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It was the hand of God that decided the outcome of battles,

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the fate of nations and the life or death of kings. Everyone knew that.

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It was winter, the season of frost and death, and a king lay dying.

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His name was Edward the Confessor.

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He was dying childless. And it was far from obvious who would succeed him.

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As there was no heir, many thought that they should be the next king,

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including some foreign princes, like Duke William of Normandy.

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But among those gathered round the bed of the dying Saxon king was the next most powerful man in England,

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Harold Godwinson, and he thought the crown would look well on HIS head.

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He was hoping for some sign that King Edward felt the same way.

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And then Edward stretched out his hand and touched Harold. But was he giving him a blessing or a curse?

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Was this the hand of God making Harold king? Nobody knew for sure,

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but Harold had no qualms. Harold seized the crown.

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The question now was for how long would he keep it?

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And then, in the April sky, the hand of God showed itself as a comet, the hairy star.

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Everyone knew this was no blessing, but an evil omen.

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The year was 1066.

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Historians like a quiet life and, usually, they get it.

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For the most part, history moves at a glacial pace, working its changes subtly.

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In Britain, we like to think there's something about OUR history, like our climate and our landscape,

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that's naturally moderate, not given to earthquakes and revolutions.

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But there are times and places when history, British history,

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comes at you with a rush. Violent, decisive, bloody.

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A truck-load of trouble knocking you down,

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wiping out everything that gives you your bearings in the world - law, custom, loyalty and language.

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And this is one of those places.

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It doesn't look like the site of a national trauma,

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especially these days, when it looks more suitable for a county fair than a mass slaughter.

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But this is the battlefield of Hastings,

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and, here, one kind of England was annihilated and another kind of England was set up in its place.

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Some historians will tell you that, for most of the people of England,

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Hastings didn't matter that much, with Norman knights replacing Saxon lords.

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The peasants still ploughed their fields, paid taxes to the king,

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prayed to avoid poverty and disease and watched the seasons roll round.

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But the everyday can rub shoulders with the genuinely catastrophic.

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Yes, the grass grew green here again, but now there were bones beneath the buttercups.

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The governing class of the English had been dispossessed. Their men, land and animals taken from them

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and given as spoils to the victorious foreigners.

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You could survive and still be English, but now you belonged to an inferior race - the conquered.

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You lived in England, but it was no longer YOUR country.

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Anglo-Saxon England was no stranger to invasions. Viking raids had been part of life for a century.

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But since the days of Alfred the Great, the country was stable enough to soak them up.

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The longboats came and went, but still the king's law ran the Shires.

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His churches and abbeys were built more beautifully than ever.

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A town that would one day be called London was beginning to grow and prosper on the banks of the Thames.

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And then one invasion succeeded where the others had failed, and there was a Viking on the throne.

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His name was Canute, who we remember for trying to hold back the tides.

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And while he turned Anglo-Saxon England into part of his vast maritime empire, he changed nothing.

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He even chose as his closest advisor

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one of the most powerful Anglo-Saxon nobles - Godwin, Earl of Wessex.

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A scheming, ruthless man, Godwin became virtual co-ruler with Canute

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over what was still recognisably Anglo-Saxon England.

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But Canute's death in 1035 began a chain of events that would culminate

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in the one invasion that Anglo-Saxon England would be unable to swallow. And what a saga it was.

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It started with a bloody and unsparing fight for Canute's throne amongst the surviving elite.

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Treachery, murder and mutilation were par for the course.

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The last man standing with any kind of claim to the throne was a descendant of Alfred the Great,

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a prince of the Saxon royal house.

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He was called Edward and would be forever known as the Confessor. He was crowned on Easter Day 1043.

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But he inherited more than just the crown.

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He also got Earl Godwin, in no mood to lose power just because there was a new king.

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Unlike Canute, Edward had reason to hate the right-hand man forced on him,

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for Godwin had arranged his older brother's murder.

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But there was nothing he could do about his bloodstained rival - yet.

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King Edward knew that Godwin held the keys to the kingdom.

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And when Godwin offered Edward his daughter in marriage, what could he do but take her?

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Godwin was not Edward's only problem.

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He also had to learn how to govern a country he knew little about.

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For he'd grown up in exile, in a very different world across the English Channel in Normandy.

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We think of Edward the Confessor as the quintessential Anglo-Saxon king.

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In fact, he was almost as Norman as William the Conqueror.

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His mother Emma was a Norman, and he'd lived here in Normandy for 30 years,

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ever since she'd brought him as a child refugee from the wars between the Saxons and the Danes.

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But Normandy was not just an asylum for Edward,

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it was the place which formed him, politically and culturally.

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His mother tongue was Norman French, and his virtual godfathers were the formidable Dukes of Normandy.

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The Normans were descendants of Viking raiders,

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but had long since traded in their longboats for powerful warhorses.

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The Duchy of Normandy was in no sense just a piece of France.

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Though the Dukes did formal homage to the French king, in every other way they were independent,

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possessed of castles, patrons of churches.

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These warlords were constantly in the saddle - ruling vassals,

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fighting off revolts and forging shaky coalitions. But the Duchy was also humming with energetic piety.

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In the 11th century, handsome stone monasteries and churches with Romanesque arches began to appear.

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The first grandiose stone castles, as tough as the lords who had built them, became part of the landscape.

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So, until the throne of England tempted him back across the Channel at the age of 36,

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this was Edward's home,

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and, while he was here, a child was growing up who would change the course of British history.

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It was on the site of this castle at Falaise in 1027 that William,

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known to all his contemporaries - although not in front of his face - as William the Bastard, was born.

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He was, indeed, the illegitimate son of Duke Robert of Normandy and the daughter of a tanner called Erleve.

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In the cut-throat world of feudal Normandy, it was important that he learn, quickly, how to survive.

