The Battle of Hastings (23 page)

Harold marched on the road from London, through the forest of the Weald. William of Jumièges wrote: ‘Hastening to take the duke by surprise, he rode through the night and arrived at the battlefield at dawn.’
13
He arranged for an assembly point on the southern exit from the wooded heights. The place was marked by an old apple tree. We now need to consider the site where the battle was fought. Historians have agreed. There is no doubt. Vested interests would be upset if the accepted site was wrong. It is probably correct, but the ‘probably’ needs to be emphasized. When first suggested that evidence could be interpreted to indicate a different site, one might have expected enraged howls from various quarters.
14
In the event, nobody seemed to notice, not even more recent works on the battle. This is odd because the point is a serious one. The
best
evidence for the location of the battle is not at all definite about the accepted site, and we should recall that none of the eleventh-century sources was the work of an eyewitness, or probably of anyone who ever visited the site. So far as we know, the twelfth-century Battle Abbey chronicler was the only author of any of our sources who actually knew the ground. We should therefore examine the matter of location in more detail.
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The reason that historians assume they know where the battle was fought is that they accept without question the statement in the
Chronicle of
Battle Abbey
. Allen Brown, whose account of Hastings remains the best, wrote: ‘we know the site of the engagement: we know with an unusual degree of precision where it was fought’.
16
But the Abbey
Chronicle
, as we have seen, would not normally be considered a prime source of evidence: it is late, it contains demonstrable distortions and economies with the truth, and it has reasons for manufacturing or exaggerating this particular point. The reason it is taken seriously is because it is a local source: the writer would have known abbey traditions and local lore. But he was writing a century after the event, his knowledge is all at second hand, and the source of his information is not passed on to us. The chronicle tells us that, in building the abbey, the Conqueror was fulfilling a vow that had been made long before on the continent, and the modern editor suggests we should treat this tale with circumspection. We ought to treat all his tales with circumspection.
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He wrote that four monks were brought over from Marmoutier and they ‘studied the battlefield and decided that it seemed hardly suitable for so outstanding a building. They therefore chose a fit place for settling, a site located not far off, but somewhat lower down, towards the western slope of the ridge … This place, still called
Herste
, has a low wall as a mark of this.’ But when the Conqueror was told, ‘he refused angrily and ordered them to lay the foundations of the church speedily and on the very spot where his enemy had fallen and the victory had been won’. He adds that ‘the English had already occupied the hill where the church now stands’. He then goes on to say that ‘they prudently erected the high altar as the king had commanded, on the very place where Harold’s emblem, which they called a standard, was seen to have fallen’.
18

This has convinced many, and it may be true, but in accepting this chronicler we must realise we are taking much for granted. The tale has the same sort of pseudo-realistic ring about it as the vow story. The writer himself says that the Conqueror never visited the site. The building was certainly not ready until many years after the battle. They started in one location and finished in another. The writer was keen to enhance his abbey’s reputation with the tale of the vow; one cannot but suspect that he at least firmed up the foundation story to suit the abbey’s purpose. We should have reservations about swallowing the tale without question. It is some cause for concern that the altar story does not emerge until a century after the event: it is surprising that no earlier writer knew of and repeated such a vivid detail.
19

The reason all this is being laboured is that we shall now do what we recommended should always be done, look at the early and best evidence. Only from its being local can the
Chronicle
of Battle Abbey
possibly be thought ‘best’. The early chronicles in fact do not clearly identify the location, and there are some comments which are a little worrying to the acceptance of the traditional site. The most important of these is the one chronicle written by an Englishman in Old English and close to the event, the D version of the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
. This is a brief account of the battle, but it makes a clear statement of location: ‘King Harold was informed of this [William’s landing and activities] and he assembled a large army and came against him at the hoary apple tree.’
20
It does not say they assembled there and then moved on a mile and fought, but that is where they fought. This also indicates that it was no chance location, but one that was well known and selected well in advance as a meeting point, perhaps with the prime intention of preventing a Norman march northwards to London.
21

The location of the apple tree oddly enough has been investigated and settled to most people’s satisfaction. It is thought to have been on the summit of Caldbec Hill, where there is now a windmill. This is a place where the boundaries of three hundreds met, and such old trees often marked important boundary points of that kind.

The odd thing is that historians have settled the position of the tree, but never considered that the D version might be correct. It is an eminently suitable position for the sort of battle the chronicles describe. Caldbec is a hill with slopes steeper than those at Battle. In fact Caldbec, 300 feet above sea level, dominates the area, and Chevallier, again without considering there might be other significance to the statement, thought that before victory was won the Normans would have needed to control Caldbec. And what of our best source for the battle, William of Poitiers? He wrote: ‘They stationed themselves in a position overlooking him, on a hillside adjacent to the wood through which they had advanced’, which again fits rather better with Caldbec than with Battle.

The
Carmen
gives some detail of the English taking up position. (We shall keep to our determination to treat the
Carmen
as a second rank source.) The poet says that the Normans first saw the English while they were still among the trees: they could ‘see the forest glitter, full of spears’. The action begins thus:

Suddenly the forest poured forth troops of men, and from the hiding-places of the woods a host dashed forward. There was a hill near the forest and a neighbouring valley and the ground was untilled because of its roughness … they seized this place for the battle. On the highest point of the summit he [Harold] planted his banner.

This could fit either hill, but the remarks about woodland are of interest.
22

Caldbec Hill was right on the edge of the heavily wooded land. Domesday Book allows us to say this with some hope of being accurate, since it indicates which parts were cultivated. The Battle chronicler says there were woods around the abbey, but from Domesday it seems likely that if troops emerged from ‘forest’ they would first come on to Caldbec, which after all was the appointed meeting place. We shall leave the identification of the Malfosse to a later point in our discussion, but it fits as well and perhaps better with a battle fought on Caldbec than one on Battle Hill.

