Was Count Eustace II of Boulogne the patron of the Bayeux Tapestry?

PII: S0304-4181( 98 )00029-3

Journal of Medieval History, Vol. 25, No. 3, pp. 155–185, 1999  1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Printed in The Netherlands. 0304-4181 / 99 $ – see front matter 1 0.00

Was Count Eustace II of Boulogne the patron of the Bayeux Tapestry? Andrew Bridgeford 44 Esplanade, St. Helier, Jersey JE4 8 PN, Channel Islands

Abstract The orthodox account of the Bayeux Tapestry takes Bishop Odo of Bayeux to have been its probable patron. This article argues that a very feasible alternative candidate for the Tapestry’s patron is Count Eustace II of Boulogne. The traditional theory fails to explain the prominence of Count Eustace in the Tapestry, given that, with English support, he launched an attack on Odo’s castle at Dover in 1067 and that a close kinsman of his (his nepos) was captured by Odo’s men. The relationship between Eustace and Odo, post-1067, is seen as the key to understanding the Tapestry’s origin. It is suggested that the Tapestry was commissioned by Eustace as a gift to Odo and that it formed part of the process of their reconciliation. This thesis is examined in the context of the Tapestry’s relatively sympathetic attitude to Harold and the probability of English design and manufacture. The minor characters Wadard and Vital are identified conjecturally as Odo’s knights who defended Dover castle against the Anglo–Boulonnais attack, a conjecture for which there is at least some circumstantial evidence. The strength of the identification of the figure traditionally taken to be Eustace is also discussed.  1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Bayeux Tapestry; Bishop Odo of Bayeux; Count Eustace II of Boulogne

When in the late 1720s Bernard de Montfaucon brought the Bayeux Tapestry to the attention of the scholarly world he reported the local tradition that this superlative and now famous embroidery of the Norman Conquest was the work of William the Conqueror’s Queen Mathilda. Despite the absence of any supporting evidence, this local myth was widely accepted as true. Even today the Bayeux Tapestry is sometimes still known in France as ‘La Tapisserie de la Reine Mathilde’. Scholars everywhere have long since abandoned the belief that the Tapestry was commissioned by Queen Mathilda. Certain internal evidence, described below, has rather pointed towards William the Conqueror’s half brother, Bishop Odo of Bayeux, as being the most likely patron of the work. In the absence of any other candidate, the view that Odo was ‘probably’ the patron of the Bayeux Tapestry has become something of a settled orthodoxy; and on occasions the ‘probably’ has been hardened into a statement of fact. But it should not be forgotten that the case for Odo is conjectural, and that it has ANDREW BRIDGEFORD LL.B., M. Phil. is a practising lawyer. His previous publications have been on legal matters. He is currently working on a book on the Bayeux Tapestry and an article on Wace.

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weaknesses. In the words of Sir David Wilson, it is ‘a strong, but not overwhelming, case’.1 We should be alive to the possibility that it might be completely wrong. The choice of patron is not simply between Odo and Mathilda. If we cast our eyes around the eleventh-century horizon at least one other possible patron comes into view. Count Eustace II of Boulogne (who ruled as count from about 1047 until his death in about 1088) was one of William’s most powerful and prestigious non-Norman allies at Hastings and he is generally identified as appearing in a highly prominent place in the Tapestry. As I shall attempt to show, circumstantial evidence exists suggesting that Eustace, not Odo, was the Tapestry’s patron. The evidence in favour of Odo actually fits Eustace at least equally well; and in some respects it fits him better. Although a definitive conclusion is not possible, I hope to show that the theory that favours Odo should not be uncritically accepted and that Eustace is a very feasible alternative candidate.

1. The case for Odo The evidence in favour of Odo being the patron of the Tapestry seems at first sight quite persuasive. It can be summarized as follows.2 • The Tapestry gives Odo an importance in the story which is significantly greater than that which is allotted to him in the surviving contemporary written sources. In those sources he is referred to as only one of two distinguished ecclesiastics accompanying the Norman expedition. In the Tapestry Odo is not just the only Norman ecclesiastic identified, he appears in some of the defining moments of the story. Odo is almost certainly depicted as present when William commands the invasion fleet to be built and again as blessing a meal soon after the Norman landing at Pevensey. He is seen twice more in the embroidery and on these occasions he is also named. We see him taking part in a council of war held with William and Robert of Mortain. And we see him rallying the young Norman troops at a critical juncture in the battle of Hastings. • The Tapestry appears to site Harold’s oath in favour of William as taking place at Odo’s cathedral city of Bayeux. According to William of Poitiers the oath was made at Bonneville.3 Orderic Vitalis places it at Rouen.4 It has been suggested that Harold’s oath may have been made at more than one place and that this may explain the discrepancies between the Tapestry and these written sources. Whatever the truth, it 1

Sir David Wilson, The Bayeux Tapestry (London, 1985), 202. See Chapter 1 of David Bernstein’s The Mystery of the Bayeux Tapestry (London, 1986); N.P. Brooks and H.E. Walker, ‘The Authority and Interpretation of the Bayeux Tapestry’, Proceedings of the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies, 1 (1979), 1–34 and 191–9, reprinted in The Study of the Bayeux Tapestry, ed. R. Gameson (Woodbridge, 1997), 63–92. 3 The Gesta Guillelmi of William of Poitiers, edited and translated by R.H.C. Davis and Marjorie Chibnall (Oxford, 1998), 70–71. 4 The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, edited and translated by Marjorie Chibnall, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1969–1980), vol. 2, 134–5. 2

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was noted that the Tapestry indirectly flatters Odo by associating the oath with Bayeux. • It was also discovered during the nineteenth century that two minor characters named in the Tapestry, Wadard and Vital, had at least one thing in common: both are recorded in the Domesday Book as being, in 1086, tenants of Odo in post-Conquest Kent.5 Wadard held lands from Odo in several other counties as well. It was later discovered that both Wadard and Vital were associated in pre-Conquest documents ´ with the Norman abbey of Preaux, as was Odo’s father Herluin de Conteville.6 The only other minor male character named in the Tapestry is Turold. He is probably the dwarf seen tending the horses of William’s messengers at (or near) the castle of Beaurain; some, however, have argued that the name Turold refers, in fact, to one of those messengers. Unlike Wadard and Vital, Turold was a common name and his identity remains uncertain. But the suggestion has been made that the Turold of the Tapestry can be equated with another tenant of Odo in Kent after the Conquest. The precise reason why the designer of the Tapestry should have wanted to include minor characters like Wadard, Vital and Turold has not been explained. But Odo’s certain association with the first two of these figures, and his possible association with the third, again pointed to the Bishop of Bayeux as being the most likely patron. • To the above may also be added the Tapestry’s long connection with Bayeux. The earliest known written reference to the Tapestry is contained in an inventory of the possessions of Bayeux Cathedral dated 1476. From this it is easy to assume, though impossible to verify, that the Tapestry has had a strong connection with Bayeux ever since the time of its inception. For these reasons the Mathilda theory gradually became superseded during the course of the nineteenth century by the belief that it was probably Odo who was the Tapestry’s patron. Various aspects of the Tapestry have also pointed to English design and manufacture.7 In outline the pertinent points are these: certain spellings and word forms in the inscriptions are suggestive of this conclusion; England was the home of a great tradition of embroidery by women – a tradition unmatched in Normandy; and the best artistic parallels appears also to be with English work. Although Wolfgang Grape has recently argued that the closest artistic parallels are French, Richard Gameson has countered that collectively the parallels are not as impressive as those that can be drawn with contemporary English artwork.8 The conclusion that the Tapestry is an English 5

Thomas Amyot, ‘A Defence of the Early Antiquity of the Bayeux Tapestry’, Archaeologia, 19 (1821), 192–208; Bolton Corney, Researches and Conjectures on the Bayeux Tapestry (London, 1836, 2nd. rev. ed. 1838). 6 Charles Prentout, ‘Essai d’identification des personnages inconnus de la Tapisserie de Bayeux’, Revue Historique, 176 (1935), 14–23; reprinted and translated as ‘An Attempt to Identify Some Unknown Characters in the Bayeux Tapestry’, in: Study, ed. Gameson, 21–30. 7 For a recent discussion of the evidence see Richard Gameson ‘The Origin, Art and Message of the Bayeux Tapestry’, in: Study, ed. Gameson, 157–211. 8 Wolfgang Grape, The Bayeux Tapestry, Monument to a Norman Triumph (Munich, 1994); Richard Gameson, ‘The Origin, Art and Message of the Bayeux Tapestry’, in: Study, ed. Gameson, 157–211.