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He was only a child when his father died on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land,

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leaving eight-year-old William as his heir. A lamb thrown to the wolves.

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Certainly, Edward would have known the young William.

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It's even suggested that he was one of the hand-picked companions entrusted by William's father

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with keeping an eye on the vulnerable young boy.

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Edward would have seen how William survived childhood traumas, narrowly escaping assassination attempts.

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How William was forced, aged just ten,

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to witness the brutal murder of his beloved steward in his bedchamber before his very eyes.

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And Edward must have marvelled at the way the stripling boy grew into a steely and ruthless young man,

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eventually triumphing in battle over a formidable league of rebel nobles.

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While William was securing absolute power in Normandy,

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Edward was, by now, in the middle of a nervous reign and watching out for his biggest threat, Earl Godwin.

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But, in 1051, Edward seized his chance to rid himself of his rival.

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Edward had brought over Norman allies,

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established them in castles, made one Archbishop of Canterbury.

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Feeling his moment had now come,

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he confronted Godwin with the crime of his brother's murder and threw him out of the country.

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But Edward's bid to rid himself of his sworn enemy failed miserably.

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In exile, the Earl of Wessex was as dangerous as at home and sailed back with a fleet to humiliate the king.

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Out went Edward's Norman cronies, back came the Godwins,

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stronger than ever.

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Edward was now little more than a puppet king.

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He turned to the religious life, spending days in meditation and prayer, becoming the Confessor,

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devoting himself to the foundation of his Benedictine abbey upstream of London, his west minster.

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Impotence, though, has its uses.

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Godwin, clearly, had ambitions for the future.

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He'd foisted his daughter Edith on Edward to get a young Godwin as the next king of England.

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But Edward had his own ideas. Yes, he'd married Edith, but he would never sleep with her.

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His revenge would be her childlessness.

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Now Edward had an even more mischievous thought.

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"If Godwin wants an heir to the English throne so badly, I'll give him one. But one more to my liking."

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And it's at this point, so Norman chroniclers claimed,

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that Edward promised the succession to the Duke of Normandy, William the Bastard.

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Of course, nobody knew anything about this in England,

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least of all Godwin who, in 1053, died suddenly of a stroke while at dinner with the king.

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But there were plenty of other Godwins ready to take the Godfather's place.

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His sons now took over where he had left off, controlling England, virtually unchallenged.

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And presiding over the family empire was the eldest son Harold.

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Harold Godwinson seemed to have everything - land, power, riches, charisma, an aristocratic wife

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and a supporting troop of loyal and clever brothers.

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He even managed to make himself patron of churches, like this one at Bosham in Sussex.

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Though he didn't dare make too brazen a move,

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any dispassionate observer would have had to conclude that, once Edward was gone,

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the throne was Harold's for the taking.

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And then, all at once, an ill wind blew away this fair-weather vision.

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It all started with a voyage that no-one can fully explain, even to this day.

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In 1064, Harold and a group of men set sail across the Channel for Normandy.

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Maybe it was to rescue his younger brother Wolfstan who had been taken hostage by William.

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But, to Norman chroniclers, the journey only had one purpose -

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Harold was confirming Edward's offer of the crown.

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Why would Harold do something so against HIS own best interests?

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Perhaps that's why it makes up the first bit of the story

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of the most grandiose piece of Norman propaganda - the 70-metre-long Bayeux tapestry.

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The tapestry was commissioned by William's half-brother, Bishop Odo of Bayeux, after the conquest.

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But it may have been made by Englishwomen embroiderers,

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who were generally regarded as the most skilled stitchers in Europe.

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Who else would have made such a glamorous hero?

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Something seems to have gone wrong in the Channel, perhaps a storm.

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Landing in the territory of Guy of Ponthieu,

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they were arrested and handed over to Guy's liege lord -

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William of Normandy. The embroiderers make it dramatically clear

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that Harold and his men now find themselves in an alien world.

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The Saxons are moustachioed at this stage in the story

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with a certain air about them, despite their predicament.

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The Normans, by contrast, shave the backs of their heads.

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They are the scary half-skinheads of the early feudal world.

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Realising his lucky number has come up, William can afford to show charm and generosity to his prisoner,

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cleverly bringing him into his military entourage.

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William took Harold on campaign with him in Brittany,

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where Harold returns the favour by rescuing two of William's soldiers

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from the quicksands of Mont-Saint-Michel, one on his left arm, one on his back.

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But William's hospitality is steel tipped.

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He makes Harold one of his knights, a solemn ceremonious business, but one involving a two-way obligation.

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William, now his liege lord, would be obliged to protect Harold, his new knight.

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But Harold would have had to make his own promises,

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and there seems no doubt that he did swear some sort of oath to the Duke.

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To the medieval mind, there was nothing more serious than an oath.

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The tapestry maker makes it clear that this was a religious act

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by having a witness point to the word "sacramentum".

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Harold's oath WAS a kind of sacrament since it went to the heart of the matter -

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what would happen to England after Edward died?

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The English said that Harold agreed to be William's man only in Normandy

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and that this had no bearing on the English succession.

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The Norman chroniclers, though, said Harold had sworn to help William take the throne of England.

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The oath became even more binding when, in a cheap theatrical trick,

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the cloth was whipped from the table over which Harold had sworn.

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Underneath was revealed a reliquary containing the bones of a saint.

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Well, how much trouble was he in? Had Harold promised something he couldn't deliver?

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Or had he made no promises at all about the English crown?

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Norman chroniclers like to imagine Harold returning, haunted by guilt, saying one thing and doing another.

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But, in England at any rate, there were no signs of a queasy conscience at all.

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In fact, to get his hands on the crown, Harold did something inconceivable for a Godwin,

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something which, one day, would have disastrous consequences.

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He sold his own brother, Tostig, down the river.

