Harold II

King of England (r. 1066)

• Born: c. 1022
• Birthplace: East Anglia, England
• Died: October 14, 1066
• Place of death: Near Hastings, England

Harold Godwinson was elected English king in 1066 and defeated a Norse invasion at Stamford Bridge, but he was defeated at Hastings by William the Conqueror and the Normans, marking the start of the Norman Conquest of England.

Early Life

Harold Godwinson (Harold II) lived during, and was part of, the domination of Saxon England by Viking invaders. Although sometimes called “the last Saxon king,” Harold II was not of royal birth and was half Danish. His father, Godwin, was an English warrior during the confused attempts of King Ethelred II, the Unready (r. 978-1013 and 1014-1016) to resist Scandinavian invaders. After Ethelred’s death, Godwin supported the Danish monarch Canute the Great as English king (r. 1017-1035), became earl of Wessex, and fathered a family of eight by marriage to a Danish noblewoman. Godwin’s support of Canute’s heirs may have involved him in the treacherous murder of Ethelred’s son Prince Alfred in 1036. However, when Canute’s last son died in 1042 “as he stood at his drink,” Godwin supported Ethelred’s remaining son, Edward, recently returned from exile in Normandy. King Edward the Confessor (r. 1043-1066) married Godwin’s daughter Edith in 1045 but abstained from sexual relations in symbolic gratitude for church protection during his Norman exile. A future succession problem was thus inevitable. Meanwhile, though, the Godwins prospered, and in 1045 Godwin’s second son, Harold, was made earl of East Anglia.

Young Harold Godwinson’s administration of his extensive earldom was apparently at least satisfactory. He was reasonable, congenial, and persuasive in counsel, although sometimes impatient in military situations. Physically, Harold was moderately tall, strong, and athletic, with the blond hair and flowing mustache of a “Viking type.” Early on he began family life with a mistress, Edith Swan-neck, who became the mother of five (or six) of his children. Harold gained more prominence in the conflicts caused by his older brother, Sweyn, who was exiled once for violating an abbess and again for the murder of a cousin. With Sweyn’s death in 1052, Harold became heir-presumptive to the heritage of Godwin.

Early in 1051, King Edward put Earl Godwin on the defensive by ordering him to punish the citizens of Dover for a brawl with the traveling party of Eustace of Boulogne. The aging earl and his sons defied the royal order, but in an armed confrontation with Edward’s forces, Godwin’s allies backed down. The Godwins were outlawed for treason and exiled late in 1051; Harold found refuge in Ireland.

King Edward used the absence of the Godwins to appoint several Norman administrators to English positions in church and state. The Norman rulers, although themselves a Franco-Norse mixture, were his mother’s people, and a youth spent in Normandy made Edward feel more comfortable with them than with the Anglo-Danish Godwins. According to some accounts, in late 1051 or early 1052, King Edward’s cousin, the illegitimate but powerful twenty-four-year-old duke William of Normandy (William the Conqueror), himself visited England and received Edward’s promise of succession to the English throne. Why Edward did not make this promise a matter of widespread public record in England is unclear. By the spring of 1052, however, anti-Norman sentiment in England allowed the Godwins to return in force and obtain pardon and restoration. Earl Godwin died in April of 1053, and Harold succeeded him as earl of Wessex.

Life’s Work

From 1053 to 1066, Harold not only increased the lands and power of his family but also became the chief shaper and manager of national policy under Edward. He led armies in two hard-fought and successful wars against the Welsh, and he negotiated with the Scots and with rival earldoms in Mercia and Northumbria. Another ongoing problem was the status of Stigand, who had been appointed archbishop of Canterbury in 1052 but who did not prove acceptable to Vatican authorities. If Harold did make a visit to Rome about 1057, as sometimes alleged, he did not solve this problem, for when Alexander II became pope in 1062, the Vatican reformers made replacing Stigand part of their agenda. Also, the English succession problem deepened in 1057, when King Edward the Confessor invited the return of Ethelred’s grandson, Edward the Exile, who landed in England, fell ill, and died. This left no adult English prince at hand as an alternative to the possible succession of William of Normandy.