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work has been neatly dovetailed with the hypothesis that Odo was its patron by supposing that Odo had the Tapestry made in Kent, where he had his power base after the Conquest. One of the religious houses in Canterbury – St Augustine’s – has been suggested as a possible place of manufacture, but the evidence for this seems suggestive rather than compelling.9 Wilson has suggested Winchester as an alternative.10 Not everyone agrees that the Tapestry would have been intended for an ecclesiastical setting. But Gameson has clearly emphasised how the overarching message of the Tapestry would have been fundamentally religious to the eleventh-century eye: it concerns the sanctity of oaths made on holy relics and the power of divine retribution. The supposition that the Tapestry was intended for the occasion of the consecration of Bayeux Cathedral in 1077 does not seem unreasonable. It is widely accepted that the Tapestry does not represent the purest, most aggressive Norman point of view: at the very least Harold seems to be treated with fairness, as a tragic figure caught in a dilemma rather than an out-and-out villain. That something of the English viewpoint pervades the embroidered narration is accepted by many scholars; though not by everyone. Perhaps because of his commitment to the thesis that the Tapestry was made in Normandy, Grape is one scholar who does not accept that any aspect of the English viewpoint has intruded into the telling of the story. In his eyes the Tapestry bounds along in a relentlessly pro-Norman fashion from start to finish. Such a view can only be maintained by a continually strained interpretation of the visual evidence. For if we came for the first time to the Tapestry with the expectation that it will present us with the obvious pro-Norman case, such as we find it set out by William of Poitiers, we would be more than once surprised. We see nothing of the murder of Alfred, Edward’s brother, in 1036, for which Harold’s father, Godwin, was alleged to have been partly responsible; no express mention is made of what is really the substantial plank in William’s case – the apparent designation by Edward in 1051; the purpose of Harold’s mission in 1064 / 5 is not made explicit; Harold appears God-fearing and heroic in the first part of the Tapestry; the oath in favour of William seems to be obtained from Harold under threat of his continued detention in Normandy and its contents are not spelt out; Harold’s demeanour on his return from Normandy seems inconsistent with the view that Edward would regard the outcome as a success; Edward appears to nominate Harold on his deathbed; Harold does not seize the Crown but is offered it by an assembly of people who point back at Edward’s last wishes; there is no mention of the papal blessing of William’s expedition (unless the papal banner is depicted on the mast of William’s ship or is one of the various other banners shown on the Tapestry); the fact that Stigand had been excommunicated is passed over without comment and he is given his formal title of Archbishop; moreover, contrary to the Norman case, this cleric of dubious status is not expressly shown as the officiant of the coronation; and subsequent to that coronation the Tapestry does not doubt Harold’s status as REX ANGLORUM. Cumulatively, these aspects of the Tapestry leave one with the distinct impression that 9

See Brooks and Walker, ‘The Authority and Interpretation of the Bayeux Tapestry’, 1–34 and 191–9; reprinted in Study, ed. Gameson, 63–92. 10 Wilson, The Bayeux Tapestry (London, 1985), 212.

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the designer was attempting to be as sympathetic to the memory of Harold as the circumstances allowed. With this in mind, the suggestion has been made by David Bernstein and others 11 that the Tapestry contains two meanings: one for the Norman patron and one more hidden meaning representing an English point of view. Bernstein’s argument that a pro-English sub-text was surreptitiously included by the English designer and / or emboiderers seems implausible, for it implies that the Tapestry was hardly supervised by the conjectured Norman patron or his associates as work progressed. Whilst we may have no empirical knowledge to show how closely a contemporary patron would have supervised the making of a politico-religious wall-hanging, close supervision of every stage of the Bayeux Tapestry seems, a priori, highly likely: the sheer scale of the work; the large resources that must have been devoted to it; the great importance of its subject matter; and the probable intention that it should have an ecclesiastical setting: all these considerations point toward the likelihood of close supervision. The divorce which Bernstein seeks to make between the content of the Tapestry and the views of its patron is thus an uneasy one. Against the ‘two-meanings’ view Richard Gameson has persuasively argued that the ‘general’ beholder in the eleventh century would have come away with one single over-arching meaning: and that was that Harold was not a contemptible figure, but a tragic hero who chose the wrong course when placed in a dilemma, one who incurred the wrath of God for his perjury and thus subjected himself and his nation to defeat and humiliation.12 When the comet appears in the upper border it does so, by implication, at the behest of God and from that point on the Tapestry’s story unfolds with divine inevitability towards its tragic conclusion. The punishment of Harold and his nation by a God who was both retributive and interventionist in the earthly arena was the explanation for the events at Hastings favoured by the eleventh-century mind. What is noteworthy is that this viewpoint, as presented in the Tapestry, does not seek to vilify Harold in the manner of William of Poitiers, for whom Harold was ‘a man soiled with lasciviousness, a cruel murderer, resplendent with plundered riches, and an enemy of the good and the just’.13 On the contrary, the Harold of the Tapestry comes across as a man who is in principle both brave and noble; and though his downfall is the central theme of the work, it is a downfall which is presented to us as having been caused not by outright villainy, but rather by mistakes committed in extenuating circumstances. Harold is thus neither vilified nor exculpated. His errors are laid bare, their consequences shown; but at the same time the Tapestry invites us to mitigate our judgement of him as a person. It is surely legitimate to ask whether a work which reflects this particular agenda truly bears the imprint of Odo’s patronage. Two reasons, neither in themselves compelling, should at least prompt us to survey the field for other candidates. Firstly, there is something odd about supposing that the Bayeux Tapestry was made to the orders of someone so close to the Conqueror, so soon after the Conquest, at a time 11

Bernstein, The Mystery of the Bayeux Tapestry; see also Richard D. Wissolik, ‘The Saxon code in the Bayeux Tapestry’, Annuale Mediaevole, 19 (1979) 69–97. 12 Gameson ‘The Origin, Art and Message of the Bayeux Tapestry’, 157–211. 13 William of Poitiers, 114–5.

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when its eventual outcome must have remained considerably uncertain. This difficulty is of course the very difficulty which those, like Bernstein, seek to overcome by supposing that the designer and embroiderers had sufficient free rein surreptitiously to include their own version of events in a work of apparent Norman propaganda. It is of course possible that holding the Tapestry up for comparison against the account of William of Poitiers is a little misleading: William of Poitiers may represent the extreme end of a spectrum of Norman views about Harold, and other views may have been current but unrecorded. But there just seems too much in the Tapestry that could be taken as subversive for us to be entirely comfortable with the view that the work was produced at Odo’s command, as a quasi-official production of the Norman court. If we take as improbable Bernstein’s suggestion that the English designer and embroiderers worked more or less independently from their patron, we are surely led to doubt Odo’s patronage in the first place. The second point is an extension of the first. Although it would be dubious to try to deduce too much about the Tapestry’s patronage solely on the basis of the surviving reports of Odo’s character, such considerations certainly do not add to our confidence that we owe the work to him. I thus do not seek to press the point too far, but the picture we get of Odo from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and from Orderic Vitalis is of a person who is ambitious, worldly and haughty and one, moreover, whose attitude to the defeated English was at best one of disdain and at worst one of outright cruelty. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (version D) tells us that when William returned to Normandy in March 1067 ‘Bishop Odo and Earl William [Fitz-Osbern] were left behind here and they built castles throughout this nation, and oppressed the wretched people’.14 Orderic informs us that during the same period Odo and William Fitz-Osbern ‘were so swollen with pride that they would not deign to hear the reasonable pleas of the English or give them impartial judgement’.15 Odo also took a leading part in suppressing the rebellions of Waltheof and Ralf the Staller in 1075 and in subduing the north of the country in 1080. There is some evidence to suggest that William of Poitiers had close relations with Odo,16 and this leads me to wonder whether Poitiers’ opinion of Harold may actually be closer to Odo’s own views than the assessment that comes across in the Tapestry. True, Odo was a patron of the arts and of learning at his cathedral and the very extreme views put by Orderic in William’s mouth at his death-bed may well do Odo an injustice.17 But the overall impression of him as a very secular and zealous prosecutor of the Conquest remains. Referring to the Bayeux Tapestry, Sir Frank Stenton wrote in 1957: 18 ‘Many hard words can fairly be said about bishop Odo of Bayeux but there was something more than crude ambition about a man who could commission and display a work so generous in its treatment of a defeated enemy.’ But is this putting the cart before the horse? How certain is the case that Odo did commission the Tapestry? It would certainly be natural to suppose that an embroidery commissioned by Odo would represent a far more undiluted, pro-Norman piece of propaganda, one which would at least have 14

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, translated and edited by M.J. Swanton (London, 1996), 200. Orderic Vitalis, vol. 2, 202–3. See William of Poitiers, xvii. 17 Orderic Vitalis, vol. 4, 98–101; David Bates, ‘The Character and Career of Bishop Odo of Bayeux (1049 / 50–1097)’, Speculum, L (1975), 1–20. 18 The Bayeux Tapestry, ed. Sir Frank Stenton (2nd ed. London, 1965), 23. 15 16

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expressly mentioned Edward’s nomination of William in 1051 (which was truly the first act in the drama) and generally presented us with a far less favourable portrait of Harold. The deduction that Odo was the Tapestry’s patron is a hasty one based on inconclusive evidence. Odo’s position as William’s closest associate and the surviving reports of his character should combine to give us pause and we should seriously examine whether there might be some other explanation for his prominence in the Tapestry and for the appearance of Wadard, Vital and Turold.

2. The case for Eustace The case for Eustace is founded upon his own prominence in the Tapestry. We see this very independent-minded vassal of the Count of Flanders during the course of the battle of Hastings, swinging round to point out Duke William as the latter raises his nose-piece to dispel rumours of his death (Fig. 1). The Tapestry shows us the trio of Odo, William and Eustace in quick succession and in close alliance. Several aspects of Eustace’s depiction seem to underline his importance in the eyes of the designer and I shall return to these shortly. But there is, of course, a fundamental preliminary question: is the figure intended to represent Eustace at all? Today we only see the letters E. . . .TIVS; and of these, the letters E and TI are themselves a nineteenth-century reconstruction based on the surviving stitch holes and even the reconstructed T is only half shown. I believe that the conclusion that the full name would have spelt EVSTATIVS is correct and that the figure is indeed intended to represent Count Eustace II of Boulogne. I am comforted in this view by the fact that it is shared by practically all authorities on the Tapestry. But I shall ask for the indulgence of the reader in postponing discussion of this fundamental point until the end of this article. Instead I wish to pass immediately on to the question which I take to be the central mystery of the Bayeux Tapestry: why is Eustace depicted with such prominence in an embroidery traditionally taken to have been commissioned by Normans? Indeed why is Eustace depicted at all? For in 1067 Eustace rebelled against the Normans by attacking Dover castle. The attack, although well planned, degenerated into a complete fiasco. As a result of this ignominious failure, Eustace was exiled from England for several years and only became reconciled with William after some period of time. Why would the Normans give such prominence to a rebel? Even after the reconciliation, whose exact date we do not know, it seems unlikely that such prominence would be given to someone who had so recently rebelled. The point seems to have been glossed over too often. And it is vital to note that a further specific enigma underlies Eustace’s prominence in an embroidery traditionally taken to have been commissioned by Odo.