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Tostig was the Earl of Northumbria.

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He was also the family hothead and had managed to provoke a northern rebellion against him.

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He'd been fleecing abbeys and monasteries,

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creating his own private army and generally acting like a greedy tyrannical brat.

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Inevitably, the local nobles rose against him, declared him outlaw

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and put in their own man to be the new earl.

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Harold was sent by King Edward to sort out the mess and, immediately, was faced with two tough choices.

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He could back his younger brother Tostig against the rebels, but that might create a civil war.

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Or he could forget all about blood ties and support Tostig's enemies.

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In return, they might feel grateful enough to offer him their support

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when the time came for him to make his bid for the English throne.

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In the end, Harold put ambition before brotherly love.

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He threw out Tostig and replaced him with the Earl Morcar. Harold had broken Godwin clan solidarity

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and turned his own brother into a mortal enemy.

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It was this merciless war of brothers which, in the end, cost Harold his throne and his life.

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More than anything else, it was the cause of the death of Anglo-Saxon England.

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The winter of 1065 was marked by tremendous gales

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which destroyed churches and uprooted great trees.

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As King Edward the Confessor lay on his deathbed, he was visited by a strange and terrible dream

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which he insisted on relating to all those who had gathered around him.

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Two monks told me that, because of the sins of its people, God had given England to evil spirits.

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I said to them, "Will God not have mercy?" And they replied,

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"Not until a growing tree cleft in two by a lighting storm

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"should come together of its own accord and grow green again. Only then will there be pardon."

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But no-one paid much attention to the ravings of an old man.

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What was more important was that Edward had touched Harold's hand.

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Maddeningly, the king had fallen short of declaring him his heir,

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but it was enough of a sign for Harold, and for the northern earls who supported him.

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On January the 6th 1066, Westminster saw the funeral of one king in the morning

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and the coronation of another in the afternoon.

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There are two Harolds depicted in the Bayeux tapestry, but which was the real one?

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The confident king who issued coins bearing the optimistic slogan "pax", the Latin for peace?

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Or the guilty, twisted usurper, stricken by omens, haunted by a vision of ships?

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The phantom fleet which the embroiderers set in the border of the tapestry

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suggests Harold could all too well imagine the reaction across the Channel to his coronation.

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A Norman historian has William hearing the news while out hunting.

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"When the Duke heard the news, he became as a man outraged.

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"Oft he tied his mantel, oft he untied it again and spoke to no man.

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"Neither dared any man speak to him".

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For ten years, William had let it be known throughout Europe that he'd soon add England to his territories.

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He was in the lethally dangerous position of looking ridiculous.

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He consulted with his feudal magnates in a series of assemblies.

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By no means all of them were thrilled with the idea of invading England.

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The risks seemed a lot more daunting than the enticement of new lands and wealth.

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So the Duke went to strategy number two, turning the matter into an international crusade.

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Couldn't the Pope see that his cause was just,

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that Harold was an infamous oath breaker, a despoiler of churches,

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while William was a builder of abbeys, a protector of bishops against bullying barons?

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It was all completely absurd, and it worked like a dream.

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The Pope was won over, gave William his papal blessing and invested him with his ring and his banner.

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It was now much more than a dynastic feud.

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William used the consecration of his wife's abbey here at La Trinite in Caen

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to proclaim a crusade against the infidel Harold.

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And the barons who'd fought shy of risking their necks on the Duke's personal vendetta

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now flocked to join the legions of the blessed.

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The Bayeux tapestry shows work got under way immediately to build an awe-inspiring expeditionary force.

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Rows of Normandy trees went down to the axe to emerge as 400 dragon-headed ships.

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Loaded onto the ships were coats of mail, bows, arrows, spears,

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and the most indispensable item of all - vast casks of wine.

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And packed so tightly into the boats that they supported each other

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were, perhaps, 6,000 horses. 3 for each knight.

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Across the Channel, Harold responded by proving he, too, was a phenomenal military organiser.

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As the crack troops of his army Harold could call on the elite of, perhaps, 3,000 housecarls,

250
00:26:04,840 --> 00:26:09,080
professional soldiers, trained to handle a two-handed axe

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that could slice right through a horse and its rider at one blow.

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The core of the army was provided by the 5,000 thanes or noblemen of England.

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In addition, there were the 13,000 part-time soldiers -

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known as the fyrd - who were obliged to give the king two months' service each year.

255
00:26:32,080 --> 00:26:36,840
With amazing speed, this army was stationed along the south coast.

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By August the 10th, William had HIS army in place along the Normandy coast.

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Two great fighting forces bent on each other's annihilation

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faced each other across a little strip of water to determine the destiny of England.

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And there they sat.

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William waiting for a southerly wind that never came, and Harold waiting for William who never came.

261
00:27:12,920 --> 00:27:19,000
This waiting was particularly serious for Harold. By the first week of September,

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he kept the fyrd in battle position for at least two weeks longer than their two-month obligation.

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What's more, it was now harvest time.

264
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So, with who knows what misgivings and uneasiness,

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on September the 8th, Harold demobilised the fyrd and sent the soldiers home.

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He was right to feel uneasy.

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Just 11 days later, Harold had a very nasty shock. His younger brother was back.

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Tostig and a Norwegian king, Harald Hardrada had landed in Northumbria with as many as 12,000 men.

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Tostig had spent his time in exile looking for allies to pursue his vendetta against Harold.

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It was a real coup for him that he'd finally enlisted the support of the awesome king of Norway.

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Hardrada was quite simply the most feared warrior of the age.

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Built like a Norwegian cliff face,

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he had a reputation for superhuman strength and elaborately creative cruelty.

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Hardrada also had a flimsy claim to the English throne that went back to Canute

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00:28:36,200 --> 00:28:42,840
and he wasn't one to flinch at a military challenge that could win him the disputed crown.

