Magna Carta – foundation of liberty?

More nonsense is attached to Magna Carta than any document in British history. Several exaggerated claims are made for this text. It is routinely asserted that Magna Carta is the basis of the rule of law, the guarantor of liberty, cornerstone of the English constitution and even the foundation of global human rights. At its 800^th anniversary in 2015, huge publicity attended the occasion, with TV programmes, exhibitions, several written pieces masquerading as learned articles, and vast public enthusiasm. Sadly, this was pretty well all misplaced.

Magna Carta’s importance, such as it is, depends less on what it says, but on what people wrongly think it says. So what’s the background? King John’s 16 year reign was a series of disasters. Among these were the loss of Normandy in 1204, huge arbitrary taxes, general misgovernment of the realm and John’s eventual excommunication, until 1213, by the Pope. A succession of failed attempts to reconquer Normandy led to military and financial catastrophe.

The barons, whose families had to pay for all this, had finally had enough. It wasn’t just the vast sums raised from them, but the nakedly unfair, even cruel, means of doing so. They resolved to force the issue. Indeed it’s surprising it took them so long. Historian Marc Morris makes his point unequivocally - not only was John a bad king, he was by far the worst king England has ever had.    

Tipping point

With the country verging on civil war, the tensions building up culminated in the standoff at Runnymede, near Staines on the river Thames. There in June 1215 John was presented with a series of demands from the leading landowners and magnates, designed ostensibly to try and improve the king’s behaviour. This group of nobles was supported by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton. A draft written by Langton was also presented. It proposed, under its security clause, setting up a Council of 25 leading men to enforce the charter, and advise the king. It also sought to impose rules to establish reasonable conduct with some limits on arbitrary royal power. The document was sealed, not signed, by John. It later became known as Magna Carta.

Articles of Magna Carta 1215

So where did the attempt at peace go wrong? First it was annulled by Pope Innocent III in August. He had sent letters to England warning the barons that John was accountable to him, the Pope, as overlord of the kingdom, not to them. The agreement was ‘illegal, unjust, harmful to royal rights and shameful to the English people’. He declared the charter ‘null, and void of all validity for ever’.

A bad start. John, too, was angered by what he saw as the arrogant attitude of the 25 barons. He thought the charter would help calm things down, and then become just a generally vague symbol of good government. But his opponents saw things differently. They were determined the deal should be strictly enforced, and in the course of this standoff, constantly challenged local officials. They also refused to disarm. John never meant to adhere to the agreement, and realising this, the barons remained, to say the least, wary. So neither side stood behind their commitments and indeed, may never have truly believed in the exercise. In truth, it didn't have a chance.

No effective enforcement, then, and conflict between the king and barons soon renewed. John died the following year, and the charter was immediately re-issued, minus some of its more radical content. The following year at the end of the war with Louis, it formed part of the Lambeth peace treaty where it assumed the name Magna Carta. It was re-issued again in 1225 under Henry III, and by Edward I in 1297 when it was confirmed as part of England’s statute law.

The document's key contradiction

Magna Carta had again become a political tool. But in its original form the technical detail of Church rights, feudal payments to the Crown, taxes and even fish weirs was relevant only to a very small number of people - rich landowners. It had nothing to do with Britain’s libertarian tradition.

Jonathan Sumption, former Supreme Court judge and renowned medieval historian, puts it well. “I have no problem with the values which the charter is commonly supposed to express. But I have the utmost difficulty in finding them anywhere in the charter. The document is long. It is technical. And it is turgid. Magna Carta may have been an ambitious document for its time, but it is nothing like as ambitious as the Declaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen. Magna Carta is a document for 1215, and not for all time. And it is a document for Englishmen, not for humanity. Indeed not even a document for all Englishmen, but only for the small minority who were free, male and relatively rich.”

Magna Carta famously states ‘no free man should lose his liberty or property except by the lawful judgment of his peers or according to the law of the land’. But that pledge was next to worthless in a despot state with arbitrary rule. There’s no point saying you could only be imprisoned according to the law of the land when the law of the land said a man could be arrested simply by the King’s warrant.

Magna Carta as a political weapon

The modern myth of the charter is mainly due to Sir Edward Coke, the 17^th century lawyer and politician. Seeking arguments against the doctrine of the divine right of kings, so beloved of Charles I, he sought to make the document a foundation of parliamentary powers and principles, like habeas corpus. His account, unfortunately, was badly flawed. But he rescued Magna Carta from obscurity, and transformed it from a laundry list of feudal regulations into a key part of our history. Taken up by the founding fathers it also guided the US Constitution mainly by virtue signalling. Coke’s idea of Magna Carta has been sold to the world, but it’s not a version that either John or his barons would have recognised.

