The next two panels (27 and 28) represent what is in popular history the pivot of the whole story, Harold’s oath. It is, of course, the chief single event in the story of what the Norman writers regard as his treason. Note first that the scene is Bayeux. That is important, both because it explains why this favourite town of William’s should also be the custodian of the document before us, and because it again refers us to Wace and the Roman de Rou. Wace is the only author, I believe, who puts down Bayeux as the scene of Harold’s oath. I will give the words from the Roman de Rou that the reader may judge:
“That he (Harold) would give up to him (William) England when the King Edward should die, and that he (Harold) should take to wife, if he willed, a daughter that he (William) had. This, if he would, he should swear. William ... summoned a Parliament3 at Bayeux as people say,” &c. &c.
William is clothed in all the ritual garments of his authority, garments which were for the rulers of that day almost hierarchic and priestly; he is seated upon a throne, and everything is done by the artist to bring out the solemnity of the occasion. Harold swears with a hand upon either reliquary set upon two neighbouring altars for the purpose of the oath. It is true that the inscription upon the Tapestry tells us nothing of what he is promising upon oath, but we are quite safe in presuming that the story follows Wace and that he is promising the crown of England.
It is, of course, the chief matter of historical dispute in the whole business whether Harold did make that promise or no.
29
30
In the next two panels (29, 30) Harold crosses the sea, touches English land, and comes again into the presence of his king, Edward. The episodes are not very striking. Perhaps the most remarkable is the conventional building with a sort of pier thrust out into the sea, from which a look-out man watches for the fleet and from the windows of which its arrival is also watched. This building makes the division between the first and second of the panels. It is remarkable that we have no written evidence of this interview between Harold and Edward immediately following his landing; but it must have taken place, and evidently contemporaries took it for granted.
31
32
The next two panels (31 and 32) are a very curious instance of that reversing of the historical order by the Tapestry, of which we have already seen a minor example in the case of the messengers sent by William to Guy of Ponthieu. What the artist desired to do was to tell, as a separate little story, the death and burial of Edward; but he conceived of it as an episode running from right to left, and the result is that, in the order of the Tapestry, we have the burial actually coming before the death. Take the two panels separately, read them from right to left, and you get a consecutive story; Edward upon his death-bed, in the upper part of the canvas, is speaking his last words to his lieges with the women and the tonsured priests about him. In the lower part he is represented dead. Then, in the second part, to the left, you have the body carried to Westminster Abbey, with acolytes ringing bells and a retinue of tonsured priests. Perhaps the hand appearing from heaven above Westminster Abbey is designed to indicate the sanctity of the king. Nowhere does the Tapestry follow Wace more closely than in these episodes, and even if we had no other evidence to guide us this portion of the Tapestry alone would be almost sufficient to establish the connection between the poem and the embroidery.
33
34
Then comes the turning-point in the story, as in the series of pictures, and it has been designed to come not quite half way in that series (the 34th out of 76 panels). Harold is offered the crown of England: accepts it, and appears enthroned and in full regalia. To the left you have two messengers holding the typical battle-axe of the Saxon army, and a third messenger pointing towards the death-bed of Edward4 with his right hand, and with his left holding forth the crown. Next you have the same symbolism completed with the picture of Harold enthroned as a king. The early Middle Ages were careful to an extreme of their conventions, which were centuries old and which linked them with Rome. To distinguish by conventional signs between a king and a man who might be an actual ruler but not king, to distinguish the various rituals of various decisive ceremonies, the various accoutrements and the rest, was with them as strict a matter as spelling is with us—I could not put it more strongly. When, therefore, Harold is represented with the orb and cross, the sceptre and the crown, and the long vesture of royalty, seated on the high throne, and presented with the temporal sword, that picture is equivalent to what some long emphatic statement would be in modern times that such and such a man had committed himself to such and such a political action. It means “See here! Harold did really seize the throne!” Scholars have made some play over the presence of Stigand, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in this panel. I may briefly put before the reader what I make of this figure. In the first place, it is a divergence from Wace, who does not mention Stigand. In the second place, it shows Stigand’s rôle as the Ecclesiastic responsible for the crowning of Harold. In the third place, we must note that he is called “The Archbishop.” Now I put all this together and I presume that when the Tapestry was produced, about a generation later than the Conquest, it was desired to make prominent the fact that a man held to be schismatic was responsible for the Coronation, and that the same motives which caused the making of Harold the villain of the piece throughout caused the author to bring Stigand well forward. One or two critics have suggested that Stigand’s irregular position would have prevented a foreign, or a later, artist from calling him “Archbishop.” That seems to me unhistorical. True, William of Malmesbury and every orthodox writer thought Stigand no true Archbishop of Canterbury. He was a “false Archbishop” in their language, but for all purposes of general description he was the Archbishop all the same. Whether Stigand did, as a fact, crown Harold or not is a matter for historical discussion; but it is certain that those who designed the Bayeux Tapestry wanted it to be thought that Harold, a perjurer and a traitor, had been crowned by a man who, in the heat of St. Gregory the Seventh’s reformation of the Church, would be odious to public opinion.
35
36
Between this panel and the next are a group of figures representing “the populace,” who do homage to the new king. Then come two panels, separated one from the other and dividing, as it were, the first half of the Epic from the second. These two panels (35 and 36) give the comet, a figure of Harold, and the arrival of an English ship upon Norman land.
It was just after Low Sunday of the year 1066, on the Tuesday, I think, that a great comet was seen in France and England. Modern science has affected to regard it as Halley’s Comet, which it may possibly have been—but modern science should remember that the variation of these bodies, and the confusion of our evidence upon their movements in the remote past, gives no one a right to certitude in such a matter. Nor is it of the least importance. So far as we can fix a date, 25th April 1066 seems to have been the moment when this star was first seen. At any rate, it was an apparition which vastly moved the opinion of Europe at the time.
What