276
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Harold Hardrada sailed southwest from Norway on August the 12th.

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En route to England, he stopped here in the Viking earldom of the Orkneys

278
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to pick up yet more men and ships to add to his already formidable fleet.

279
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Expectations must have been high. The Norsemen could almost smell triumph in the summer winds.

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There would have been feasting,

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singing and the reading of poems, some, doubtless, written by Hardrada himself.

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And it may be here that Tostig joined the Viking fleet.

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If he did, and if he looked out at the water and saw the 300 ships,

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his little heart must have skipped a beat to think of the catastrophe awaiting his brother.

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Together Tostig and Hardrada would be unstoppable, invincible.

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Or would they?

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Having landed on the Northumbrian coast,

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the Viking army headed for York where it fought off the northern earls to take control of the city.

289
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Complacent with victory, Hardrada and Tostig travelled with just one third of their army

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00:30:02,600 --> 00:30:09,440
eight miles east of York to Stamford Bridge where they had arranged to collect 500 hostages.

291
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But what they saw on the banks of the River Derwent was not a forlorn group of hostages,

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but a massive army - their weapons glittering like sheets of ice, as the Viking bard put it.

293
00:30:23,080 --> 00:30:28,240
Tostig knew it meant trouble. It was his big brother.

294
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Getting his army in position to surprise the Norsemen was an epic feat by any standards.

295
00:30:35,240 --> 00:30:39,480
Harold had travelled from London, picking up his army on the way,

296
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covering 187 miles in four days. 37 to 45 miles a day!

297
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Imagine, then, thousands of men going as fast as their horses,

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or, in many cases, as fast as their legs could carry them.

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Up the Great North Road to Peterborough, Lincoln, Tadcaster.

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00:30:58,840 --> 00:31:04,000
The ultimate high-impact hike with the heaviest backpacks imaginable.

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And, at the end of it, Harold fought one of the bloodiest battles in English history.

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It was the English who broke the Viking line, and the remaining Norse warriors cowered round their chiefs.

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We must imagine the great Hardrada swinging his axe beneath the Land-waster flag

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before finally sinking down with an arrow in the throat.

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Tostig, picking up the Raven flag, and, in his turn, being cut down.

306
00:32:05,040 --> 00:32:12,400
The carnage was so complete that it took just 24 of the 300 ships that had sailed to England

307
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to return the pitiful remnant of the Norse army back to Norway.

308
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In a final act of respect, Harold found his dead brother

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and took what was left of him to be buried at York Minster.

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But he had no time to grieve or exult over the death of Tostig,

311
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for the day after the battle of Stamford Bridge,

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the Norman fleet, at last, felt the wind change direction.

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With great haste, the Duke went to sea with his fleet sailing swiftly to the coast of England.

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Their first sight of land would have been the cliffs at Beachy Head,

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and they landed in the nearby sheltering harbours of Pevensey.

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An old Roman fort guarded the beach.

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Within its empty shell, William's men erected a prefabricated timber castle - later rebuilt in stone -

318
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as if declaring that THEY were now the heirs to the Romans.

319
00:33:33,200 --> 00:33:38,000
Expeditions for food and forage from the base camp took the usual form -

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burning everything that couldn't be seized, striking terror into the hearts of the locals.

321
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One of the most unforgettable details in the Bayeux tapestry is this seemingly incidental detail

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of a mother and child turned refugee,

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fleeing from their burning house, maybe even Hastings.

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Resigned to their fate, not looking back.

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This is the first of the images that will echo through European art -

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00:34:10,680 --> 00:34:14,280
through Rubens, Goya and Picasso's Guernica -

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of the victims of war, of civilians, of innocents.

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But William soon discovered there was no easy route to get from Pevensey to London.

329
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The country behind the town was waterlogged, crossed by little river valleys that fed into the sea.

330
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But there was one old Anglo-Saxon trail that could take him to the Roman road going north through Kent,

331
00:34:40,120 --> 00:34:44,240
and it was for mastery of this ancient, muddy, rutted track

332
00:34:44,240 --> 00:34:49,360
that the most gruelling battle in early British history would be fought.

333
00:34:50,920 --> 00:34:55,800
Having beaten back the threat of the Vikings and his own brother,

334
00:34:55,800 --> 00:35:02,520
it must have seemed inconceivable to Harold that he'd have to do it all over again within a week or two.

335
00:35:02,520 --> 00:35:08,720
It would not be easy. Who could he call on? The bruised and battered remains of his army.

336
00:35:08,720 --> 00:35:15,360
It would be a long shot but, after Stamford Bridge, perhaps Harold felt he could trust his luck.

337
00:35:15,400 --> 00:35:21,480
Besides, William's public name calling - Harold the Perjured, Harold the Oath Breaker,

338
00:35:21,480 --> 00:35:26,160
Harold the Perfidious - had made it personal now, a mortal duel.

339
00:35:26,160 --> 00:35:31,640
Let the hand of God decide who was the righteous party, who would prevail.

340
00:35:38,160 --> 00:35:41,000
Harold left London at full speed.

341
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He gathered what he could of a new army by an old grey apple tree,

342
00:35:45,600 --> 00:35:51,960
an ancient, blasted tree that stood on a hill at the crossing of the tracks leading out of Hastings.

343
00:35:51,960 --> 00:35:56,400
There Harold planted his banner, the Dragon of Wessex.

344
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The Normans called this place Senlac, which means lake of blood.

345
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Imagine yourself then on the morning of Saturday the 14th of October 1066.

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You're a Saxon warrior, a housecarl as it happens, and you've survived Stamford Bridge.

347
00:36:25,480 --> 00:36:28,840
Your position here couldn't be better.

348
00:36:28,840 --> 00:36:35,240
You stand on the brow of the hill and look down hundreds of yards away at the opposition.

