to the fact that other scenes do not need inscriptions to themselves. The names of William, Harold and others often—and inevitably—occur away from the figures to which they refer.
From Abbot Baudri onwards, it has generally been assumed that the arrow-struck figure in the “standards” scene is Harold, and that the arrow has struck him a mortal blow in the eye. A few commentators, perceiving that the next scene of a Norman hacking down the Englishman is, by its isolation and treatment, of pivotal importance in the Tapestry, have said that Harold is seen struck in the eye in one scene, and hacked down by the horseman in the next.
The reason why Baudri and his followers have assumed the arrow-struck figure to be Harold seems to be based entirely on the position of the embroidered word harold above the arrow-struck man. But the position of this word is quite fortuitous. The designer of the Tapestry clearly took not the slightest trouble to allow for the inscriptions, as can be seen by the extremely haphazard way in which they have had to be introduced—strung out here, bunched up in two or three lines there, words divided in the middle or clumsily pushed into other places.
Where convenient, the name of a man was placed by his figure, especially if he was of secondary importance, like Turold and Wadard: but with William, Harold and Odo it did not matter so much, and we have their names variously placed, sometimes well away from them. In the two scenes in question, the pivotal one is the Englishman being struck down by the Norman; this scene is so short that the inscription had to start well over to the left above the previous scene, especially as there is no room for any inscription to continue beyond the figure of the Englishman (Harold) being hacked down. Thus, the inscription starts over the “standards” scene and ends over this stricken Englishman in the next scene.
There can be no doubt, in the present writer’s opinion, that the arrow-struck figure is not Harold, and that the falling, hacked-down figure in the next scene is Harold.
Apart from the suspicious origin of the story, the first important reason for rejecting the arrow-struck figure as Harold is the lack of any pictorial prominence given to it. Harold is one of the two chief figures in the Tapestry, now being killed as the climax of the story; and we are asked to believe that the designer—a master of drama—places Harold fourth and last, and quite undistinguished in any respect, in a group of “routine” figures in a battle scene: such treatment is quite unthinkable within the context of the Tapestry.
It is also an invariable rule in the Tapestry—and in most medieval illustrations—that anyone mortally wounded, or suffering violent death, is depicted as falling, bent, or prostrate. The arrow-struck figure is standing upright: there are two other figures in the Tapestry with arrow-in-the-face (or eye) wounds, one of them fleeing the battle-field, the other dead and lying prostrate. By all the rules of the game, the arrow-struck figure is simply a wounded Englishman.
As to Harold being shown, first hit in the eye and then hacked down, this too is quite inadmissible. On the few occasions in the Tapestry when the same man is shown in two adjacent scenes, he is shown clearly separate in each. It is inconceivable, by any artistic, literary or “common-sense” standards, that—in the climax of the Tapestry—one of the two chief actors in the drama should first be shown insignificant and wounded, and then “starred” in a scene of his own. It is equally inconceivable that the insignificant “overlap figure” of one scene should occur again as the principal actor next door; and all, so to speak, within the span of one horse.
An additional point, if such were needed, is that despite the usual inconsistencies in the dress and arms of the same figure shown in previous scenes of the Tapestry, it would be unlikely, to say the least, that the designer would first show a figure with shield and spear, having been mortally hit in the face by an arrow, and immediately afterwards show the same figure with no arrow in his face, with no shield or spear, having taken up the large battle-axe and then being struck down by the enemy.
“Harold himself,” says William of Jumièges, “fell covered with deadly wounds.” We see him falling, hacked down by a Norman horseman, in his last appearance in the Bayeux Tapestry.
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