The Collected Works of Hilaire Belloc. Hilaire Belloc

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СКАЧАТЬ of the brothers of Harold, all the three shields that appear have some mark. There is no need to labour the point, nor even to point out the elaborate design upon one of the shields portrayed in the pursuit of the defeated army.

      It is evident that we are dealing with a work produced at a time when it was thought normal that any man of distinction should carry his mark upon his shield, and, I repeat, to think that normal was the state of mind of the middle twelfth century at earliest and not of the mid-eleventh century at all.

      There is just one good argument and only one for the contemporary character of the document; that argument is the argument from tradition. It is an argument to which I shall always offer the greatest reverence, particularly as it has been particularly despised by the superficial but popular University historians of the last century. Tradition is certainly the binding element in social memory, and if one could discover an active tradition that the embroidery of Bayeux had been made by the wives of those who fought at Hastings, though existing evidence not traditional would compel us to reject that tradition in its absolute form, yet it would be our duty to consider closely how the tradition arose and what it might mean—for instance, it might mean that the existing work was the adaptation of an earlier work. But, as a fact, the tradition is not old. It was not of popular but of academic, and therefore of worthless, origin. The later Middle Ages seem to have known nothing of it; the Chapter of the Cathedral, which was the conservator of the document, bears no testimony of the sort. To call the Bayeux Tapestry “Queen Matilda’s Tapestry” seems to have been nothing but the guesswork of an antiquarian don. Let us leave it at that.

      Another evidence of date is the fact (to which I shall make continual allusion in the text) that the Bayeux Tapestry follows fairly closely the Roman de Rou, Wace’s poem describing the Conquest; and that poem cannot be earlier than the middle of the twelfth century—it is usually put as late as the last third of the twelfth. Not only is Wace followed, but certain other authorities which help to date the production.

      Now this would be quite conclusive but for one rebutting argument, the value of which I leave to the judgment of the reader. The written sources which the Tapestry appears to follow would repose upon certain common traditions, memories, and earlier documents, and the Tapestry might be imagined to repose upon the same. But the general rule in tracing the sources of human work of this sort is that the written account precedes the pictorial and serves as a basis for it, while the convergence of this evidence with the evidence of accoutrements and dress leaves little doubt.

We have in the Bayeux Tapestry something certainly later than 1140,1 almost certainly later than 1150, probably as late as 1160, but, on the other hand, certainly prior to the date 1200.

1. The bier of Edward the Confessor is designed in the twelfth century fashion, not in the eleventh—the long vestment of the royal personages throughout is a twelfth-century not an eleventh-century type. The description of the coat of mail in Wace (verses 6522 and the following) is that of the Tapestry; and most important of all the coat of mail of the Tapestry is no longer the mere breastplate, but the full coat of the Crusading period.

      It is true that we have very little information upon the eleventh century armour, but with the Crusades we do get a full description, and we have a right to judge by what we know rather than by what we do not know. Thus Ordericus Vitalis remarks the full coat as a novelty.

      The helmet with a nasal is not now in any document before the seal of Baldwin, the late 1115, but after that date it is common, as one may see in the seal of Charles of Flanders or of Matthew of Montmorency. Indeed, the seal of William the Conqueror himself gives no sign of the nasal, and the same is true of the seals of the First Crusade. This kind of helmet is wholly twelfth century; but remark that William, in the Chronicles, lifted his helmet to show his face. So there is here doubt.

      NOTES

       The corresponding reference-numbers will be found in the following text.

2. Many of our historians carelessly talk of Harold being brought to Rouen. We have no proof of this. There is just one allusion in the Chronicles to the place where delivery of Harold’s body was made from Guy to William, and the place mentioned is what we should expect, a frontier town, Eu. The Palatium does not only mean a place, it also means an institution; and though Rouen was William’s chief city, whenever he moved, his clerks and staff of government—that is, his “Palatium”—moved with him.

3. Mr. Oman in his version of the affair makes Bonneville the scene of the oath. I have not seen the proof of this. The two fundamental pieces of evidence—Wace and the Tapestry—both say Bayeux. William had a castle above the river Touques at Bonneville, and ruins of it, or of a later construction upon its site, can be seen to-day; but it is a good two days’ march from Bayeux.

      The French word “parliament” meant, of course, any general assembly for discussion, and was here used of something earlier than any representative assembly, though these were already springing up in the Spanish March of the Pyrenees, to which district we owe the origin of representative institutions.

4. I have never understood why this third messenger should have been confused with Harold himself. The Latin inscription is quite clear: “Here they gave to Harold the Crown of King.” The people holding the axes are not Harold, neither is the man offering the crown, that I can see.

5. The Tapestry, of course, does not show Freeman’s famous “Palisade,” and that for an excellent reason. The Palisade never existed outside the imagination of Oxford.

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      The first three sections of the Bayeux Tapestry must be taken together, for they describe one incident, which is the departure of Harold from Bosham the port of Chichester, and a manor of his own. Of strictly contemporary evidence to that journey we have none. We can only guess that the year in which it was taken was the year 1064. As to its motive the Bayeux Tapestry gives of course the current Norman version, or rather hints at it. Edward the Confessor is in his palace at Westminster. It is important to note the conventional signs of his rank, the sceptre and the crown. It is the reappearance of the same symbols in the crowning of Harold—which was in the Norman version his supreme act of treason—that is particularly insisted upon. Edward, thus officially presented as it were, is giving a message: that is certainly the symbolism of the attitude, and it is exceedingly likely, though not equally certain, that the person to whom the message is being given is intended for Harold. But it is remarkable that the inscription here says nothing of the nature of that message, and that the point of capital importance—William of Malmesbury’s assertion that Harold was sent by Edward to assure William of his succession to the English throne—is not set out. Taking Wace as the basis of the Tapestry—and this is the best hypothesis—Harold sailed to release from William’s custody his brother Wulfnoth, who had been kept as a hostage in Normandy СКАЧАТЬ