349
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All you have to do is prevent the Normans breaking through to the London road.

350
00:36:40,640 --> 00:36:44,800
They have the horses, but then they have to ride them uphill.

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Along the hillside, you see a densely packed crowd of Englishmen.

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At the front are the housecarls, a wall of solid shields, and, with them, the axemen.

353
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But, behind them, the part-timers, the fighting farmers, who must have time to find THEIR courage.

354
00:37:03,800 --> 00:37:09,920
Down at the foot of the hill, you can hear the whinnying of Norman horses

355
00:37:09,920 --> 00:37:13,560
and what sounds like the chanting of psalms.

356
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You're a Norman foot soldier

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and you hope to God the gentlemen on horses know what they're doing.

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All around you, you can hear the scraping of metal, the sharpening of blades, the mounting of horses.

359
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On the brow of the hill, you see a thin glittering line of men.

360
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You cross yourself and you finger the rings on your coat of mail and wonder how solid they are.

361
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You wonder what use they're going to be against an axe. You've never seen axes in battle before.

362
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But then you catch sight of the Papal banner and take heart. Surely, God is on YOUR side.

363
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The real beginning must be imagined as the cavalry raced up the hill one by one, getting into range,

364
00:38:03,600 --> 00:38:08,760
hearing the rhythmic chant of "Oot! Oot!" "Out! Out!" from the Saxons,

365
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and then hurling their javelins at the front line.

366
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Then came the slow advance of the archers, unloosing their first arrows under a hail of enemy spears.

367
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And, finally, the foot soldiers breaking into a run behind them.

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Then there was just the murderous smashing and crashing of horses, the slicing and thrusting of weapons.

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The screams, cries of the wounded and dying.

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If the axeman stood firm against the oncoming horse, he'd still only get one good swing.

371
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If he missed, he was left open to the slash of the sword from the rider above.

372
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It was the initial success of the English that also threatened their downfall.

373
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On the left flank of William's army, horses stumbled and retreated.

374
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The right flank of Harold's army, many of them inexperienced fyrdmen, decided to chase them down the hill.

375
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But Harold, always conservative in his tactics, refused to allow others to follow.

376
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He seems to have lost momentary control of his troops,

377
00:39:36,880 --> 00:39:43,800
who couldn't resist following the horsemen, elated by the thought that the Duke of Normandy was lost.

378
00:39:43,800 --> 00:39:48,320
But William threw back his helmet to prove he was very much alive.

379
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He rallied the ranks of the Norman centre round the rear of the pursuing Saxons

380
00:39:53,720 --> 00:39:56,640
and set about slicing them to pieces.

381
00:40:02,560 --> 00:40:05,040
The battle wasn't over yet.

382
00:40:05,040 --> 00:40:08,280
It would take at least six hours to decide.

383
00:40:12,840 --> 00:40:20,360
The Bayeux tapestry is shockingly explicit in exposing the extent of the carnage and mutilation.

384
00:40:24,160 --> 00:40:30,600
But it was the English army that was eventually, and very, very slowly, ground down.

385
00:40:30,600 --> 00:40:38,480
William began exploiting weak points, settling into an alternating rhythm of archers and cavalry.

386
00:40:38,480 --> 00:40:43,040
The arrows now shot high into the air and fell, not on the front line,

387
00:40:43,040 --> 00:40:46,840
but the heads of the unprotected men behind them.

388
00:40:47,840 --> 00:40:54,880
How did Harold himself die? Lately there's been an attempt to read the death scene in the tapestry

389
00:40:54,880 --> 00:40:59,320
as though he was the figure cut down by the horsemen...

390
00:41:00,560 --> 00:41:07,960
..not the warrior pulling the arrow out of his eye, the story you and I grew up with. But it seems clear

391
00:41:07,960 --> 00:41:15,640
that the words "Harold Rex" occur directly, and significantly, above the arrow-struck figure.

392
00:41:17,720 --> 00:41:24,080
Then, certainly, the knights would have been on him, cutting him down, leaving him disembowelled.

393
00:41:25,080 --> 00:41:31,240
The thanes bravely mounted a last stand, defending the body of their king.

394
00:41:31,240 --> 00:41:37,800
But, for many, it was a lost cause. It was time to save one's neck, to get out of the way.

395
00:41:40,720 --> 00:41:45,840
There are such sad stories of what follows, and perhaps some are true.

396
00:41:45,840 --> 00:41:52,080
One of them has Harold's lover, Edith Swan Neck, walking through the heaps of gory corpses

397
00:41:52,080 --> 00:41:56,400
to identify the dead king by marks on his body known only to her.

398
00:41:59,120 --> 00:42:05,560
What we do know is that around half the nobility of England perished on that battlefield.

399
00:42:24,200 --> 00:42:28,600
William had sworn that, should God give him the victory,

400
00:42:28,600 --> 00:42:36,320
he would build a great abbey of thanksgiving at the exact spot where Harold had planted his flag.

401
00:42:36,320 --> 00:42:41,520
And here it is, a statement, if ever there was one, of pious jubilation.

402
00:42:43,480 --> 00:42:50,160
But William had to make sure he'd won not just a single battle, but the war for England.

403
00:42:50,160 --> 00:42:53,200
This was done in the time-honoured way -

404
00:42:53,200 --> 00:42:59,000
cutting a swath of fire, rape and plunder through the countryside of south-east England.

405
00:42:59,000 --> 00:43:02,600
One by one, the Anglo-Saxon cities folded.

406
00:43:03,840 --> 00:43:09,360
William was crowned at Westminster on Christmas Day 1066.

407
00:43:09,360 --> 00:43:14,120
But the event was more like a shambles than a triumph.