King John's tomb in Worcester Cathedral

Britain’s libertarian tradition, widely admired internationally, at least until fairly recently, dates from the 17^th century. The Civil War and English Revolution, together with the 1689/1690 constitutional settlement, is the true bedrock of the country’s rights and liberties. Magna Carta had little if anything to do with it.

Richard I, Coeur de Lion – national hero?

There’s a yawning gulf between the popular myth of Richard the Lionheart as a heroic character, and what we know from historical fact. King for less than 10 years, Coeur de Lion spent barely six months in the country - about the length of the English cricket season. And though physically brave in battle, he was a vicious character even by the standards of the time, having nearly 3000 prisoners killed in cold blood after the siege of Acre. It rather stretched the boundaries of his much vaunted chivalry.

Richard's Fontevraud tomb - photo by Adam Bishop

While he was seemingly not domestically unpopular, Richard quarrelled with his family, with his allies on crusade and even his friends (who called him ‘Yes and No’ due to his terseness). And he cost the English treasury vast sums to ransom him from capture and pay for his ruinous Chateau Gaillard project, the huge fortification on the Normandy border at Les Andelys.

Richard was the third son (of five) of King Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine. While he was born in England, probably at Oxford, Richard never had much fondness for the place. His horizons were those of the Angevin dynasty and all its territories. Richard was King of England from September 1189 to April 1199. But he also ruled as Duke of Normandy, Aquitaine and Gascony, Lord of Cyprus, Count of Poitiers, Anjou, Maine and Nantes, and was overlord of Brittany at times during the period. He spoke French and Occitan (old Provencal, common then in Gascony and Aquitaine). And despite widespread belief, probably English, too, given his early years under the care of an English nurse. Historian Marc Morris, who knows his way around the episode, points this out.

King's ransom

Richard was captured by Duke Leopold of Austria in December 1192 on returning from the third crusade. In March 1193 he was handed over to the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry VI. The story that Blondel the troubadour found Richard imprisoned in an obscure castle and reported back on his whereabouts to his friends in England is a complete myth. The location and terms of his custody were never a secret.

Emperor Henry VI was in need of money for the army he was building up. And Richard was hardly popular, having upset some of his crusade allies among others. So as a high status piece in the game he might be ransomed. But imprisoning a king returning from a crusade was politically dubious at best. Indeed it was anathema to the Papacy, so Emperor Henry was duly excommunicated.

Despite this, a huge 150,000 marks was the ransom demand, equivalent to three times the annual revenues of the English Crown. Richard’s mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, used her influence and leverage to help raise the money for her favourite son. Paid in silver, it was sourced from heavy property taxes on both clergy and laymen and by selling the gold and silver treasures of the churches. The sum was collected as metal, loaded up, then physically transported to Germany. Richard was finally released on February 4 1194. Philip of France then famously sent a message to Richard’s brother, John, “Look to yourself, the devil is loose”.

While Richard was away on crusade, or in captivity, or fighting in Aquitaine, the government in England was definitely not run by his brother John. This is another myth, deliberately propagated by Sir Walter Scott in Ivanhoe, and by 20^th century books, films and a TV series, of a country yearning for the return of its brave and noble King Richard. A succession of ‘justiciars’ was actually appointed, starting with William de Mandeville, earl of Essex, and Hugh Puiset, Bishop of Durham. These men, supported by officials, had what were virtually viceregal powers in the king’s absence. When Essex died in 1190 he was replaced by William Longchamp who was later given charge of the ‘seal of absence’.

It was a messy arrangement, based on a rough division of functions, not on a council with collective responsibility, where the chancellor was simply the head. And indeed it seems Longchamp rather exceeded his powers, or so others thought, and he was deposed of his justiciarship. The Archbishop of York was added to the ruling group, then later the Archbishop of Canterbury, and perhaps some leading magnates.

This cabal was not formally constituted as a ‘Council of Regency’ but in practice acted as one, and offered what for the time was in fact a reasonably sound basis for English government. Still, a name definitely absent from the group was Prince (later King) John, not trusted by Richard, nor by anyone much else.

Apart from the horrors committed at Acre, Richard was implicated in the assassination of Conrad, elected King of Jerusalem, alongside co-conspirator Guy de Lusignan. Coeur de Lion then engineered Guy’s installation as ruler of Cyprus. He did, however find time for political reasons to marry Berengaria of Navarre while there, though can have spent little time with her. Richard had been betrothed for many years to Alys, half sister of King Philip of France, but this was terminated in 1190 for a series of reasons which space prevents us from considering.