3. The specific enigma of Eustace’s prominence The important point is that when Eustace rebelled in 1067, he did so by attacking Dover castle, in other words Odo’ s castle. The significance of this may well have been underestimated. It is my contention that a correct understanding of why and by whom

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Fig. 1. Eustace. The Bayeux Tapestry – 11th Century. By special permission of the City of Bayeux.

the Tapestry was made depends on a true understanding of the relationship between Odo and Count Eustace in the aftermath of the incident at Dover in the autumn of 1067. At the time of the attack, William was absent in Normandy and Odo was vice-regent of all England jointly with William Fitz-Osbern. Specifically, Odo was the Earl of Kent; Dover was his town; and the castle at Dover was Odo’s castle too: ‘As for the castle at Dover,’ says William of Poitiers, ‘[William] entrusted it to his brother Odo, together with adjacent south coast, which goes by the old name of Kent’.19 When Eustace attacked, the 19

William of Poitiers, 164–165.

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written sources tell us that Odo and Hugh de Montfort were together the guardians of Dover castle (though both were absent); but in the circumstances the likelihood is that Hugh was Odo’s castellan and that Odo was in overall command. Shirley Brown is one of the few to have taken the enigma of Eustace’s prominence seriously.20 She has approached the problem from another angle. She does not doubt that Odo was the patron. But she suggests that the Tapestry was made at a time when he and William had already begun to quarrel in the 1080s.21 In this she departs from the generally accepted view that it was most likely to have been made well before Odo’s downfall. Brown suggests that the purpose of depicting Eustace with such prominence was to elicit William’s forgiveness in favour of Odo by alluding to the fact that he had already forgiven the rebel Eustace and that Wadard, Vital and Turold were the vassals to whom Odo entrusted the organisation of the making of the Tapestry while he lay imprisoned at Rouen. But the role attributed to Odo in the Tapestry would surely, in William’s eyes, have aggravated rather than mitigated Odo’s crimes (whatever they were) and there is nothing to suggest that any of Wadard, Vital or Turold would have been in a position to organise the production of such a massive work. Brown is surely right to draw attention to Eustace’s prominence but her explanation for it does not ring true. There is another explanation for the prominence of both Eustace and Odo, and it seems more plausible. The most that can be deduced with certainty from the unusual stress placed by the Tapestry upon Odo is that he had some connection with the work. The theory that this connection was in the nature of patronage does not exhaust the possibilities; and it fails adequately to account for the prominence of Eustace. My alternative suggestion is that the prominence of Count Eustace can be explained by supposing him to be the Tapestry’s patron and that the prominence of Odo is accounted for by the fact that the Tapestry was intended as a gift by Eustace to Odo as ´ ˆ part of the process of their reconciliation following the Dover debacle. The prominence of Odo is thus explained by the fact that he was the Tapestry’s recipient rather than its patron: in other words, as a result of flattery rather than self-promotion. Odo, of course, appears four times in the surviving embroidery, Eustace only once. But qualitatively, as opposed to numerically, Eustace’s prominence should not be underestimated. As from the moment that battle commences at Hastings, only Odo, William and Eustace are named as participants on the Norman side.22 There must have been many soldiers whose acts of individual courage might have called for some special mention. Many, too, were the participants fighting for the Norman side who by reason of their rank and prestige alone might have had some expectation of being depicted in an embroidery of the day. But, unlike William of Poitiers, or Wace a century later, it was no part of the designer’s brief to produce a list of who was there and who did what. Instead, out of an army that must have numbered several thousand,23 it is surely of significance 20

S. Brown, ‘The Bayeux Tapestry: Why Eustace, Odo and William?’ Anglo-Norman Studies, 12 (1990), 7–28. See also Werkmeister, ‘The Political Ideology of the Bayeux Tapestry’, 535–595. 22 There is a symmetry in that only three Englishmen are named in the course of the battle: Harold and his two brothers, Gyrth and Leofwine. 23 B.S. Bachrach estimates the probable number of men in William’s army at about 14,000, of whom about 10,000 may have been effective fighting men: ‘Some Observations on the Military Administration of the Norman Conquest’, Proceedings of the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies, 7 (1986), 1–25; others have suggested slightly lower figures but the number is still in the thousands. 21

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that only Odo, William and Eustace are named in the Tapestry as taking part in the actual battle on the Norman side. If we subtract William from this trio, because his presence could hardly have been ignored, we are left with just Odo and Eustace. If there are any clues as to the originating circumstances of the Tapestry they must lie in our identifying in what respects the designer has been idiosyncratic in choosing what to put in and what to leave out. The choice of Odo and Eustace, and no others, as named battle companions of the Conqueror attests to the relation between them being fundamental to the reasons why the Tapestry was made. Moreover, Eustace’s placement in the Tapestry makes him not simply a participant at Hastings in some undefined way. At the most critical juncture in the battle he is the one who takes pride of place immediately adjacent to the Norman Duke. The preceding scene shows us the Norman army suffering heavy casualties. The rout is stopped in the Tapestry by the combined efforts of Odo, William and Eustace. Odo is seen encouraging the young knights, waving his bishop’s mace with aplomb; William raises his nose-piece to dispel rumours of his death; and Eustace, carrying a great banner, jockeys into position to point out the still-living Norman Duke. The nose-piece raising incident is found in William of Poitiers and in the Carmen de Hastingae Proelio, attributed to Bishop Guy of Amiens; but unlike the Bayeux Tapestry neither of those sources shows Eustace or Odo as active during this critical stage in the battle.24 Promptly after that, the Tapestry moves on to depict a renewed and successful assault on the English position and the victorious killing of Harold. There is therefore a lot of force in Shirley Brown’s conclusion that ‘the sequential arrangement [in the Bayeux Tapestry] of the chosen highlights of the Battle of Hastings was carefully orchestrated so that the ultimate French victory is seen as a direct result of an action stemming from the alliance of Odo of Bayeux, Duke William and Eustace of Boulogne’.25 There are other clues, too, which suggest that in the eyes of the designer Eustace was particularly important. His name is captioned as a single word in the upper border. Only on three previous occasions does any writing at all appear in the upper border and each of these previous occasions seems to denote a moment of significance in the story.26 Eustace’s banner is also the largest and most elaborate banner in the whole Tapestry (I shall return later to the problem of its significance); and it flies breezily in the upper border. It is also noteworthy that of the sequence of twenty-three archers in the lower border under the battle scene, only one wears a coloured tunic. I cannot guess the reason for that, but what is apparent is that the archer with the coloured tunic is sited immediately below Eustace. The cumulative effect of all these devices is to draw the eye to the Count of Boulogne.

24

In the latter half of the twelfth century, Wace also attests to the tradition that Odo helped reverse the rout though he has no account of the nose-piece raising incident: Le Roman de Rou de Wace, ed. A.J. Holden (Paris 1970–73), vol. 3, ll. 8107–8128. 25 S. Brown, ‘Why Eustace . . . ’, at 17. 26 The three previous occasions are: (1) the appearance of Halley’s comet; (2) when Edward communicates his last wishes; and (3) when William takes the decision to invade England upon (or so it appears) the advice of Odo. I ignore the part of the Tapestry where the upper border disappears altogether during the crossing by William’s fleet.

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4. The attack on Dover castle ` William of Poitiers, William of Jumieges, and Orderic Vitalis all agree on the essentials regarding Eustace’s attack on Dover castle in 1067.27 We learn from them that it was a well-planned assault, timed to coincide with the absence of Odo and Hugh de Montfort and the bulk of their knights to the north of the Thames.28 William himself was absent in Normandy. The precise date of the attack is not known for certain, but it is likely to have occurred at some point after 1 September 1067 when Eustace’s nominal overlord, Count Baldwin V of Flanders, died.29 Eustace had the benefit of support from a sizeable contingent from the nearby regions of Kent and the promise of support from Englishmen from wider afield if he could maintain a siege of two days. But the decision was taken to attempt to seize the undermanned castle then and there rather than risk a long siege. Several hours of intense fighting ensued. At length the morale of the attackers began to flag. The defenders threw open the gates and launched a courageous sally of their own. The Boulonnais knights were scattered in confusion amidst cries (incorrect as it turned out) that Odo had returned at the head of a mighty army. Eustace’s noble nepos (a word traditionally translated as ‘nephew’), taking part in his first battle, was captured and Eustace himself only just managed to regain Boulogne with the remnant of his forces. The identity of the young nepos is not clear. Professor Barlow, following a lead made by Catherine Morton and Hope Muntz, has suggested that the word should be translated as ‘grandson’ and he has therefore surmised that Eustace’s first marriage with Godgifu, Edward the Confessor’s sister, was not (as is usually thought) childless but bore a daughter who in turn had a son who had reached military age in 1067.30 Eustace, then, on this account, took with him on the attack on Dover a young pretender to the English throne. But whilst it is true that William of Poitiers most frequently used nepos to mean grandson, the use of the term to mean ‘nephew’ is also exemplified in his writing.31

27

` William of Poitiers, 182–185; William of Jumieges, Gesta Normannorum Ducem, edited and translated by E.M.C. Van Houts 2 vols. (Oxford, 1995), vol. 2, 176–179; Orderic Vitalis, vol. 2, 204–207. It appears that the first Norman castle was situated in the area of the Saxon church of St Mary-in-Castro and the Roman lighthouse: see Jonathan Coad, Dover Castle (London, 1995), 12–18; Dover Castle, ed. R. Allen Brown (London, 1974). Immediately after Hastings William spent eight days at Dover strengthening the preexisting Anglo-Saxon fortifications. Between then and the time of Eustace’s attack the Normans would have had a further year to improve the defensive capabilities of the site. From the marine side it formed a natural barrier: William of Poitiers tells us picturesquely that by 1066 the rock-face had been chipped away with iron tools ‘so that it is like a wall of towering height equal to the flight of an arrow on the side washed by the sea’ (William of Poitiers, 144–45). 28 It is not known what unrest to the north of the Thames drew Odo and his men away from Dover. It seems at least possible that it was a diversionary tactic designed to facilitate Eustace’s assault. 29 D. Douglas, William the Conqueror (London, 1964), 212. 30 F. Barlow, Edward the Confessor (Newhaven and London, 1997), 307–8; The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio of Guy Bishop of Amiens, ed. C. Morton and H. Muntz (Oxford, 1972), xxxix. 31 See Barlow, Edward the Confessor, 301–306. A late twelfth-century French vernacular treatment of ˆ de Sainte Maure’s Chronique des Ducs de Normandie, ed. C. Eustace’s attack on Dover is found Benoıt ˆ uses the word nevou to describe the captured kinsman (vol. 2, 529). Fahlin, 2 vols. (Lund 1951–4). Benoıt ˆ understood his earlier It might be hoped that this could give us some indication at least as to how Benoıt authorities. However, the ‘grandson / nephew’ ambiguity appears also to pertain to the use of the vernacular word nevou.