408
00:43:14,120 --> 00:43:16,560
At the shout of acclamation,

409
00:43:16,560 --> 00:43:20,880
the Norman soldiers stationed outside thought a riot had started,

410
00:43:20,880 --> 00:43:25,320
to which their response was to burn down every house in sight.

411
00:43:25,320 --> 00:43:31,760
As fighting broke out, many of those in the abbey, smelling smoke, rushed outside.

412
00:43:33,360 --> 00:43:38,120
And the ceremony was completed in a half-empty interior with William,

413
00:43:38,120 --> 00:43:43,200
for the first time in his life, seen to be shaking like a leaf.

414
00:43:46,120 --> 00:43:50,280
When he emerged from the smoke and chaos of the coronation,

415
00:43:50,280 --> 00:43:56,440
just what kind of king did the surviving remnant of the old governing class imagine they had?

416
00:43:56,440 --> 00:44:00,120
Did they fondly suppose he was going to be another Canute

417
00:44:00,120 --> 00:44:05,000
who, now he'd won his realm, would disband his army and send them home?

418
00:44:05,000 --> 00:44:08,280
If they did, they were in for a very nasty shock

419
00:44:08,280 --> 00:44:13,360
because, even if William had wanted to do this, it was quite impossible.

420
00:44:13,360 --> 00:44:18,880
His whole campaign had been based on the promise of the lure of land,

421
00:44:18,880 --> 00:44:24,280
the pledge to hand over Saxon land on a golden plate of conquest.

422
00:44:26,360 --> 00:44:31,120
There was never the remotest chance that William would be another Canute

423
00:44:31,120 --> 00:44:37,800
and assimilate himself into the world of Anglo-Saxon England. His conquest turned the country around.

424
00:44:37,800 --> 00:44:44,560
England's orientation now was south, away from Scandinavia and towards continental Europe.

425
00:44:48,280 --> 00:44:55,120
The north of England, which still retained strong Viking sympathies, offered the most resistance.

426
00:44:55,120 --> 00:45:01,320
Three years into William's reign, York opened its gates to King Sweyn of Denmark,

427
00:45:01,320 --> 00:45:06,040
hailing him as a liberator from the new king of England.

428
00:45:08,000 --> 00:45:12,800
William's response was to mount a campaign of oppression in the north

429
00:45:12,800 --> 00:45:17,400
that was not just punitive, but an exercise in mass murder -

430
00:45:17,400 --> 00:45:23,480
thousands upon thousands of men and boys gruesomely butchered, their bodies left to rot and fester.

431
00:45:29,640 --> 00:45:33,000
Every town and village burnt without pity.

432
00:45:33,000 --> 00:45:40,360
Fields and livestock destroyed so completely that any survivors were doomed to die in a great famine.

433
00:45:42,840 --> 00:45:46,880
Hard on the heels of massacre and starvation came plague.

434
00:45:48,560 --> 00:45:52,920
And all across England, William built at least 90 castles,

435
00:45:52,920 --> 00:45:56,240
dominating areas of potential revolt.

436
00:45:56,240 --> 00:46:03,120
Engines of terror that helped William control over two million Saxons with just 25,000 Normans.

437
00:46:15,160 --> 00:46:22,560
Most of the voices describing to us the events after 1066 are written from the victor's perspective,

438
00:46:22,560 --> 00:46:27,400
unapologetic and crowing, sketching the starkest possible contrast

439
00:46:27,400 --> 00:46:33,440
between the Machiavellian perjurer Harold and the noble, betrayed William.

440
00:46:33,440 --> 00:46:40,440
But among this rather nauseating chorus of congratulation, there is at least one that dares break rank.

441
00:46:40,440 --> 00:46:44,360
That, in fact, sees the conquest as it surely was -

442
00:46:44,360 --> 00:46:50,560
a brutal, ruthless and completely successful act of aggression and cruelty.

443
00:46:51,720 --> 00:46:57,400
The voice is all the more credible because it belongs to someone who, by rights,

444
00:46:57,400 --> 00:47:02,040
should have found nothing to fault in the Norman conquest -

445
00:47:02,040 --> 00:47:08,760
the monk Orderic Vitalis, whose family came over with William and belonged to the conquering class.

446
00:47:08,760 --> 00:47:13,200
In the early 12th century, he began to pen his account of the conquest.

447
00:47:13,200 --> 00:47:19,720
In complete contrast to the others, Orderic never minces his words about what he thought of as colonisation.

448
00:47:19,720 --> 00:47:26,480
"Foreigners grew wealthy with the spoils of England, while her own sons were either shamefully slain

449
00:47:26,480 --> 00:47:31,680
"or driven as exiles to wander hopelessly through foreign kingdoms."

450
00:47:34,800 --> 00:47:42,160
His account conveys the traumatic magnitude of what happened in England in the years following 1066.

451
00:47:42,160 --> 00:47:46,480
Pre-conquest England was an old country, as Orderic describes it.

452
00:47:46,480 --> 00:47:49,840
Afterwards, it was a completely new one.

453
00:47:49,840 --> 00:47:52,520
Of course, not everything changed.

454
00:47:52,520 --> 00:47:59,120
To look at a list of governing institutions you might suppose that nothing had changed,

455
00:47:59,120 --> 00:48:03,440
that one class of governors had kicked out another class. Big deal!

456
00:48:03,440 --> 00:48:06,920
But I rather think it WAS a big deal.

457
00:48:06,920 --> 00:48:13,840
Imagine the county gentry of England - priests, squires, judges - all wiped out overnight -

458
00:48:13,840 --> 00:48:21,760
half of them dead, the rest humiliated, broken, replaced by an alien class.

459
00:48:21,760 --> 00:48:24,920
They speak differently, they look different,

460
00:48:24,920 --> 00:48:31,640
they take what they want when they want and then rubber-stamp the decision in YOUR courts.

461
00:48:34,120 --> 00:48:36,680
They also build differently.