Historical Legacy

A belief held by some that Richard was responsible for St George being adopted as England’s patron saint is wrong - a Tudor myth. He would have sold the country had he received a realistic offer, and the nonsense around his tangential ‘Robin Hood’ involvement is simply unfathomable. Indeed Richard was not highly regarded by posterity until briefly in the 19^th century. Even then most serious historians scorned him. Stubbs thought him “a bad son, a bad husband, a selfish ruler and a vicious man”. It would be hard to disagree.

Finally it’s curious that a statue of Richard Coeur de Lion stands outside the Houses of Parliament in Old Palace Yard. The first parliament we’d recognise today was called by Simon de Montfort in 1258 under the Provisions of Oxford. The authoritarian Richard would have had no truck with it, of course, but in any case when it happened he’d been dead for nearly 60 years. Created by the Italian sculptor Marochetti, the statue was first fashioned in clay for the 1851 Great Exhibition. Then the horse’s tail fell off. Two years later Victoria and Prince Albert for some reason headed a list of subscribers for a bronze cast, installed in 1860. But 40 years on, with what seems delicious irony, it was found to be riddled with holes, and never properly attached to its pedestal.

Henry II and Thomas Becket

This quarrel has been at the centre of our perception of English 12^th century history since the events themselves. The relationship between the two men has been accorded a degree of romanticism, with a presumed friendship running across the medieval fault lines between church and state. The portrayal of these tensions in drama, and generally in popular culture, has the two men’s long and amicable relationship turning sour, then assuming the characteristics of a personal and public power struggle. It’s a picture geared to a more modern dramatic imperative, and is unfortunately rather misleading.

The popular understanding of the relationship is of Thomas Becket being first promoted and then brought down by King Henry II. Historians Frank Barlow and Simon Schama, among many others, have been inclined to characterise the quarrel in this way. Becket, whose career as a cleric developed under the protection of Archbishop Theobald, was made chancellor soon after Henry’s accession in 1154. His strength of purpose and administrative capacity turned this position into one of the great offices of state. It was a secular post, and Becket was employed as an ambassador, a civil servant, and chief fixer. On occasion he even led troops into battle. He also moved to re-balance the tax base so that the Church, having traditionally been given preferential treatment, took on more of the English tax burden.

Archbishop Theobald, who had first recommended Becket to Henry, was angered by this and cut off contact with Becket. But he died in 1161, and despite the claims of more experienced bishops, Henry appointed Thomas, over their heads, to Canterbury. Becket was expected to combine both jobs, but he resigned as chancellor precipitately and instead threw himself into extending the Church’s wealth and power.

Church v State

This change inevitably meant endless arguments over law and property. The themes were the ever widening reach of papal sovereignty, plus the increasing claims of canon law for Church immunity from secular authority, with the exemption of the clergy from the courts that were applicable to everyone else. Such special pleading was characterised by the demand for liberty against oppression. It did not go down well with Henry, nor probably would it have done with any secular ruler.

It’s important to remember the medieval Church was an international organisation and carried all the authority which this involved. It was invested at this time in what we might now see as a power grab across Europe. But Henry too, was head of an extensive international family business, the Angevin monarchy. He was stubborn and driven by the determination to restore the lands of his grandfather, Henry I. Rather a case of the irresistible force against the immovable object. During his reign Henry spent more time in what is now France than in England. He spoke Norman French and Latin, but never learned English.

Becket lobbied determinedly in Rome against English government plans to weaken the influence of the Church. After the so called Clarendon proposals were accepted in January 1164 by most of the bishops, but not Becket, a final meeting of the Council at Northampton took place in October. It was meant to force the issue with Becket but he escaped overseas to exile at the Cistercian Abbey of Pontigny, Burgundy, 120 miles from Paris. He built this base as an alternative propaganda and power centre, winning support from around Europe. Then, after threats from Henry against the order, he moved to Sens, 35 miles away.

In a stormy six years' exile Becket was a noisy adversary, threatening to excommunicate and interdict Henry plus several bishops. Attempts were made to bring the two together. Yet the pope, sympathetic to Becket, was reluctant to make an enemy of so powerful a figure as Henry. At last, under pressure from Rome, they seemed to come to terms in July 1170. 

Power and personality

It was at best an uneasy truce. Becket at last returned to Canterbury in December but then promptly excommunicated three bishops, loyal supporters of Henry. It wasn’t the most diplomatic of moves but Thomas often lacked the ability and probably the will to compromise. Indeed he seemed not to have had a political bone in his body.

When Henry heard of this he is said to have railed “What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and promoted in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born clerk”. This reaction was recorded by Grim, a normally reliable contemporary source, who was present on 29^th December when four knights burst into Canterbury Cathedral and at the altar literally cut Thomas to pieces. The presumed quote that inspired this murderous initiative, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” didn’t actually appear in print until the 19^th century.