Norman accounts describe a voyage by Harold, probably in 1064, to Ponthieu, where the ruler turned him over to William of Normandy. The duke treated his“guest” well, “invited” him to share in a campaign against Brittany, and “rewarded” him with a ceremony equivalent to knighthood in exchange for Harold’s oath of loyalty, support for William’s succession as English king, and also a promise to marry one of William’s daughters. In some versions, concealed holy relics reinforced the loyalty oaths. Harold later argued that he made promises under duress so as to be free to leave. Why Harold undertook the trip at all is not clear.

Harold returned from Normandy in 1065 to find trouble in Northumbria. Harold’s brother Tostig governed this earldom harshly, provoking a rebellion. Harold agreed to outlaw and exile Tostig, replacing him with Morcar, a brother to Earl Edwin of Mercia. He subsequently agreed to marry Aldgyth, a sister to Edwin and Morcar, a union that, when it took place in 1065 or early 1066, constituted an apparent breach of his alleged promises to Duke William.

Edward’s final choice of a successor, according to the Saxon accounts, was his deathbed selection of Harold Godwinson on January 5, 1066. A council of the Witan elected Harold king on the following day, apparently to forestall other claimants to the throne. William of Normandy quickly publicized his own case and gained papal support, while Harold “Hardrada”(“hard ruler”) of Norway claimed England as the promised reward for his victory in a war against Denmark. The exiled earl Tostig and his freebooters were ready to help either of these challengers. In addition, the Welsh and Scots were traditionally hostile, and Edwin and Morcar, the “northern earls,” were doubtfully loyal.

By April of 1066, when Halley’s Comet was seen as a portent of fateful events to come, Norman and Norwegian shipbuilding operations were well underway. Earl Tostig’s forces on the Isle of Wight began to raid England’s south coast, while Harold mobilized the English fleet and fyrd (militia) in June. However, Harold’s advantage of a large militia at hand soon posed a significant supply problem. The potential invaders spent the summer of 1066 waiting for Harold’s militia to disband for want of food. As Tostig changed his base to Scotland and Hardrada’s fleet advanced to the Orkneys, King Harold’s soldiers began to desert for their own harvests. On September 8, Harold demobilized the militia and moved his fleet to London for supplies and refitting. At the same time, William shifted his base to Saint-Valery-sur-Somme, but he was held in port by unfavorable winds.

In the second week of September, Hardrada’s fleet arrived off Northumbria and was joined by Tostig. Their combined force, carried in perhaps three hundred ships, traveled up the Humber and Ouse Rivers to a landing in Yorkshire on September 18. While Harold assembled troops, his allies Edwin and Morcar were defeated in a major battle at Gate Fulford on September 20. Hardrada and Tostig, welcomed in York, scattered their forces in search of plunder. Harold’s ready forces, gathering militia en route, covered two hundred miles from London to Tadcaster in from four to five days, surprising the dispersed invaders. On September 25, Harold won a hard-fought and decisive battle at Stamford Bridge, Hardrada and Tostig were killed, and Harold allowed the Norwegian survivors an unmolested departure to avoid further losses of his own before facing the next invader.

William’s landing near Hastings on September 28 compelled the English to make another forced march south, arriving at London on October 6. Harold summoned militia, but Edwin and Morcar held back, while Harold’s own earldoms of Wessex and Kent were immediately threatened by the invaders. The prospects of national resistance over the winter were uncertain, and Harold decided to do battle with the force he had at hand. Most of his army arrived after nightfall on October 13 on the South Downs ridge at Senlac, an area now occupied by the town of Battle, more or less ready for action on the following day, Saturday, October 14.