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There does not seem to be any other evidence for issue from the marriage with Godgifu. Moreover, when William the Conqueror insisted that Eustace leave behind a hostage in 1066 as security for Boulonnais loyalty, a son of Eustace was chosen (the son is usually thought to have been Eustace’s heir, the later Eustace III of Boulogne).32 If a grandson of the marriage with Godgifu had existed, William would arguably have insisted that this grandson – an obvious rival – should be the young man held hostage, rather than Eustace’s son, leading one to doubt the existence of the conjectured grandson at all. Heather Tanner has suggested that nepos may in fact be better translated in this context as ‘bastard’ and she has suggested that the nepos may be a bastard son of Eustace called Geoffrey.33 As the nepos is described by William of Poitiers as a very noble young man this is perhaps made less likely. Both Barlow and Tanner proceed on the assumption that Eustace had no nephews. But Beryl Platts has argued that she has identified male issue from Eustace’s brother Lambert, who had died in 1054, and takes the nepos to be a son of Lambert called Seier de Seton, who is later found in Scotland where he had been granted lands on the firth of Forth by Malcolm Canmore at the place subsequently known as Seton Palace.34 Uncertainty prevails as to the identity of the nepos. But if he was not a pretender to the English throne, it seems quite possible that his fate lay in Odo’s hands and that the gift of the Bayeux Tapestry to Odo may be related to the young hostage’s release from captivity. If the ‘nobilissus tiro’ referred to by William of Poitiers was indeed Eustace’s orphaned young nephew, it is not difficult to imagine how the Count of Boulogne could have felt responsible for the young man’s fate. Equally, if he were Eustace’s own grandson or illegitimate offspring, the tie of kinship would have been strong. (If this were so, the depiction of Odo in the Tapestry encouraging the young Norman tyros at Hastings would have had a particular resonance.) Whoever the nepos was, he was by definition a close kinsman of Eustace. The resounding defeat of the Boulonnais attack and the captivity of the nepos must surely have dominated the relationship between Odo and Eustace in the period immediately following the incident at Dover in 1067. Orderic tells us that a number of other prisoners were also taken by Odo’s garrison. There may therefore have been other kinsmen and allies whose release Eustace sought to obtain. Contemporary practice makes it highly likely that the nepos and any other captives of rank would have been retained in the hope of extracting a large ransom.35 It would run counter to common sense to suggest that a work as large and as complex as the Bayeux Tapestry could have been made on the off-chance that it would be successful in achieving a very specific political objective, such as the release of

32

William of Poitiers, 182–3. H.J. Tanner, ‘The Expansion of the Power and Influence of the Counts of Boulogne under Eustace II’. Anglo-Norman Studies. 14 (1992), 251–86, at 266. 34 Beryl Platts, Origins of Heraldry, (London, 1980), 47–51, 65. The theory is further referred to in the same author’s Scottish Hazard (2 vols., London, 1985–1990). Seier had a brother called Walter. Mrs. Platts’ suggestion that Seier de Seton went to Scotland in the train of Edgar the Aetheling in 1068 does not appear to be supported by positive evidence. 35 See Matthew Strickland, War and Chivalry (Cambridge, 1996), chapter 7 (‘Ransom and the Treatment of Prisoners’). There appears to be no compelling reason to believe that William would have sought to exercise a right of pre-emption in respect of Odo’s captives who were not a threat to his dynasty. 33

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prisoners. However, it is possible that, at the time when the release of the nepos and other captives was negotiated, the Tapestry was promised as a gift to Odo which would follow in due course.

5. Eustace’s aim in 1067 What Eustace hoped to achieve in 1067 is a debatable question. The extent of the English support alluded to by the chroniclers seems sufficiently wide to cast doubt on Tanner’s suggestion that Eustace’s aim was purely personal: only the capture of Dover or, alternatively, simply to regain the lost lands of his late wife Godgifu.36 Why would so many Englishmen have been willing to join with him if his aims were so limited and so personal? It seems distinctly possible that he was seeking to make good his own claim to the throne in his capacity as Edward’s ex-brother-in-law and a descendant of Alfred the Great.37 His great nobility was underscored by the fact that he was also the senior heir of Charlemagne. Before the invasion of England William had insisted that Eustace leave behind a son as a hostage.38 The Norman Duke must therefore have been well aware that the Count of Boulogne might make a claim to England rivalling his own. By the time of Eustace’s attack on Dover the one serious English contender for the throne – the young Edgar the Aetheling – was effectively out of the picture, having been taken by the Conqueror to Normandy in March 1067. In the desperate post-Hastings situation, without further hope or choice, a significant body of English opinion may well have looked upon Eustace as the least objectionable of the foreigners who could seriously claim the right to be elevated as their king.39 Although Eustace had been involved in a nasty skirmish with the townspeople of Dover in 1051 this cannot have materially sullied his reputation in Kent, for Kentish men are said by Orderic to have been at the fore in supporting his attack on Dover castle in 1067. At any rate, whatever the extent of Eustace’s ambitions, the attempt to seize Dover was a disaster for him. His nepos was captured. He was condemned and his lands in England were forfeited.

36

Tanner, ‘Counts of Boulogne’, at 272–274. Eustace’s descent from Alfred the Great is apparent from E. Rigaux, Recherches sur les Premiers Comtes de Boulogne (Boulogne, 1896); see also the tables set out in an appendix to the Carmen, 128 and in Tanner, ‘Counts of Boulogne’. It arises from the marriage of Baldwin the Bald and Aelfthruth, Alfred’s daughter. Amongst those who have considered seriously whether Eustace could have aimed at the English throne are Freeman (The Norman Conquest (Oxford, 1876), vol. 4, 113), Platts (Origins of Heraldry (London, 1980), 61), Le Patourel (The Norman Empire (Oxford, 1976), 76) D. Bates, William the Conqueror (London, 1989, 74) and Morton and Muntz (Carmen, xxxix). On balance, however, Freeman was minded to doubt that Eustace was aiming at the crown. Ann Williams has also recently strongly doubted this view, The English and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge, 1995), 16. But her contention that Eustace received ‘little or no local support’ for his attack on Dover seems at odds with the sources – if they are to be believed. 38 William of Poitiers, 182–183. William may have continued to hold the son in 1067, which would have increased the antagonism between him and Eustace. 39 William of Poitiers seems to say as much. His view was that Eustace attacked Dover castle at the instigation of ‘the inhabitants of Kent’ who ‘thought that if they were not to serve one of their own countrymen, they would rather serve a neighbour whom they knew’: William of Poitiers, 182–3. 37

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6. Reconciliation with William At some time before Domesday 1086, the Count of Boulogne reached a reconciliation with William and was granted an enormous English lordship. William of Poitiers alludes to the reconciliation near the very end of the surviving (incomplete) version of his Gesta Guillelmi. Marjorie Chibnall, the latest editor of the Gesta Guillelmi, identifies the possible outer limits of its composition as being 1071 and 1077.40 Barlow has suggested that Eustace’s reconciliation with William took place shortly before 1074.41 The key to this reconciliation must lie in the changed situation on the continent in the early 1070s when William faced serious challenges from a number of enemies and needed to exercise decisive military and diplomatic skill in order to safeguard his position. Whilst William’s father-in-law Count Baldwin V lived, Flanders could be relied upon for its policy of benevolent neutrality. But his death in 1067 was followed prematurely in 1070 by that of his son, Baldwin VI. Flanders descended into civil war. William and Eustace took the same side in this conflict by supporting Arnulf III and his mother Richilde against the opposing claims of Arnulf’s uncle Robert the Frisian. This may (as suggested by Tanner) have reflected a renewed amity between Eustace and William or alternatively, it may have opened the way for the rapprochement to take place. Victory was achieved for this alliance at the battle of Cassel in February 1071; but it had been achieved at the cost of the death of Arnulf and the Conqueror’s envoy William Fitz-Osbern. Eustace succeeded in taking Robert the Frisian captive but the latter soon managed to escape from custody at St. Omer. A new alliance then emerged between Robert the Frisian and Philip I of France, the upshot of which was that Robert became Count of Flanders and Philip married his step-daughter Bertha. This alliance was founded on their joint desire to curtail Norman influence. William of Malmesbury notes how, once installed in Flanders, Robert the Frisian ‘often irritated king William by plundering Normandy’.42 Orderic speaks of a ‘lasting and mutual hostility’ arising between Normandy and Flanders as a result of the battle of Cassel and in particular the slaying of William Fitz-Osbern.43 In 1074 Philip I of France attempted to install Edgar the Aetheling in the castle of Montreuil-sur-Mer (a stronghold in Ponthieu which the French king controlled) as a base from which he hoped Edgar could cause mischief in Normandy from the north. William’s continental difficulties in the early 1070s were reflected in the Maine where he had to crush a revolt in 1073. If a renewed alliance between Eustace and William had not already been cemented in February 1071, the need for it would have become steadily more pressing as William’s difficulties developed during the early 1070s. With William’s resources stretched in England, and Flanders hostile and allied to a belligerent Philip I, the Norman king would have particularly needed a strong ally like the Count of Boulogne to protect the northern border of his duchy. More generally, the ability to utilise the short sea crossing through the straits of Dover would have offered obvious logistical advantages for the Normans. William may 40