What other myths are attached to this episode? First, Henry and Thomas had not been friends. It’s clear from recently reviewed source material that the relationship was, as the case with everything about Henry, wholly conditional on the facts of power. Henry’s son, later to be known as the Young King Henry, had earlier been sent to Becket’s household for educational grooming, and seems to have been fond of his mentor. But this was a fairly typical pattern in the period. It's quite hard to equate this with friendship. John Guy, Becket’s most recent biographer, says Henry was a foul tempered, bullying, venal perjured tyrant ‘with an innate assumption that his will was law’. Clearly hated by his many children and his wife, as well as magnates and bishops, it’s no surprise that Becket found him hard work. But Becket, too, was not popular either at home in England or in exile.

Henry and Thomas - an exchange of views

International cult

Also despite what has often been written, and believed, Henry was not mortified by the murder of Thomas. He regarded it as inconvenient. The dead archbishop was quickly made a saint and a ‘cult of Becket’ soon grew up around him. Idealised and canonised, his was soon the most famous shrine in Christendom. Local monks grew fat on the resulting tourist trade.

While no charmer in his lifetime, and one who never felt he belonged, the awkward, bristly Becket was venerated as a martyr. Seeing the strength of public feeling and the power of this new cult, Henry eventually did public penance at Becket’s tomb. But it can easily be seen as a PR stunt to try and go with the grain. And in any case it didn’t happen until July 1174, with Becket now a saint, and well over three years after the murder.   

Finally, the relationship and power struggle between Henry and Becket has often been viewed through too Anglocentric a lense. Strip out the personalities and there would still have been a tug of war between church and state, as there has been throughout history in Britain and other countries. Competition for power and influence is a permanent leitmotif, in this case drawn more starkly by the struggle between the European medieval church and the European Angevin patrimony for rights, resources and legitimacy. These days we can see the international dimension. But it is an important factor in British history that has often been ignored.

Norman Conquest

The 1066 Battle of Hastings marked the Norman Conquest, didn’t it? Anglo Saxon England was obliterated by the new Norman tyranny of William the Conqueror. The country’s language, culture, law and indeed the whole structure of society was changed. Even the environment altered as hundreds of castles sprang up. But it certainly didn’t happen overnight. It was an attenuated and bumpy road for all of William's reign. And the period before 1066 was hardly the golden age of some people’s imagination.

Hastings did not secure England for Duke William. 1066, for all its drama, was just the beginning of the Conquest and Hastings only its opening engagement. Indeed, there followed 20 years of challenge to the new rulers from unreconciled groups in England, and external threats from Scandinavia. There was even a rebellion from some Norman earls in 1075. Far from being a settled state, England under William faced a series of revolts and insurrections lasting until 1087. In fact there was little peace and barely any time when the country was free from violence, often of the most brutal kind.

Nervous invaders

It’s hard to avoid the impression that the Norman invaders lived in constant fear of having their throats cut by the defeated English population. They were hardly new to the consequences of violent military invasions and occupations. Apart from constant fighting on their own domestic borders in Brittany, Maine and the Vexin, they were involved in Ireland, Spain and even North Africa. More recently they had been fighting as invaders and occupiers in southern Italy, and most notably, Sicily. In England perhaps 15,000 Normans ruled over two million conquered people. Worrying arithmetic. 

William may well have thought at first of a more inclusive Anglo-Norman regime. But events soon changed his mind. There was a nervy start with the 1066 Christmas Day coronation, when Norman guards mistook acclamation at Westminster Abbey for a riot. William supposedly trembled throughout the ceremony. The next five years saw a series of local English rebellions - in Norwich, Exeter (involving Harold’s mother, Gilda) and in the Welsh Marcher lands. They were not co-ordinated so were fairly comfortably defeated, though with increasing violence.

In autumn 1069 a fresh English northern revolt was triggered by King Sweyn’s Danish invasion. Sweyn was bribed to leave, but the English leaders Morcar and Edwin fought on, joined by Edgar Atheling, the Anglo-Saxon royal claimant. Their initial defeat of a Norman force saw a reprisal - a sustained campaign of killing the population north of the Humber, known as the ‘Harrying of the North’. Livestock and crops were destroyed in a brutal scorched earth policy leaving the population to starve and the land unusable for a generation. The worst ever atrocity in Britain, modern estimates put the number of deaths at a vast 100,000-150,000.

Among a general pattern of insurgency, and a Danish invasion and occupation of Norwich, a further revolt took place in the Fenlands. At Ely local leader Hereward was besieged by a Norman force. He held out for a while before defeat, but it tied down Norman military assets for yet another spell. And in 1075 William was challenged by three Norman/Breton earls led by Ralph de Gael. The roots of the quarrel are obscure but the effect was further to weaken Norman rule and the security of the Anglo-Norman state. William’s authority remained shaky yet a feared Danish invasion in 1085-86 did not materialise.