Harold aligned perhaps eight thousand infantry some Danish soldiers, but mostly Saxon militia along the summit crest at Senlac, with each flank reasonably well anchored; the uphill road to London was squarely blocked. His deployment was well defended by the thrusting spears and battle axes of his warriors. However, in a long day of sporadic combat, the superior equipment, training, and mobility of the invaders about five thousand infantry and two thousand cavalry became apparent. Norman horsemen cut up any Saxon attempts at attack, confining Harold to a static defense. William was able to direct probing assaults and battle maneuvers, while stories of Harold’s combat valor say nothing of any actions to support his gradually weakening right wing. As dusk approached, superior Norman archery proved decisive. An arrow struck Harold in the right eye and killed him; with his death, the English center broke. As night fell, the Saxons managed a ragged retreat, but thereafter the English cause had no active and accepted leader.

Harold’s scattered remains were collected, by William’s order, for burial “by the shore he defended so well” rather than in hallowed ground. Tradition holds that a subsequent reburial was made in Waltham Abbey. A new church, Battle Abbey, was built by William on the spot where Harold was killed. However, the estates of Harold and his followers at Senlac were confiscated as being the property of rebels in arms against William their lawful king. Norman references to “King Harold of England” soon changed to “Harold Godwinson” and then to “Harold the usurper.”

Significance

Saxon chroniclers mourned Harold’s defeat as a national calamity, describing William the Conqueror as a stern ruler and his Normans as greedy oppressors. Puritan nationalism in the seventeenth century and Romantic nationalism in the nineteenth century glorified Harold as a fallen hero in the cause of Anglo-Saxon freedom. Twentieth century historians argued that most eleventh century Saxons were not free and that their victory at Senlac would have perpetuated Anglo-Danish barbarism, while the Norman Conquest restored closer commercial, linguistic, and religious contacts with the Latin civilization of Southern Europe. Such interpretations, based on later ideas of national destiny, may somewhat distort the issues of 1066, but certainly Harold II represents a significant “might have been” in the field of “history if.”

Danish Kings of England, 1016-1066

Reign

• Monarch

1016-1035

• Canute the Great

1035-1040

• Harold I Harefoot

1040-1042

• Harthacnut

1043-1066

• Edward the Confessor

1066

• Harold II

Note: Both Edward and Harold II were of mixed Danish and Saxon ancestry.

Bibliography

Barlow, Frank. Edward the Confessor. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970. A scholarly study that includes many references to Harold.

Butler, Denis. 1066: The Story of a Year. New York: Putnam, 1966. A readable narrative but compiled using some unreliable chronicles and expanded by fictitious details.

Freeman, Edward A. The Norman Conquest of England: Its Causes and Results. 6 vols. New York: AMS Press, 1977. Especially useful and comprehensive work, which glorifies Harold and the Saxons.

Hodgkin, Thomas. The History of England from the Earliest Times to the Norman Conquest. London: Longmans, Green, 1931. A scholarly and well-balanced use of source material, though with few notations. Appendix on sources and historians.

Stenton, F. M. Anglo-Saxon England. 3d ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. A classic history that is critical of eleventh century English leadership and heavily dependent on pro-Norman sources. Still a good source for the period.

Walker, David. The Normans in Britain. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1995. Offers an overview of the Anglo-Norman period in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, beginning with the Battle of Hastings.

Walker, Ian W. Harold, the Last Anglo-Saxon King. Gloucestershire, England: Sutton, 1997. Discusses Harold’s family background, his exile and return, and his and William the Conqueror’s roles in the Norman Conquest.

Whitelock, Dorothy, David C. Douglas, and Susie I. Tucker, eds. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. 2d ed. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1989. A basic contemporary source with later chronicles by Florence of Worcester, William of Malmesbury, and William of Jumieges.

Wright, Peter Poyntz. The Battle of Hastings. Salisbury, England: Michael Russell, 1986. A short book filled with illustrations and maps and devoted entirely to the Battle of Hastings. Traces the events leading to the battle, its tactics and strategies, and the immediate aftermath.