It might be thought that Orderic’s description, though a late one, confirms the abbey account. He wrote: ‘a great multitude of the English flocked together from all sides to the place whose early name was Senlac … Reaching the spot they all dismounted from their horses and stood close together in a dense formation on foot.’ It is important that Orderic uses an otherwise unknown place-name, and it has been universally applied to Battle Hill, but without any evidence. Orderic knew a name for the place, but which place? Senlac means literally ‘sand-lake’, and there is no lake close by Battle Hill, though people have conjectured that there may once have been.
23
The hill itself would certainly not be called ‘sand-lake’, and there is no reason to think that Senlac means Battle Hill.

However, there was a lake, or at least a pool, close by Caldbec Hill, close to Oakwood Gill on the edge of the wooded area. We also note that taken as it stands, without prior knowledge of where Senlac is, Orderic’s account sounds more like that of the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
, as if the English dismounted and fought at the point of assembly, rather than marching on a mile or so, and that Senlac was the name of the assembly point. His account is that they came to Senlac and ‘Reaching the spot they all dismounted from their horses’. The Bayeux Tapestry, just as it moves to the story of the battle, depicts three trees – none have been shown since the Norman felling of timber for building the fleet.
24
This seems to confirm that woods were in the vicinity of the fighting, though in this case seen from the point of view of the Norman advance, which also shows a hill on the approach.

There are a few minor points which might cause this pause for thought to seem worthwhile. The battle accounts have always left a few puzzles when historians have tried to relate them to the actual ground of Battle Hill. There are questions about the ‘hillock’ on the Tapestry.
25
One has been identified in the flatter ground before the abbey, but it hardly fits, and is very small. The ‘hillock’ also appears on the Tapestry before even the rumour of William’s death. Later, it will be suggested that there was no hillock to look for. Then there is the matter of where the ‘Malfosse’ was, if that is the correct name even to connect with an incident in the battle.
26

It is puzzling given the enormous interest in Hastings, that despite the digging of foundations for the abbey, for the old primary school, for all the houses along the main road, all the digging in gardens, the archaeological digs at various points in the abbey grounds, the road making, not a single trace of the battle has been found. There are a few tales about finds, but none which have ever been verified and which would prove that Battle Hill had been the site of a great battle. Have people simply been looking in the wrong place?
27

Here we shall end this debate. There is no certainty that the battle of Hastings was fought at Caldbec. What needs to be said is that the evidence is not decisive. There are question-marks against placing the site on Battle Hill, and we should keep a more open mind on the matter than has been the case to date. I did not put this case with any particular pleasure. I have had a long association with Pyke House and the traditional battlefield. I shall be perfectly happy if some further proof appears which confirms the traditional location. It is simply that if one looks at the evidence objectively, questions have to be raised. I must confess to a wry grin at the thought that the traditional site just might be wrong, and at all those people who have so carefully measured Battle Hill to calculate how many men stood on it if each had 3 feet of ground, the little signs all over the place to mark who stood where, the confident guides in the abbey, or whatever… .

The case for Caldbec Hill as the battle site has been put at some length because it has never been done before, not because it is necessarily correct. Yet whatever reservations we have about the Battle chronicler, it does seem likely that the abbey called after the battle would have been built where the battle was fought, and that the monks, who did not know the land or the country, would have sought advice from any one of the thousands who had fought there. But stranger things have happened. We may also question whether the altar is actually on the summit of the hill and was Harold’s command post. But on the ground of probability, there remains a good case for the traditional site.
28

Harold certainly placed a banner to mark his command position on the summit of the chosen hill. Harold may have had two banners: the Wessex dragon banner sometimes called the Wyvern which is shown on the Tapestry, and perhaps also his own personal banner of the Fighting Man. William of Malmesbury says that after the battle the Fighting Man, embroidered with gold and precious stones, was sent to the Pope by the victor.
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The following account of the battle will be based on the early chronicle evidence, and will not assume a known site, though locations will be discussed where it becomes important to do so, for example, over the Malfosse business. Before we can move to the actual conflict there is one other disputed matter to settle. Did the English set up some kind of palisade or defence to protect themselves during the battle? We can answer fairly certainly: no they did not. The wall comes either from a mistranslation and misunderstanding of Wace, or from Wace himself if you believe he meant a palisade rather than using that simile for the shield-wall. The palisade in front of the English was popularised by Freeman as a ‘development of the usual tactics of the shield-wall’, and has survived in various accounts since, despite Round’s thorough demolition work on it in the last century.

I have changed my mind over this since 1985. I then believed that Wace got it wrong and had the idea that a shield-wall must be some sort of real wall. This is possible, the matter depends on a translation of a difficult section of his French, and in particular on the translation of ‘escuz’, which could mean either shield or wall/fence. I now feel that Round may have got it right, and that Wace did not mean a solid wall at all, that he realises perfectly well what a shield-wall was, and that his passage is a poetic flight intended as a simile, and that he no more meant an actual wall than Shakespeare thought the sea was a real wall around the scepter’d isle. It is the word ‘escuz’ which persuades me, as it persuaded Round. I think we can credit Wace with deliberate poetic punning. What he is saying is that the shield-wall was
like
a real wall and so on, with somewhat exaggerated emphasis and detail. Of course, one can always be wrong on such debatable matters.
30
In any event, Wace, with his knowledge of twelfth-century warfare, is often interesting on tactics, and added a point we may accept without difficulty in an imagined speech by Harold: ‘all is lost if they once penetrate our ranks’.
31
The English did form a solid mass together on the hill, close together, an imposing sight, a difficult obstacle.
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