As William had returned to Normandy in 1067 and remained there for much of his reign, effective power was invested in a regency led by his half-brother Bishop Odo, who commissioned the Bayeux tapestry. This man’s greed and abuse of power were legendary – his estates were larger than anyone but the king’s – and he cannot have helped with any bridge building efforts. He faced trial in 1076 for defrauding the Crown and the Diocese of Canterbury, and was imprisoned in 1082 for freelancing a military expedition to Italy. He may have been planning to make himself Pope.              

Them and us

People these days, led by popular culture, tend to assume the Normans are ‘them’ and the English are ‘us’. The Normans brought militarism, feudalism, and the class system, true, but also abolished slavery (perhaps 20% of the country's population were slaves). Says historian Marc Morris, “The notion persists that pre-Conquest England had been a much nicer place - freer, more liberal, with representative institutions and better rights for women. Thus the Conquest is still regarded in many quarters as a national tragedy. But almost all of this is a myth”.  

William’s father died when he was young. His childhood influences were chiefly those of the medieval warrior culture, of which there were some key role models in Anjou - Counts Fulk and Geoffrey Martel. They and their like used terror as a political weapon. Says historian David Bates, “William had a strong sense of personal entitlement that sometimes translated into exceptional ruthlessness”.

The results of this attitude made for grim times. Lanfranco, the Italian cleric brought in to assume some of the administrative burden, cut a miserable figure. In 1073 he complained of "an unbearably awful" situation, "so much unrest among different people in such distress and injuries that I am weary of my life and grieve exceedingly to have lived in times like these". Yet it's worth pointing out that he was at the time angling to leave England for a change of job on the continent.   

Master builders? 

Castles were famously built from the very start of the invasion. But contrary to common belief they were almost all earth and wooden structures, put up quickly by new landlords using local forced labour. They defined territory - like staking a claim in a gold rush area - reinforcing strong points. The constructions were crude fortified positions. 500 were built by 1087, but stone castles weren’t erected in any numbers during William’s reign.

Such fortified strongholds reinforced the feudal link between a local magnate or landlord, and his superior lord. Says Marc Morris, whose work on the Conquest clearly sets the standard, “Kings were able to keep a firmer grip on their kingdoms through their vassals’ ability to defend the borders. Not only did this lead to greater security and stability, it allowed kings to think of themselves as rulers of a country, not simply rulers of a tribe or people, and to govern for all people in their realm”.  

One sphere where the Normans were keen to construct, or reconstruct, was religious buildings. There had been a boom in church and cathedral building in Normandy from earlier in the 11^th century. In 1066 England had 15 cathedrals. Nine had been completely re-built by William’s death in 1087, and the other six by the time of his son Henry I’s death in 1135. The same rebuilding programme was applied to every major Abbey.

It’s perhaps misleading to ascribe all this castle and church building activity simply to the Normans. Variants of castle design “reached parts of Europe not conquered by anyone, and would surely have arrived in England”, says David Bates. Romanesque architecture was here in Edward the Confessor’s Westminster Abbey, and new parish churches had been developing since well before 1066. But Norman occupation gave it a boost. “William’s insistence on grandeur and display did make a difference after 1066 in ways that were very influential. But the labels ‘Norman’ and ‘English’ often do not fit”.

St Cross Winchester

Land and power

It’s sometimes said that the Conquest marked an English tilt away from a Scandinavian to a Southern European orientation. Given the country’s long history of Danish/Viking conflict and then settlement, with a continuing threat from Scandinavian warlords, this is hard to establish. Much of northern and eastern England was Nordic by history and culture, and the Normans themselves were of course descended from Vikings. Norman princess Emma (Aelfgifu in English documents) was married in 1002 to King Aethelred, then in 1017 to Cnut. Part Danish through her mother Gunnor, she was a wealthy and influential figure. Emma's skeleton has been reconstructed in Winchester Cathedral. Her son Edward (the Confessor) was brought up in Normandy and had several Norman advisors. And in any case the English court had long links with the Carolingian political legacy and with Rome.