William of Poitiers, xx. Barlow, Edward the Confessor, 308. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, translated as A History of the Norman Kings 1066–1125 by Joseph Stevenson (reprinted by Llanerch Publishers, 1991), 30. 43 Orderic Vitalis, vol. 2, 284–85. 41 42

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also have sought to gain some advantage from the fact that Eustace’s brother Geoffrey was Bishop of Paris and chancellor to the French king. As for Eustace, reconciliation with William offered him both a powerful ally, in his policy of maintaining and enhancing his independence from Flanders, and the prospect of English landholdings which (although they may or may not have been as extensive as those originally granted to him in the immediate aftermath of Hastings) were certainly rich in worth and wide in extent. Any further ambition in England must have been sharply curtailed by the defeat at Dover in 1067. It is also possible that it was only after the reconciliation that Eustace’s son, who had been taken as a hostage for Boulonnais loyalty in 1066, was released by William. Against this background I would suggest that the reconciliation between Eustace and William, at first surprising, appears intelligible, even if its precise date remains uncertain. Though William was undoubtedly a harsh and stubborn ruler, expedient clemency was certainly not foreign to his character. Thus, in 1074, we also see William, in a swift and decisive diplomatic manoeuvre, coming to terms with Edgar the Aetheling, another rebellious rival for the English throne, by allowing him a peaceful exile and so forestalling Philip I’s intention to use Edgar as a pawn in his anti-Norman, pro-Flemish policy. But for Eustace there may well have been an additional need to mark good relations with Odo; this would certainly have been the case if Odo continued to hold Eustace’s nepos. It is impossible to date the making of the Tapestry with certainty within this chronology, but it does not seem unreasonable to suggest that it played a part at some stage during the early to mid 1070s in the process of reconciliation between Odo and Eustace and the release of the nepos. In the autumn of 1076 William suffered a disastrous defeat at Dol, in Brittany, at the hands of the Bretons and the French king. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us that in the wake of this defeat William hastily withdrew from Dol having ‘lost there both men and horses, and countless treasures’ (version D).44 Professor Douglas pointed out that William’s defeat at Dol in 1076 was ‘the first serious military check which he had suffered in France for more than twenty years, and its importance has been unduly minimized’.45 One might perhaps wish to see in this episode, perhaps vainly, some clue that will assist us in dating the Tapestry, for in the Tapestry we see William successfully campaigning at and around Dol in alliance with Harold during the Breton campaign of 1064 / 5. After the defeat in 1076, the Tapestry’s treatment of the earlier Breton campaign would arguably have been inappropriate. Even if (as the evidence suggests) the designer of the Tapestry was English, the Tapestry’s imagery of the Breton campaign of 1064 / 5 would, arguably, have caused an unnecessary degree of offence to the Normans in the period following the 1076 defeat: for it would have implied that William could campaign successfully in Brittany with Harold’s help but not without him. Admittedly, the point is not overly strong. If the Tapestry post-dates the 1076 defeat, the English designer may have wanted to give just that impression; or he may have been ignorant of the 1076 defeat; or he may in any event have thought it artistically necessary to dwell upon the Breton campaign at some length in order to show the developing 44 45

The Anglo Saxon Chronicle, translated and edited by Michael Swanton (London, 1996), 213. Douglas, William the Conqueror, 234.

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relationship between William and Harold. But the view that takes the Tapestry to pre-date the 1076 defeat seems marginally more persuasive and thus coupling it with the foregoing suggestion about the circumstances of the Tapestry’s commission, it may just be possible to contract the theoretical outer limits for the making of the Tapestry to the autumn of 1067 and the autumn of 1076. If one theme marks Eustace’s career it is his ability to find a way to reconcile himself with his erstwhile enemies as in his shifting policies he sought to maintain and enhance the status of his comital house.46 Thus we find him supporting the rebellion of Duke William’s uncle in 1053,47 only to side with Duke William at Hastings, only to rebel against him in 1067, only to re-establish his alliance with William in the 1070s. So, also, we find him fighting with the townspeople of Dover in 1051, indeed demanding that King Edward arrange their punishment en masse for their temerity in opposing his will, and yet sixteen years later winning the support of a sizeable number of Kentish people for his attack on the Norman garrison stationed at the very same town. His relations with the Counts of Flanders were similarly by turns cordial and hostile. It is perhaps to the taxing problem of how he might accomplish yet another reconciliation, this time with Odo, that we owe the genesis of the magnificent Bayeux Tapestry.

7. Wadard and Vital The identification of the minor personages Wadard and Vital as tenants of Odo has been regarded as practically clinching the Odo case (Figs. 2 and 3). Wadard appears shortly after the landing at Pevensey in the context of a scene showing William’s men foraging for food. The inscription above Wadard merely tells us that ‘Here is Wadard’. As for Vital, he appears at the point where the two sides are taking up their battle positions at Hastings and is named as the knight who is asked by William whether he has seen Harold’s army. No one has produced a convincing explanation as to why the names of such minor knights as Wadard and Vital should have been recorded for posterity in the Tapestry. Instead it has sometimes been thought sufficient simply to state that they were tenants of Odo and from this it seems to be assumed that the case for Odo’s patronage is further substantiated. But there is no evidence to assist us in making the latter deduction. I have suggested that the Tapestry’s patron was Count Eustace. What connection did he have with Wadard and Vital? The answer may be entirely logical. It may be that we need to identify the right relationship between Odo, Eustace, Wadard and Vital. We learn from the chroniclers that when Eustace attacked Dover castle, the bulk of Odo’s garrison was away with him to the north of the Thames. But the remnant of his and Hugh de Montfort’s knights distinguished themselves in defeating Eustace and capturing his nepos. My suggestion is that that remnant was led by Wadard and Vital. If this is true, then Eustace would have

46 47

See especially Tanner, ‘Counts of Boulogne’. For the evidence as to Eustace’s involvement in supporting the rebellion of William of Arques, see Tanner, ‘Counts of Boulogne’, at 268.

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Fig. 2. Wadard. The Bayeux Tapestry – 11th Century. By special permission of the City of Bayeux.

crossed swords (perhaps literally) with both of them. They would also have been Odo’s knights responsible for the capture of the nepos. If Eustace sought to mark his reconciliation with Odo, and the release of the nepos, it would have been entirely appropriate to depict, and thus pay tribute to, Odo’s knights Wadard and Vital who had defeated him by their valiant defence of Dover against all the odds. In support of this contention, we can turn to the entry for Dover in the Domesday Book. Twenty-nine houses are mentioned as being ones in respect of which the king had

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Fig. 3. Vital. The Bayeux Tapestry – 11th Century. By special permission of the City of Bayeux.

lost his customary dues. Of these houses, Wadard appears in Domesday as holding six of them, and in the associated Excerpta survey he is (probably more accurately)48 listed as holding seven. In either case this is a greater number than any other person holds in his sole name. It must be accepted that the Dover entry makes no attempt to list all the properties in the town; the houses listed may only represent a fraction of the total. Nevertheless we may tentatively suggest that, amongst other knights of Odo who held 48

See Elia M.J. Campbell, ‘Kent’, in: The Domesday Geography of South-East England, edited by J.C. Darby and E.M.J. Campbell (Cambridge, 1962), 146.

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significant property in and around Dover, Wadard may have had some special responsibility in relation to the defence of its castle, at least at the time of the Domesday survey of 1086. The equation with the situation in 1067 cannot be made with certainty, but the organisation of the defence of the strategically important Dover castle must have been planned in advance and put into place by William immediately following Hastings. We know that Dover was one of the first places William sought to secure after the battle. According to William of Poitiers he spent eight days there strengthening the fortifications before advancing onto London.49 The entry for Dover in the Domesday Book is not the only evidence to connect Wadard with the defence of Dover castle. Further, and perhaps more striking, evidence is provided by the thirteenth-century castleguard surveys. There we find that what had been the core of lands held by Wadard in several counties spread around the kingdom is known as the barony of Arsic; and the Arsic barony was burdened with the particular duty of providing knights to defend Dover castle. The manors in question not only include the main body of Wadard’s estates in Kent, Surrey and Oxfordshire but also isolated manors in Dorset and Wiltshire as well. Thus, although the eleventh-century records are not explicit as to how the defence of Dover castle was organized, the suggestion has been made that the innate conservatism of the age produced a situation in the thirteenth century which was a simple reflection, slavish and cumbersome as it must have been, of the system for the defence of Dover castle which had been established by William and Odo after Hastings.50 It seems to follow from this that one of Wadard’s primary duties was indeed the defence of Dover castle. Specific reference is in fact made in the Domesday Book that Wadard’s lands at Combe (in Kent) and at Thames Ditton (in Surrey) each owed ‘the service of one knight’; it is not specified where or for what purpose the knight was owed, but in the thirteenth-century records both Combe and Thames Ditton owed the provision of one knight to the Arsic ward for the defence of Dover castle. Vital is not recorded in Domesday as holding any houses in Dover and the evidence seems to be lacking to connect him with that town, even circumstantially. But it is a common and by no means unreasonable working assumption that Wadard and Vital are depicted for some broadly similar reason. Vital is a substantial tenant of Odo in Canterbury, only sixteen miles to the north of Dover, and here he is recorded in the ` Excerpta as holding forty-five houses jointly with Ranulf of Colombieres (though only twenty-nine were acknowledged by them). It seems by no means impossible that Vital ´ may have been obliged to join Wadard, his colleague from Preaux, in the defence of Dover castle in the autumn of 1067 in the absence of other knights of Odo who had departed with Odo to the north of the Thames. Lack of impossibility is, of course, far from being a positive case in favour of my suggestion. But at any rate the evidence seems entirely consistent with the suggestion that Wadard and Vital were the defenders of Dover castle against Eustace, and in respect of Wadard it is remarkably so. It is 49 50

William of Poitiers, 144–145. See Professor David Bates’ Ph.D. thesis ‘Odo Bishop of Bayeux, 1049–1097’ (Exeter University, 1970), at 93–100; F.W. Hardman, ‘Castleguard Service at Dover Castle’ Archaeologia Cantiana, 49 (1938), 102–3; Brooks and Walker, ‘The Authority and Interpretation of the Bayeux Tapestry’, 1–34 and 191–9; reprinted in Study, ed. Gameson, 63–110, at 69, footnote 22.