462
00:48:36,680 --> 00:48:39,760
Ely Cathedral is one of those places

463
00:48:39,760 --> 00:48:46,880
where the intimate scale of Saxon churches was replaced by a statement of massive triumphalism.

464
00:48:46,880 --> 00:48:51,200
These columns speak of authority and raw power.

465
00:48:51,200 --> 00:48:57,560
They command obedience and reverence. They are, in the most literal sense, awesome.

466
00:49:06,080 --> 00:49:12,720
It was the difference between the immense Romanesque bulk of the great Norman cathedrals

467
00:49:12,720 --> 00:49:16,080
and the small spaces of the Saxon chapel.

468
00:49:16,080 --> 00:49:22,080
There was another telling difference between the old and new rulers of England.

469
00:49:22,080 --> 00:49:27,680
Anglo-Saxons didn't use surnames. They were Cedric or Edgar of somewhere or other.

470
00:49:27,680 --> 00:49:33,640
But the Normans incorporated places into their own names, like an act of possession.

471
00:49:33,640 --> 00:49:37,840
They were Roger of the Beautiful Hill - Roger Beaumont -

472
00:49:37,840 --> 00:49:42,760
because the place WAS theirs. They owned it lock, stock and barrel.

473
00:49:42,760 --> 00:49:48,800
In fact, preserving the estate intact was what the Norman nobility was all about.

474
00:49:48,800 --> 00:49:55,520
It was they who introduced the practice of passing on whole estates intact to one heir - the eldest son.

475
00:49:55,520 --> 00:50:00,440
The unsentimental, decisive way with things was the Norman way,

476
00:50:00,440 --> 00:50:03,840
giving a hard-nosed edge

477
00:50:03,840 --> 00:50:10,360
to the fuzzy tangles of contracts and customs that had been used by the Anglo-Saxons.

478
00:50:10,360 --> 00:50:14,720
And it was in this spirit that William, in 1085,

479
00:50:14,720 --> 00:50:21,680
held court in Gloucester and launched, arguably, the most extraordinary campaign of his reign,

480
00:50:21,680 --> 00:50:23,960
a campaign for information.

481
00:50:23,960 --> 00:50:28,760
We tend to think of William as more or less permanently in the saddle.

482
00:50:28,760 --> 00:50:34,920
He grew up in a world, after all, where authority was usually delivered on the blade of a sword.

483
00:50:34,920 --> 00:50:41,760
So it's all the more impressive that he seems to have understood that information could also be power.

484
00:50:41,760 --> 00:50:45,840
William the Conqueror was the first database king.

485
00:50:48,040 --> 00:50:51,400
His immediate need was to raise a tax,

486
00:50:51,400 --> 00:50:57,640
but the compilation of the Domesday Book was more than just a glorified audit.

487
00:50:57,640 --> 00:51:04,320
It was a complete inventory of everything in the kingdom, shire by shire...pig by pig.

488
00:51:04,320 --> 00:51:09,840
Who had owned what before the coming of the Normans, and who owned what now.

489
00:51:09,840 --> 00:51:13,560
How much it had been worth then, and how much now.

490
00:51:14,920 --> 00:51:19,320
"The King sent his men all over England into every shire

491
00:51:19,320 --> 00:51:24,000
"and had them find out how many hides there were in each shire,

492
00:51:24,000 --> 00:51:28,040
"what land and cattle the king himself had in the county.

493
00:51:28,040 --> 00:51:34,760
"So very narrowly did he have it investigated there was no single hide nor, shame to relate it,

494
00:51:34,760 --> 00:51:42,320
"but it seemed no shame to him, was there one ox, or one cow left out and not put down in record."

495
00:51:42,320 --> 00:51:47,000
While some of the information was taken verbally by William's scribes,

496
00:51:47,000 --> 00:51:51,040
some must have owed its existence to Saxon records.

497
00:51:51,040 --> 00:51:54,800
The most extraordinary paradox about the Domesday Book

498
00:51:54,800 --> 00:52:00,560
is that what we think of as a monument to Norman power and strength

499
00:52:00,560 --> 00:52:07,200
owed itself to the advanced machinery of government left behind by the old Anglo-Saxon monarchy.

500
00:52:07,200 --> 00:52:13,800
And it was thanks to this that the data was collected at such lightning speed - less than six months.

501
00:52:15,200 --> 00:52:19,800
The results were presented to William, here, at Old Sarum,

502
00:52:19,800 --> 00:52:24,240
an ancient Iron-Age fort inside which he'd built a royal palace.

503
00:52:24,240 --> 00:52:30,560
When given the Domesday Book, it was as if William had been handed the keys to the kingdom again,

504
00:52:30,560 --> 00:52:34,000
as if he'd reconquered England - statistically.

505
00:52:34,000 --> 00:52:38,400
Because its information was more impregnable than any castle.

506
00:52:38,400 --> 00:52:45,840
It was called the Domesday Book because it was said its decisions were as final as the Last Judgment.

507
00:52:49,720 --> 00:52:56,760
"The Church itself holds Wenlock. There are 40 hides, 4 of which are exempt from tax under King Canute.

508
00:52:56,760 --> 00:53:02,040
"There are 15 slaves. 2 mills serve the monks, plus 1 fishery.

509
00:53:02,040 --> 00:53:09,640
"Enough woodland to fatten 300 pigs and 2 hedged enclosures. Value now 12 pounds."

510
00:53:12,360 --> 00:53:17,000
Two ceremonies took place on Lammas Day 1087 at Old Sarum.

511
00:53:17,000 --> 00:53:23,560
First every noble in England gathered here to take an oath of loyalty to the king.

512
00:53:23,560 --> 00:53:29,720
And then came the handing over of the book, the ultimate weapon to keep them in line.