What of the 1086 Domesday survey? Morris convincingly concludes that it gave the Norman nobility security of title to the estates they grabbed in the Conquest’s early years. It was also a directory for royal officials of who held what (directly or indirectly from the king) providing them with the means to seize and deliver lands, and charge accordingly. It was sometimes said that the Conquest did not make much difference to people in general - they just exchanged one set of overlords for another. But Domesday reveals a cataclysmic change to England’s ruling class. Half the country was now in the hands of just 200 landlords. Bates writes “almost all the major landowners hail from Normandy and Northern France. There’s barely an English tenant-in-chief to be seen”,

Several myths about the Norman Conquest have been punctured. It wasn’t simply a romantic story of Anglo-Saxon England violated by Norman tyranny. And women usually had a hard time under both regimes. But it was still hugely important. There’s no doubt about the dramatic changes involved. Buildings and architecture, of course, plus new military techniques, a new ruling elite and language of government. John Gillingham calls it “a Conquest unparalleled in European history”. He’s right.

Besides the political and social revolution there’s a more intangible legacy. The Normans, concludes Morris, “imported a new set of attitudes and morals, which impinged on everything from warfare to politics to religion to law, and even the status of the peasantry. Many of these changes could be grouped under the heading ‘national identity’. The Conquest matters, in short, because it altered what it meant to be English”.

1066 Harold's Death at Hastings - was it an arrow?

All the sources confirm King Harold Godwinson was killed at Senlac Hill in October 1066. They also agree his death effectively marked the end of the battle of Hastings, one of the most important events in English history. The story was given lasting pictorial resonance through the Bayeux Tapestry. So most of us learned at school that the remains of the English army fled after Harold and his two brothers were killed, the king, famously, by an arrow in his eye. But was this true? 

What does the Tapestry show?

A number of problems accompany the familiar narrative. First, there are two figures shown in the relevant part of the Bayeux Tapestry. One seems to be holding an arrow in his right eye, while another, just adjacent, is being attacked on the ground. It is not clear which one is Harold. They can’t both be him as they are dressed differently and one carries a shield while the other carries an axe.

In other Tapestry scenes with long inscriptions, names are often not close to the figures they represent. It has been pointed out that in the earlier scene of Harold’s supposed oath to William, for instance, Harold’s name appears over William’s head. The phrase ‘Hic Harold rex interfectus est’ is split across both figures. So it’s hard to be dogmatic about this supposed scene of Harold’s death. 

Another problem concerns the Tapestry itself. The arrow piercing the figure in question is not original. It was added during 19th-century French ‘repairs’. In fact 18th century reproductions show this figure holding a spear above his head. The more recent stitching not only turns the shaft into an arrow but lowers its angle as it runs behind his head. Close study of the embroidery’s stitching and pre-repair engravings reveals that at least seven modern arrows have been added - all longer than they would actually have been in medieval times. There are also 17 empty stitch-holes now running in a straight line from the head of the falling Harold in the centre of the scene.

Clearly the Bayeux Tapestry is not holy writ and cannot be relied on to represent events as historical truth. It has been changed by restorers for reasons which are unclear, yet probably reflect the prevailing wisdom brought on by later propaganda. Like all historical evidence the Tapestry, more accurately an embroidery, is best treated with respect tinged with a degree of scepticism.

Contemporary sources

That brings us to a third problem which is always a worry for historians. The closest contemporary sources don’t refer to any arrow in the eye for Harold. No arrow is mentioned in the Carmen de Hastingae Proelio, (Song of the Battle of Hastings) attributed to Guy of Amiens and written sometime before 1068. Nor is it referred to by the Norman commentator William of Jumièges, who wrote early in 1070 and says only that "Harold himself was slain, pierced with mortal wounds."

Other near contemporary sources provide a more detailed account of Harold’s death. They report William and three French knights broke through the English shield wall at the top of the slope, and literally took Harold apart, gruesomely eviscerating him and cutting off his head and legs. This tradition that Harold died by being hacked to pieces reappears in some accounts from the period. So where does the legend of the arrow come from? And why was it created? 

It is first mentioned by Baudri of Borgueil writing in the first decade of the 12^th century, 40 years after the battle. He describes Harold dying from a laetalis arundo (lethal arrow), but given he was keen on classical allusion, he may have taken the phrase directly from Virgil. Several later (12^th and 13^th century) sources also mention it. The Norman writer Wace, who held religious office in Bayeux and may have seen the Tapestry, says the king was grievously wounded ‘above the right eye’. Even the English sources William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon pitch in with Harold being ‘struck in the eye’. 

So why the change? The answer may be due to qualms about the bloody event when the history was being re-written. It was not mandatory to kill kings or other important figures at the time. If not captured for ransom, they might be allowed to withdraw and escape. But at Hastings this would clearly not have suited the Normans. Allowing Harold to leave the battlefield at dusk with much of his army, and then to resupply and reinforce, could have been disastrous for William. He was determined to end the matter decisively and unequivocally. Harold had to be killed there and then. 