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certainly not for any exceptional feat accomplished by either of them during the Norman invasion or on the battlefield at Hastings that Wadard and Vital have the honour of being depicted. For none is recorded. My suggestion is that it is rather their part in the action at Dover a year later which, tacitly, the Tapestry is acknowledging. Against the background that no one has produced a satisfactory explanation for the appearance of Wadard and Vital, there is at any rate a possible explanation for it which is consistent with Eustace’s patronage and for which there is, at least in the case of Wadard, circumstantial evidence. We can also note that, although they appear in different scenes in the Tapestry, Wadard and Vital both, by their bearing, seem to indicate to us the same letter in the inscriptions above: the letter D. In the case of Wadard the tip of his lance points directly at this detached letter. In the case of Vital the lance touches the letter D and his finger points at it. Could these be allusions to their defence of Dover castle?

8. Turold The other minor male personage named in the Tapestry is Turold (Fig. 4). Since Turold was a very common Norman name – corresponding to the old Norse Thorvaldr – the identification of the Tapestry’s Turold with a Kentish tenant of Odo is speculative. Several different candidates for the Tapestry’s Turold have been suggested; but no one identification has yet been made which carries conviction over the others. Lucien Musset refers to the researches of J. Adigard des Gautries which turned up no less than twenty-nine individuals called Turold living in Normandy before 1066.51 We do not know who the Turold of the Tapestry was and the reason for his naming and depiction remain obscure. The difficulty is compounded by the fact that differing views have been taken as to whether the name TVROLD refers to one of Duke William’s messengers, who have ridden to Count Guy de Ponthieu, or to the dwarf who holds their horses once they have arrived at their destination. The fact that the name TVROLD is centred over the dwarf tending the horses, coupled with the way in which the text-less name has been lowered by the designer to a point half way down the main field, must suggest that Turold is indeed the dwarf and not one of the messengers.52 There is no independent occasion when the name of a personage in the Tapestry protrudes label-like from their side; but there are numerous occasions where a name is more or less centred immediately over the head of its owner. The nearest equivalent is the way in which Archbishop Stigand is later denoted; but the name of Turold is brought lower down the main field, commensurately with the dwarf’s smaller stature. If Turold is the dwarf, it seems important to note that he is already in situ when

51 52

Lucien Musset, La Tapisserie de Bayeux, Oeuvre d’ Art et Document d’ Histoire (1989), 251. However an interesting suggestion put forward by P.E. Bennett should not be ignored, namely that both the dwarf and the nearest messenger are being denoted as Turolds: ‘Encore Turold dans la Tapisserie de Bayeux’, Annales de Normandie, 30 (1980), 3–13 at 13.

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Fig. 4. Turold. The Bayeux Tapestry – 11th Century. By special permission of the City of Bayeux.

William’s two messengers arrive. The location of the Turold scene cannot be stated with certainty. We may still be at Beaurain; but the preceding dividing tree possibly denotes a geographical as well as a temporal division. If we are still at Beaurain, this would imply that Turold is someone connected with that castle and not (despite his name) a Norman; or if he is of Norman origin, he is at least not a Norman resident. It would be easy to suppose from the Tapestry that Beaurain lay in Count Guy’s territory of Ponthieu. But Beaurain castle seems to have lain, in fact, in the neighbouring county of St. Pol, whose

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count was a close ally and vassal of Count Eustace.53 This raises the intriguing possibility of a connection between Eustace and Turold. Even if the Turold scene is not at Beaurain, we are surely not in Normandy, but rather in Ponthieu, again suggesting that Turold is either not Norman in origin or not Norman by residence.54

9. Proto-heraldry The Bayeux Tapestry has been cited as evidence that the Normans were not using heraldry, as we have come to know it, in 1066 and that the Tapestry belongs to the pre-heraldic age. Beryl Platts, however, has used the Tapestry as part of her argument that heraldry has its origins in the eleventh-century practices of the counts of Boulogne and their kinsmen, who shared a common descent from Charlemagne. Platts identifies symbolism of Boulogne and its allies being carried by various personae in the Tapestry’s drama. The banner borne by the named Count Eustace is one example which she quotes (I shall return to the disputed significance of the banner later). But, for Platts, there are others as well. At the point at which the invading cavalrymen meet the unmounted Saxons at Hastings ‘the leading knight carries a bannered lance . . . . . . unmistakably ornamented with the three red balls on a ground of gold borne by the counts of Boulogne. So inherited devices of the kind we call heraldic were known in 1066, and were carried at the Battle of Hastings.’ 55 I cannot see the heraldic tinctures arranged in the way that Platts describes: but something like the three balls of Boulogne are there (Fig. 5). Barlow has independently pointed out that the balls (or boules) of Boulogne are a rebus.56 If Platts is right it is remarkable that, in a work executed under supposedly Norman patronage, it is the knights of Boulogne, and not Normandy, who lead the way; indeed the point of the lance in question marks the first physical engagement of the battle with the English. A little earlier, at the point where William deploys his troops, five of his nine commanders carry what Platts calls ‘identifying banners’. Platts similarly suggests (albeit very tentatively) that these are the banners of Senlis, St. Pol, Hesdin, Alost, and Boulogne – in other words the standards of Boulogne and its subsidiary or allied territories.57 There can be few subjects more obscure than the origins of heraldry. As Platts herself 53

See Tanner ‘Counts of Boulogne’, at 270, footnote 44. But see also B. de Montfaucon, Morumens de la Monarchie Franc¸aise, 2 vols. (Paris, 1729–1730), vol. 1, 377, where a distinction is drawn between Beaurain castle and Beaurain town, the former according to Montfaucon lying in Ponthieu, the latter lying on the other side of the river Canche, ‘dans l’Artois’. 54 For what it is worth, there is at least one Turold in the contemporary records of Ponthieu. A certain ‘Walterius Turoldus’ is named as one of the debtors of a rente of salt given by Count Guy and his wife to the church of Saint Martin-des-Champs in an undated document belonging to the period 1053–90. See C. Brunel, Recueil des Actes des Comtes de Pontieu (Paris 1880), 7–8. 55 Platts, Origins of Heraldry, 41. 56 See C. Morton, ‘Pope Alexander II and the Norman Conquest’, Latomus, 34 (1975), 362–382 at 367. 57 Platts, Origins of Heraldry, 40.

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Fig. 5. An emblem of Boulogne? The Bayeux Tapestry – 11th Century. By special permission of the City of Bayeux.

points out, much work remains to be done. It is clearly too early to say that she has established her case.58 Woodcock and Robinson point out that the existence of similar arms in related families when heraldry does appear in later records suggests that their arms do have a common origin that may well go back as far as the epoch of the Norman conquest (the devices being first borne on flags rather than shields).59 Mrs. Platts’s 58 59

For a recent view, see T. Woodcock and J. Robinson, Oxford Guide to Heraldry (Oxford, 1990), 5–9. Woodcock and Robinson, Oxford Guide to Heraldry, 8.

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important theory is one which does not seem to be widely known by Bayeux Tapestry scholars. She is, of course, concerned with the origins of heraldry, not the Bayeux Tapestry. But if her suggestions are right they point in the direction of an obvious conclusion: the so-called Bayeux Tapestry is not a work of Norman patronage at all, but a Boulonnais commission celebrating, inter alia, the role of Count of Boulogne and his allies and kinsmen.

10. The ‘pro-English’ agenda I have suggested that the more or less favourable attitude to Harold in the Tapestry sits uncomfortably with the idea that Odo was the patron. I am not suggesting that it is on this ground impossible that Odo was the patron, merely that it would not be surprising if someone else rather than him provided the wherewithal, impetus and direction for the work. I would now like to suggest that the portrayal of Harold in the Tapestry – as a tragic hero rather than a villain – is more understandable if we take Eustace rather than Odo as the patron. The Tapestry does not proclaim or dwell upon the details of William’s case because it is not a work of Norman propaganda at all. It does not represent the purest, most aggressive Norman point of view because it represents the views of the AngloBoulonnais alliance of 1067 in the aftermath of the failed attack on Dover. The line I am suggesting here is obviously not without its own difficulties. For one thing, we clearly do not know exactly what those views were. For another, Eustace had his own score to settle with Harold in 1066, having been in conflict with the Godwin family since at least 1051 when he seems to have been responsible for the skirmish at Dover that led to their exile. In fact, the tensions must go back to at least 1036 when, in a much more serious incident, the man who was (or was shortly to become) Eustace’s brother-in-law, Prince Alfred of England, and his partly Boulonnais entourage were ambushed and killed with the alleged complicity of Earl Godwin.60 Moreover, in the Carmen Eustace is named as one of the four men who jointly hack Harold to death. I have sought to cast doubt on the theory that Odo was the patron partly on the basis that he is unlikely to have been the sponsor of such a favourable view of Harold. Given the clear tensions between Eustace and the Godwin family, the theory that Eustace was the patron undoubtedly faces a similar, prima facie difficulty. Since it is a difficulty faced by both Eustace and Odo, it is not by itself a reason to favour either candidate over the other. But, in the case of Eustace, there is a difference and it may be a crucial one. We know that his attack on Odo’s castle attracted a not inconsiderable amount of English support. William of Poitiers informs us that ‘the whole district was under arms and their numbers would have been increased from further parts if the siege had lasted

60

It is reported in the Encomium Emmae Reginae that Alfred refused the aid of men of Flanders when he sailed to England in 1036 but instead took with him ‘a few men of Boulogne’ (Encomium Emmae Reginae, ed. A. Campbell, reprinted with a supplementary introduction by S. Keynes (Cambridge, 1998), 42–43). It is ` confirmed by both William of Jumieges and William of Poitiers that he sailed from the Boulonnais port of ` Wissant (William of Jumieges, vol. 2, 106–7; William of Poitiers, 4–5).