513
00:53:29,720 --> 00:53:32,320
Now nobody could hold back anything.

514
00:53:32,320 --> 00:53:35,680
And it was this book, the Domesday Book,

515
00:53:35,680 --> 00:53:41,920
that made the gathering at Old Sarum unique in the history of feudal monarchy in Europe.

516
00:53:41,920 --> 00:53:45,360
For the book, ultimately, WAS England.

517
00:53:45,360 --> 00:53:49,880
For centuries after, this was the secret of English government,

518
00:53:49,880 --> 00:53:56,200
a partnership between the power of the landed classes and the authority of the state.

519
00:53:56,200 --> 00:54:01,200
Between the guardians of the green acres and the keepers of knowledge.

520
00:54:01,200 --> 00:54:05,800
In one corner, the gentry, in the other corner, the civil service.

521
00:54:05,800 --> 00:54:09,640
And in-between them, the eternal umpire, the king.

522
00:54:10,880 --> 00:54:14,720
But the umpire was finally feeling the strain.

523
00:54:14,720 --> 00:54:20,800
Not surprising when, aged 60, William still couldn't resist playing the warlord.

524
00:54:20,800 --> 00:54:28,200
In 1087, he subdued a border dispute in France by, of course, totally destroying the town of Mantes.

525
00:54:28,200 --> 00:54:32,400
But perhaps this last devastation was one too many.

526
00:54:32,400 --> 00:54:39,240
A flaming timber from one of the houses burned by William's soldiers fell right in front of the king.

527
00:54:39,240 --> 00:54:46,200
William's horse suddenly bucked, throwing the now overweight king violently against his saddle.

528
00:54:46,200 --> 00:54:49,160
His gut took the force of the blow.

529
00:54:49,160 --> 00:54:54,040
Mortally wounded, William was taken to a priory at Rouen.

530
00:54:58,440 --> 00:55:05,120
At the very end, Orderic Vitalis puts into William's mouth an extraordinary deathbed confession,

531
00:55:05,120 --> 00:55:11,840
so penitential, so utterly out of character that it seems, on the face of it, completely incredible.

532
00:55:11,840 --> 00:55:15,880
But whether William actually spoke those words or not,

533
00:55:15,880 --> 00:55:22,080
they clearly reflected what some, perhaps many, people felt about William the Conqueror.

534
00:55:22,080 --> 00:55:26,800
When all the battles were won, when the laws had all been laid down,

535
00:55:26,800 --> 00:55:31,000
he was what he had always been - a brutal adventurer,

536
00:55:31,000 --> 00:55:38,320
and the conquest of England, not a righteous crusade, but just a grand throw of history's dice.

537
00:55:38,320 --> 00:55:45,080
"I appoint no-one my heir to the crown of England for I did not attain that high honour by hereditary right,

538
00:55:45,080 --> 00:55:51,880
"but wrestled it from the perjured King Harold in a desperate battle with much effusion of human blood.

539
00:55:51,880 --> 00:55:56,680
"I have persecuted its native inhabitants beyond all reason.

540
00:55:56,680 --> 00:56:02,880
"Whether gentle or simple, I cruelly oppressed them. Many I unjustly disinherited.

541
00:56:02,880 --> 00:56:09,000
"Innumerable multitudes, especially in the county of York, perished through me by famine or the sword.

542
00:56:09,000 --> 00:56:14,840
"Having therefore made my way to the throne of that kingdom by so many crimes,

543
00:56:14,840 --> 00:56:21,560
"I dare not leave it to anyone but God alone lest, after my death, worse should happen by my means."

544
00:56:21,560 --> 00:56:27,680
Once he had gone, in the early hours of the morning of the 9th of September 1087,

545
00:56:27,680 --> 00:56:30,440
a shocking scene took place.

546
00:56:30,440 --> 00:56:36,840
His closest followers now paid their last respects to William by all deserting him,

547
00:56:36,840 --> 00:56:41,840
racing off around the kingdom to secure their land and property,

548
00:56:41,840 --> 00:56:46,080
leaving the corpse to be looted by the servants -

549
00:56:46,080 --> 00:56:51,760
naked, bloated and beginning to putrefy on the monastery floor.

550
00:56:53,560 --> 00:56:59,960
So the man who'd spent his life taking whatever he could by whatever means possible

551
00:56:59,960 --> 00:57:04,160
was finally robbed of everything, even his dignity.

552
00:57:04,160 --> 00:57:09,080
Perhaps the hand of God had decided that this was a fitting end.

553
00:57:14,480 --> 00:57:18,240
As for his old antagonist, Harold,

554
00:57:18,240 --> 00:57:25,720
he certainly didn't stay buried on the shore facing the Channel as some Norman historians suggested.

555
00:57:25,720 --> 00:57:32,400
Rumours had it that he escaped and lived as a hermit, but another story is much more likely to be the truth.

556
00:57:32,400 --> 00:57:35,000
That, once it was safe,

557
00:57:35,000 --> 00:57:41,720
the female survivors of the family took Harold's remains and had them interred here at Waltham Abbey.

558
00:57:41,720 --> 00:57:48,360
According to William and the Pope, Harold was a despoiler of the Church, deserving of destruction.

559
00:57:48,360 --> 00:57:56,240
But the monks at Waltham didn't seem to agree, for they secretly buried him and prayed for his soul.

560
00:57:57,680 --> 00:58:03,600
Somewhere then, beneath the columns and arches of this Romanesque church,

561
00:58:03,600 --> 00:58:06,120
is the last Anglo-Saxon king,

562
00:58:06,120 --> 00:58:10,240
literally, part of the foundations of Norman England.

563
00:58:26,240 --> 00:58:30,720
Subtitles by Mary Easton BBC Scotland - 2000

564
00:58:30,720 --> 00:58:34,120
E-mail us at subtitling@bbc.co.uk