Contemporary Norman propagandists might have counselled a new spin on events, especially if William himself had been one of the killer/mutilators. An arrow in the eye smacked of divine providence - an anonymous bolt from the sky ending Harold’s life. Subsequent accounts would have found this version sitting more happily with the emerging chivalric traditions of the time.

Power of propaganda

The Norman spinners were keen on myths. Together with undue reverence by later writers for the presumed truth of the Bayeux Tapestry, these sources have carried a lot of influence among historians across the centuries. And while such chroniclers as the relatively less biased, (and half English) Orderic Vitalis may have been critical of William once he was safely dead, their narrative, including a self-justifying complicity myth, has perhaps enjoyed too much respect through history. 

In particular the idea that Harold, from the powerful Anglo-Danish Godwin clan, promised the English crown to William, probably in 1064 when he was in Normandy, is doubtful. First, William had a very weak claim on grounds either of family descent or possession, the usual Anglo Saxon criteria. Next it was simply not Harold’s to promise, whatever he felt compelled to say at the time (William was holding two family members hostage). Earlier, in 1051, Edward, feeling hemmed in by the Godwin family, may have vaguely agreed not to stand in William’s way. But this can hardly have been cast iron and in any case Edward was now dead. Though beloved of Norman propagandists, if Harold had been forced to sign some oath under duress, it would simply not have counted.  

English royal succession rules at that time varied with circumstances and people, and it is true that William and Harold were each of part Danish descent. But under both Norse and Anglo-Saxon custom a candidate would above all have needed approval from the Council of magnates and senior clerics, the Witan. William would simply never have secured it – there’s no evidence at all for any backing for him in England. In contrast, Harold, whose sister Edith was the widow of the reclusive Edward, and who had himself effectively been doing the job of king for 10 years, received the unanimous support of the Witan a day after Edward’s death. 

It's possible that the young claimant Edgar Aetheling, who had returned a few years earlier from Hungary, might have taken the throne. And he was in fact proclaimed English king after Harold’s death at Hastings. He had a good shout on genealogical grounds as the grandson of Edmund Ironside, but seems not to have been blessed with the other qualities necessary, including obviously, experience - so important in times of crisis. He might conceivably have played the role of a puppet, but if considered, this idea was discarded early on. Unusually perhaps, he lived on into old age.

So almost certainly no arrow in the eye. A paucity of contemporary written source material from the Anglo-Saxon side has meant we have tended to lean on the Tapestry - and on some 12^th century Norman propagandist writers - for a version of events. But just because it’s written down doesn’t mean it’s true, as my old history professor used to emphasise. A sound lesson, and one to be repeated throughout this series.

Welcome - why myths of British history?

In his imaginative and innovative book covering 600 years of the English past, The Outcasts of Time, historian Ian Mortimer observes “The man who has no knowledge of the past has no wisdom”. He’s right. The lack of historical understanding and plain ignorance of so many people is a problem. Why? Because history - or should this be historical myths? - are being used in politics and the media to win support, drive policy and engineer huge and irreversible change.

In reading the philosophy or methodology of history - works such as Popper’s Poverty of Historicism or Berlin’s Historical Inevitability - it’s easy to get caught up in post-modern theory and end up thinking it’s all a waste of time. E H Carr believed the destruction of historical objectivity dangerous. “If the historian necessarily looks at his period through the eyes of his own time”, he asked, “will he not fall into a purely pragmatic view of the facts? If objective truth is unattainable, why should a historian not make up a narrative and claim it is true?”  

This was prescient. What prevents ‘alternative facts’ on the internet, selective evidence, or even conspiracy theories, being pushed as genuine knowledge? In his fine essay ‘What isn’t history’ Mortimer writes, “The realisation that history cannot be defined by a shared understanding of ‘objectivity’ or ‘truth’ or by reference to a set of professional criteria, is both important and empowering. It’s still possible to prove arguments wrong. Alternative interpretations are always possible”.

Post-modernism and its scepticism about historical selection can be overdone. History is a dialogue between past and present. Mortimer is quite clear. “Fair choices, integrity, knowledge and awareness of the limitations are the key attributes” of any historian. Justin Champion would have agreed, “Trust is at the core of all historical practice”. We should pay attention to historical certainties but go beyond them to find meaning in the past that we can use for the present and future.

Why, then, are myths so corrosive? Every country has them, but it’s enough to focus on British examples. There are lots. History is politically powerful, especially when it serves an ideological purpose. A familiar nationalist approach is to make historically based claims on Britain’s place in the world, invoking former achievements as a model for today. An assurance of comforting familiarity. Historian Robert Saunders brilliantly nails it. “As so often history becomes the mask worn by ideology, when it wants to be taken for experience.”   