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for more than two days’.61 Orderic tells us that the attack was especially aided by ‘a troop of Kentishmen who assisted Eustace by every means in their power’.62 It is particularly noteworthy that it was the men of Kent who were so prominent in their support for Eustace, for as William of Poitiers notes in an apparent reference to the skirmish of 1051, he was ‘formerly their bitter enemy’ (the use of the word ‘formerly’ should be noted) and Kent was traditionally a stronghold of the Godwin family. The importance of the unlikely Anglo-Boulonnais alliance of 1067 should not be missed. It would be consistent with the evidence to suppose that Eustace was the patron of the Tapestry but that it was designed and made on his behalf by English elements who had been favourable to his attack on Dover and who remained favourable to his cause. Eustace’s relations with certain English elements in Kent were at any rate more complex and less easy to pin down than might at first be supposed. These considerations lead me to conclude that Eustace cannot be dismissed as a less likely candidate than Odo purely on the basis of the political content of the Tapestry and he may well be a more likely one. I have also suggested that the Tapestry was intended as a gift to Odo. The view of the Conquest represented in the Tapestry must have been judged by its patron and designer as being, for Odo, within a broad spectrum of views which, coupled with the Tapestry’s implicit flattery, would not have been unacceptable to him. The point I wish to make, however, is that the content of the Tapestry does not obviously suggest that Odo had a directive or guiding influence over its design and that, conversely, no such relative implausibility is thrown up by the suggestion that Eustace was the patron, given his alliance with significant English elements in 1067.

11. English design and manufacture It is well established that certain spellings and word-forms point to an English designer. The best view of scholars about the artistic context in which the designer worked also suggests English inspiration for the Tapestry. England, too, was the home of a great tradition of embroidery by women – a tradition unmatched in Normandy. These considerations seem to dovetail neatly with the case for Odo, for it is possible to suppose that the post-Conquest Earl of Kent commissioned English workers to make the embroidery. If, on the other hand, the Tapestry was commissioned by Eustace, can this be reconciled with the probability of English design and workmanship? There seem to be two main possibilities. The first is that the Tapestry was made by supporters of Eustace in England, but after Eustace was restored with English landholdings in the 1070s and pursuant, perhaps, to an earlier promise made by him to Odo. The second is that the Tapestry was made, or at least started, before Eustace was reconciled with William and that it was made in or around Boulogne with the assistance of English exiles. The possibility that the Tapestry could have been designed and made

61 62

William of Poitiers, 182–83. Orderic Vitalis, vol. 2, 204–05.

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by English exiles in Boulogne or neighbouring Flanders (the latter being a traditional place of flight for them) does not appear to have been raised before. It is interesting to note that artistic parallels are drawn by Wolfgang Grape with the work of Flemish and northern French scriptoria, such as those of St. Bertin in St. Omer, St. Andre´ near Combrai and St. Vaast in Arras, even if collectively the parallels are less impressive that the English ones.63 At any rate, the suggestion that Eustace was the patron is not, for the reasons stated above, incompatible with the theory of English design and manufacture.

12. Is it Eustace? I have reached the stage where I can no longer postpone discussion of this fundamental issue. To the extent that anything can be said for the foregoing arguments, it is correspondingly important to get this point right: is the pointing figure meant to represent Count Eustace II of Boulogne? Unfortunately, this is a question which cannot be answered with absolute certainty. A semi-circular tear in the upper border (whether the result of censorship or damage we do not know) has obliterated most of the inscription above this scene. It seems clear that the missing inscription would have supplied the name (but nothing more) of the figure below, but today we only see the letters E. . . .TIVS and even these letters are not shown in the earliest engravings of the Tapestry.64 It was Charles Stothard who, in 1821, first suggested that the figure was intended to represent Eustace of Boulogne.65 Neither of the two early eighteenth-century reporters of the Tapestry – Montfaucon and Lancelot – had noted any inscription above the figure we take to be Eustace. Stothard, however, carefully analysed the fabric itself. He noted that on initial inspection the last two letters of an inscription, ‘VS’, were visible. But, he went on: ‘On carefully examining the torn and ragged edges which had been doubled under and sown down, I discovered that three other letters, the first of the inscription an E, and T I, preceding V S, a space remaining in the middle for but four letters, the number being confirmed by the alternation of green and buff colours of the letters remaining. I therefore conjecture that the letters as they now stand may be read Eustatius, and that the person bearing the standard beneath is intended for Eustace, earl of Boulogne, who I believe was a principal commander in the army of William.’ Since Stothard’s day his identification has been followed by practically all scholars. Few, however, have taken the enigma of Eustace’s prominence seriously. Only recently has the issue been addressed – by Shirley Brown and by Wolfgang Grape. I have argued above that Shirley Brown’s explanation for Eustace’s prominence is less plausible than

63

See Richard Gameson ‘The Origin, Art, and Message of the Bayeux Tapestry’, 162–81. See Brown, ‘Why Eustace . . . ’. 65 Charles Stothard, ‘Some Observations on the Bayeux Tapestry’, Archaeologia, 19 (1821), 184–91; reprinted in Study, ed. Gameson, 1–6. 64

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my own suggestion that Eustace was the patron. Grape was also alive to the problem of Eustace’s prominence and has taken the view that the figure may not be Eustace at all.66 He suggests (1) that the space left by the missing letters may be too wide to accommodate the letters ‘VSTA’, (2) that the first letter may not be an ‘E’ at all and (3) that some other Latin names – such as ‘Florentius’ or ‘Laurentius’ – would fit just as well. On balance, Grape’s arguments do not seem persuasive. Firstly, although the gap seems slightly wider than one might expect to be filled by four letters, if they had consistent size and spacing, it is hard to see how any categorical conclusion can be drawn from this. The size and spacing of the original letters may have varied and in any event the manner in which the gap has been repaired may itself have operated to distort the extent of the original space.67 Secondly, Stothard appears to have very carefully examined the remaining stitch holes and his reconstruction of the first letter as an ‘E’ cannot easily be dismissed. Thirdly, Grape’s suggestion that the names ‘Laurentius’ or ‘Florentius’ would fit just as well has little force because he cannot point to any known person with either name and the Eustace figure, given its placement in the Tapestry, must have been someone of the first rank and importance (a point to which I shall return). Although the alternation between green and buff colouring of the letters has disappeared since Stothard’s day – presumably as a result of subsequent restorations – there is no reason to doubt Stothard’s word on the point; Grape simply ignores the additional evidence provided by this alteration in letter-colour. Is there any other evidence that the figure is meant to represent Eustace? Here a number of points of differing strength can be made. Catherine Morton has suggested that the device on the great banner carried by Eustace – ‘a cross formy cantonned by four disks’ – is also found on his coinage.68 This is indeed true; but the device of a cross with four or more disks or balls appears on a large variety of early medieval coinage from lands representing the old Carolingian empire and in Eastern Europe as well (indeed it also found on some of William’s Norman coinage) and therefore it is not possible to associate it exclusively with Eustace or his comital family.69 It has also been suggested by Beryl Platts that Eustace’s banner is a version of the one borne by his son Godfrey of Bouillon when he entered Jerusalem in 1099.70 This is doubted by Woodcock and Robinson.71 They in fact take the cross on the banner to be

66

Grape, The Bayeux Tapestry, 23. Stothard’s ‘Eustatius’ is only one of a number of Latin spellings of Eustace’s name. It appears as ‘Eustachius’ in the printed texts of William of Poitiers, the Carmen, the Domesday Book and various other contemporary documents, giving us the extra letter if one were needed. But I do not think that is necessary, and it would in any case mean changing the last T, carefully identified as such by Stothard, to an H. ` Stothard’s ‘Eustatius’ is found in the printed texts of Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, William of Jumieges and in John (‘Florence’) of Worcester. Other variants found in documents include ‘Eustacius’ and ‘Eustathius’. 68 ´ Morton, ‘Pope Alexander II and the Norman Conquest’, 362–382 at 367; Poey D’Avant, Monnaies Feodales de France, iii, 371; L. Deschamps de Pas, ‘Notes sur les Monnaies de Boulogne au nom d’Eustache’, Revue Numismatique, N.S. 4 (1859), 48–59. 69 I am grateful for advice on this point to Gareth Williams, Curator of Early Medieval Coins at the British Museum. 70 Platts, Origins of Heraldry, 40. 71 Woodcock and Robinson, Oxford Guide to Heraldry, 7. 67

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cantonned with four smaller crosses, rather than disks, but go on to point out that although the device of a cross with four smaller crosses is associated with the Kingdom of Jerusalem this is not recorded until the mid-thirteenth century. The detail on Eustace’s banner appears too small to determine with certainty whether crosses or disks are intended; but this smallness of detail does lead me strongly to doubt Woodcock and Robinson’s assertion that crosses were attempted. Disks rather than crosses are identified by Galbreath and by Derek F. Renn.72 The opposing theory about Eustace’s banner takes it to be the papal banner said by William of Poitiers to have been granted to William’s expedition by Pope Alexander II.73 But according to Orderic 74 (who is followed by Wace) that banner was borne by Turstin, son of Rollo. Expert opinion has not identified the papal banner with certainty amongst any of the flags depicted on the Tapestry. Given the present state of knowledge, it is impossible to say whether Eustace’s banner is a representation of the papal banner or a banner of some other significance. It is therefore difficult to use that banner either to support or to cast doubt on the theory that the pointing figure is Eustace. It would, however, be entirely consistent with the ambivalent attitude of the Tapestry to the Norman case for the whole matter of the papal blessing of the expedition to be ignored. As far as we know, Harold’s case was not represented at the papal court and those sympathetic to his memory after 1066 may have regarded the pope’s involvement as biased and irrelevant.75 Stronger evidence in favour of Stothard’s identification is provided by the careful depiction of Eustace’s moustachios. The nickname of Eustace II was Eustache aux grenons ( grenons signifying moustaches).76 The appearance of facial hair on the French side is exceptional: bar one or two bearded followers the French, in contrast to the English, are normally shown as clean shaven. It is true that the Eustace’s moustachios do ˆ for not appear on the earliest engravings of the Tapestry, being those of Antoine Benoıt Montfaucon, and indeed are only seen for the first time in Stothard’s own drawings.77 It might therefore be suggested that Stothard may have known of Eustace’s nickname; that he invented the moustachios for the purposes of his drawing; and that they were in due course ‘restored in’ by subsequent repairers who simply followed Stothard’s drawing. Yet which is more probable: that the meticulous Stothard (whose drawings were much more accurate than any previously produced) would have invented Eustace’s moustachˆ (whose drawings were certainly inaccurate in several details) either ios or that Benoıt 72

D.L. Galbreath, Papal Heraldry (2nd. ed. revised by Geoffrey Briggs, London, 1972), 2; Derek F. Renn ‘Burhgeat and Gonfanon: two sidelights from the Bayeux Tapestry’, Anglo Norman Studies, 16 (1994), 177–98, at 191. 73 William of Poitiers, 104–5. 74 Orderic Vitalis, vol. 2, 172–173. 75 In the article already cited, Catherine Morton argues that the papal blessing may never have taken place: ‘Pope Alexander II and the Norman Conquest’, 362–382. 76 In old French the name appears as ‘Eustache als gernaus’ I am not aware of a strictly contemporary use of this nickname, but it appears in later accounts (such as in the Old French Crusade Cycle). As four counts of Boulogne bore the name Eustace, the need to utilise the nickname would have arisen when Eustace II was referred to in retrospect by later writers and it seems very likely the nickname would have been an accurate reflection of Eustace II’s appearance. Eustace II’s apparently one-eyed father, Eustace I, had the nickname Eustache a` l’ Oeil. 77 The depiction of Eustace in the early engravings is fully discussed by Shirley Brown in Brown, ‘Why Eustace . . . ’.

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simply missed them or regarded them as unimportant? Surely the latter.78 Moreover, Stothard made no mention of Eustace’s nickname and may well have been unaware of it. His identification of Eustace was based on his close analysis, with his artist’s eye, of the remaining stitch holes in the inscription and upon the fact that he believed Eustace to have been a ‘principal commander’ of William’s army. The level of portraiture implicit in the depiction of the moustachios is noteworthy in the context of the suggestion that the master-artist of the Tapestry was working at the behest of Count Eustace. It is also more than likely that the figure we take to be Eustace is a person of the first rank and importance. He has pride of place immediately adjacent to the Norman Duke at a critical juncture in the battle. He is one of only two battle companions of the Conqueror whose names have been embroidered for us. In the whole surviving Tapestry Eustace bears the largest and most elaborate banner (whatever its precise significance). Such considerations are entirely consistent with the identification of the figure as Eustace, that noble heir of Charlemagne who was the overall commander of the Flemish contingent on the right flank at Hastings. Eustace’s role in the battle was to be denigrated by William of Poitiers (who was writing shortly after the Boulonnais revolt of 1067) and later ignored by Wace (whose patron King Henry II had latterly rivalled Count Eustace IV of Boulogne for the English throne).79 The fact that William of Poitiers did not speak highly of Eustace is used by Grape to cast further doubt that Eustace is depicted in the Tapestry. But Grape’s point here entirely loses its force if, as I have suggested, Eustace was himself the patron. No account of the battle can be divorced from the political context in which it was prepared; and, certainly, the traffic does not all flow in the same direction. A much more favourable account of Eustace II than that of William of Poitiers is found in the Carmen de Hastingae Proelio. In this poem he is, in the words of its editors Morton and Muntz, ‘the second hero’.80 If it is legitimate to give 78

But for an expression of doubt on this, see Charles Dawson’s pamphlet on The Restorations of the Bayeux Tapestry (London, 1907), 9–10. It is also curious that, despite his interest in the Eustace figure, Stothard expressly stated in the article previously quoted that only one moustache is to be found ‘on the side of the Normans’, identifying that single instance as one of the Norman looks. In the context it seems unlikely that Stothard was merely referring to Normans, as opposed to their non-Norman allies like Eustace. Since at the time of writing his article he had already completed and presented his drawings, this statement must be considered a slip on his part rather than evidence that he subsequently invented Eustace’s moustache. 79 Wace makes two references to men of Boulogne and Ponthieu taking part in the expedition (Wace, Rou, vol. 3, ll. 6171–6174 and 8663–8665) but of Eustace himself he says nothing (Eustace does not seem to be the ‘Wiestace d’Abeville’ mentioned in vol. 3, l. 8429). Wace’s historical omission is undoubtedly caused by politics contemporary to his own period. Apart from the rivalry between Eustace IV and Henry II, and more contemporaneously with the time at which Wace was writing, Boulogne ‘was in the hands of what Henry II regarded as a usurper’s dynasty’: see Matthew Bennett, ‘Poetry as History? The ‘Roman de Rou’ of Wace as a Source for the Norman Conquest’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 5 (1982), 21–39. 80 The dating and authorship of the Carmen are controversial. Against the early dating argued by its editors Morton and Muntz, R.H.C. Davis argued that it is a twelfth-century literary exercise with no claim to historical authority: R.H.C. Davis ‘The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio’, English Historical Review, 367 (1978), 241–61. But several others, both before and after the publication of Davis’s argument, have defended its early dating and the attribution to Bishop Guy of Amiens, who died in either 1074 or 1075. See, amongst others, F. Barlow ‘The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio’, in: Studies in International History, ed. K. Bourne and D.C. Watt (London, 1967), 35–67 (reprinted in F. Barlow, The Norman Conquest and Beyond, 189–221 (London, 1984); L.J. Engels ‘Once more: The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio’, Proceedings of the Battle Conference of Anglo-Norman Studies, 2 (1979), 3–20 and 165–67; and Elisabeth Van Houts ‘Latin Poetry and the Anglo-Norman Court:1066–1135: The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio’, Journal of Medieval History, 15 (1989), 39–62.

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the Carmen an early date, one of its purposes may well have been (as suggested by Morton and Muntz) the pleading of Eustace’s cause in the period when he and William had begun to quarrel before the attack on Dover or (as suggested by Barlow) the healing of the rift between them which had already come to a head as a result of that attack. Shirley Brown notes how the Tapestry’s emphasis on the Count of Boulogne exhibits the ‘tenor if not the sequence’ of the Carmen.81 Just as the Carmen may have been intended to assist in healing the rift with William, so the promise, making and gift of the Tapestry may have been intended to assist in healing the rift with Odo. The strongest arguments in favour of the figure being Eustace seem to me to be based, firstly, on the fact that Stothard came to this conclusion in 1821 after very carefully examining the remaining stitch holes and, secondly, on the depiction of the moustachios. Eustace is certainly not disqualified in terms of rank and importance from occupying the position that ‘he’ is given in the Tapestry. On balance, then, I would suggest that, following practically all authorities, the pointing figure is indeed Count Eustace II of Boulogne.

13. Conclusion I have suggested that a case can be made that the Bayeux Tapestry’s patron was not Odo but rather Count Eustace II of Boulogne and that Wadard and Vital were the knights of Odo who defended Odo’s castle at Dover against Eustace’s attack in 1067. According to this case, the Tapestry was made by English elements who had been favourable to Eustace’s attack on Dover and it was commissioned by Eustace as part of the process of reconciliation between him and Odo. More specifically, it may have been connected with the release of Eustace’s captured nepos and possibly other Boulonnais or indeed English prisoners as well. We lack, of course, the crucial evidence to make the case for Eustace telling. But, equally, the evidence is lacking to make the case for Odo anything like conclusive. Eustace fits the evidence, such as it is, at least as well as Odo, and in some respects he fits it better. I have suggested that, in comparison with Odo, Eustace’s patronage may be more readily compatible with the political context of the Tapestry. But more compelling is the fact that supposing Eustace to be the patron, and Odo the donee, provides an explanation for the prominence of both of these figures; and they are significantly the only named battle companions of the Conqueror. Taking Odo to be the patron leaves Eustace’s prominence puzzling and unexplained. Having said that, a great deal clearly depends on whether the figure in question is Eustace at all; if it is not, the argument does not get off the ground. But the theory which favours Odo has never been more than a conjecture. The debate about the Tapestry’s patron should, in my submission, be re-opened. One day, perhaps, we will come to see that devious but colourful character Eustace of Boulogne with the prominence which he strove to have, and at times achieved, in the distant world depicted in the embroidery hanging at Bayeux. 81

Brown, ‘Why Eustace . . . ’, at 18.

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Acknowledgements In laying this article before the eyes of those more competant than I to judge its merits, I am particularly grateful to Dr. Richard Gameson, who was instrumental in encouraging me to develop the initial thesis that Count Eustace might have been the patron of the Bayeux Tapestry, though the errors in this approach remain of course mine. I have also benefited from advice on particular matters from Gareth Williams, Curator of Early Medieval Coins at the British Museum, and from Mrs. Beryl Platts.