A flashing red light warns against the hi-jacking of collectively shared experiences of the conflicts defining our history. Saunders is clear “We” is the most dangerous word. “We won the war, we survived the Blitz... It allows us to pin other people’s medals to our chests; to demand gratitude for other people’s sacrifices; and to boast of victories bought with other people’s blood. It creates a false equivalence between past and present, in a way that can dull our sensitivity to change”.   

He defines the core spin of 'Global Britain', that the country could enjoy the same power today as at its colonial peak. The story is not of an empire that has gone, but of a small island punching above its weight - swashbuckling, buccaneering and pluckily winning against the odds. The myth of smallness defining Global Britain teaches dangerous lessons for the future. Any failure can readily be blamed on doomsters and traitors who refuse to believe with enough fervour. It’s central to the UK populist method. Oversimplify complex issues with a catchy slogan, and find ‘the other’ to blame - in this case the EU.

It’s a seductive though completely false message, of course. But many people don’t mind being lied to if it’s what they want to hear. And it appealed to quite a crowd. ‘Take back control’ (though we always had it) was a great slogan. The arguments for Remain were more difficult and nuanced for many people, especially those with little education or those prone to nationalist propaganda. And ‘Project Fear’ was a killer line allowing the ill-informed to shut down any arguments involving numbers, facts, protocols and other details. It could all be airily dismissed like Trump’s ‘fake news’. A huge torrent of lies followed.

British exceptionalism is the essence of Brexit. We’re better than everyone - with ignorance, arrogance and prejudice, boasting of our greatness. It’s a huge embarrassment. But it’s what the credulous, angry and disappointed want to be told. It seems to make them feel better, if only briefly, especially those looking for a cause to latch on to. Liars in politics and the media backed by untraceable funds have harnessed this and generated a self-disabling trauma. As a result the UK is the first major country to turn its back on a rules-based multilateral order.

“I was there” is another line to be wary of. The numbers who can remember the 1940-41 Blitz are really very few. Even fewer are those who heard Churchill’s wartime speeches. But that doesn’t stop a large slug of the population saying, and maybe believing, they were there. The power of collective folk memory (especially that of 1940) when absorbed through family, school and popular culture, is immense. Reporting of trouble spots often includes vox pops from tourists in a holiday resort or airport claiming their proximity endows them with special knowledge of a complex political and military conflict in the same country.

And then there’s ancestry. We’re mostly descended from Edward III of course. But many family trees, not just of the owners of stately homes and castles, can bend the narrative if unwanted facts emerge. Years ago amateur sleuthing on the early Portuguese Madeira colonists revealed a Scot whose name survives on the island. He’d left home around 1415, and ended up siring at least six children, and a Madeiran dynasty. Yet family history claimed he ‘joined the service of Ferdinand and Isabella’, the Reyes Catolicos of 1492 Spanish Reconquista fame, 75 years later. Wrong people, wrong time and wrong country. Otherwise great.

But such self-conscious burnishing of family credentials is a mainly small scale part of myth making. It doesn’t involve big lies to bolster policy like Britain’s hard exit from the EU. As the Brexit myths fade virtually nobody these days pretends there will be any benefits. Most wish the country had never gone down this path. But we’re stuck with it. It’s Britain’s version of the Emperor’s New Clothes and the rest of the world laughs at or pities us. The decision to leave the EU was based on so many absurd notions of what was available and at what cost that it detached British politics from economic and political reality. The UK may well struggle to maintain its union. Widely seen as untrustworthy, the country now has a dangerous collision with the real world.

I’m not a historian. My career was in international communications research and analysis, where there was common understanding at the political and corporate level of the importance of agreed detailed rules for a truly global industry to thrive. Most of the key players and their decisions were guided by experts in the technical, legal, strategic and commercial aspects of wireline, satellite and mobile telecoms. Or at least by intelligent and well educated people with experience in the field. Nationalism in any guise was extremely rare and I never heard anyone bleat about sovereignty.

But I’ve long been interested in history. I try to respect and value history, and indeed most historians. Some brilliant ones are mentioned here. Given the documentary evidence of the more recent past there should be few errors of fact, but maybe more scope for interpretation. Historians in general have been criticised for not calling out the obvious lies and perversions peddled by today’s politicians, media and the public. In fact many of them do just that, though some might ask if this is really their job or their responsibility.

The role of historical myths in the Brexit calamity prompted me to start this blog. But I’ve gone back to 1066 to include a long line of myths framing Britain’s national perspective. I try to acknowledge the key sources, but as it’s a blog, not an academic treatise, there are no footnotes, references or other details to show how much work was done. There will inevitably be mistakes and given the need for a quick read the interpretation may seem simplistic. I’ll sometimes go wrong, so apologise in advance, but will always try to get the shape of things right. These are just my opinions and the responsibility is mine alone.