The Making and Meaning of the Bayeux Tapestry Revisited

ABSTRACT

This article revives the suggestion, previously made by Otto Werckmeister and Shirley Ann Brown, that the Bayeux Tapestry was intended to act as part of a petition to free Bishop Odo of Bayeux from imprisonment at the hands of his half-brother, William the Conqueror, and that it was commissioned by the three knights named in it, Turold, Wadard and Vitalis, perhaps with the support of Abbot Scolland of St Augustine’s abbey, Canterbury. It argues that the role played by these three knights has been too quickly dismissed, and in so doing asks wider questions including about how political petitions were made and whether any attempt to deny Harold Godwinson a royal title and a reign had been successfully communicated to the population at large.

KEYWORDS:

• Bayeux Tapestry
• Norman conquest
• petitions
• propaganda
• politics
• material culture
• kingship

In 1082 or 1083, Bishop Odo of Bayeux was arrested by his half-brother, King William I, on the Isle of Wight, apparently while planning a campaign that was ultimately intended to win him the papacy.¹ At some point after his arrest, three of Odo’s followers, Turold, Wadard and Vitalis, decided that they would attempt to sue for Odo’s release. To give their petition a greater chance of success they decided to present the king with a gift, namely an embroidery depicting his conquest, which he could display in his hall, but which would initially remind him that Odo had helped him to gain his kingdom in the first place. They also had themselves portrayed within their embroidery to remind the king of the services that they, too, had performed for him during the campaign, with the intention, it may be supposed, that this reminder would also give their petition a better chance of success. In the past, similar reconciliations had been achieved through writing. William of Jumièges, apparently off his own bat, had composed the Gesta Normannorum ducum to reconcile Duke William with his subjects, and vice versa, following the turmoil of his minority, the subsequent rebellions led by Guy of Burgundy and William of Arques and the several invasions of Normandy sponsored by King Henry of the French and Count Geoffrey Martel of Anjou.² William of Poitiers had written his Gesta Guillemi to reconcile the English with their new Norman king.³ Bishop Guy of Amiens had composed the Carmen de Hastingae proelio probably as part of a successful attempt to reconcile the king with Count Eustace of Boulogne, around a decade before Odo’s arrest.⁴ But these authors were all churchmen, who perhaps saw writing as the natural medium with which to rebuild relationships. The three knights probably did not share that same literary culture and tradition, and they also had a very specific audience for their petition in mind – the king and, perhaps, some of the members of his court. And so they decided to commission the more visual and decorative embroidery, and perhaps outlined in their brief that the designer should borrow motifs from contemporary chansons and imperial Roman art to tell the story and make critical points.⁵ A story told mostly in pictures, with some captions in basic Latin and incorporating some well-known fables and the occasional wry comment, may be supposed to have been more appealing to their secular point of view and thus, or so they would have thought, more likely to win King William over too.⁶

It is likely that the embroidery was up to two years in the making, and it is likely, too, that the three knights, two of whom were also associated with St Augustine’s abbey, Canterbury, gained the support of Abbot Scolland for their enterprise.⁷ When the work was finally completed, it was presented to the king as part of the petition to free Odo.⁸ But King William’s anger had not abated, and the Tapestry might not have gone down as well as the knights had hoped, and so he rejected their petition and their embroidery. Alternatively, by the time the Tapestry was completed, King William I had died and Odo had been released. In either case, the embroidery remained with the knights who subsequently presented it to Odo as a demonstration of their fidelity and service to him, and to celebrate his role in the Conquest. And so it came to find a home at Bayeux, where it is possible that Baudri of Bourgeuil and, later, Wace, saw it.⁹

If this story seems familiar, that is because parts of it have been suggested before. Notably, Otto Werckmeister, followed by Shirley Ann Brown, argued in 1976 and 1989 respectively that the imprisoned Odo had commissioned the Tapestry in the hope that it would help to secure his release from King William’s prison, a suggestion that also re-dated the Tapestry to after his imprisonment c. 1082.¹⁰ Werckmeister, indeed, also suggested that the three knights might well have commissioned the Tapestry on behalf of their incarcerated lord, with Brown apparently tending more to the view that they had acted as Odo’s agents – perhaps in the light of some of the criticisms levelled at Werckmeister’s suggestion.¹¹

Those criticisms appeared very soon after Werckmeister had published his argument. In 1978, Brooks and Walker opined that, ‘nothing suggests that Turold, Wadard and Vitalis were such important lords that they could commission so magnificent and vast a work. Moreover to attribute to the imprisoned bishop such an exaggeratedly prominent role in the Norman conquest would but have added another to the list of Odo's crimes’.¹² H. E. J. Cowdrey wondered whether, if King William had ever seen the Tapestry, he would have been pleased by what he saw.¹³ Richard Gameson thought that Brown’s 1989 hypothesis ‘seems highly improbable given that the imagery is unlikely to have endeared Odo to William – not to mention the practical difficulties of organising its manufacture from imprisonment in Rouen’.¹⁴ Elizabeth Carson Pastan and Stephen White have also dismissed the idea that the Tapestry dates from after Odo’s imprisonment and have argued instead that Wadard and Vitalis owe their appearance on the Tapestry to their association with St Augustine’s abbey, Canterbury, rather than Odo of Bayeux.¹⁵

While no argument concerning the Tapestry can ever attain the level of proof, the thesis developed below is nonetheless intended to demonstrate that the rejection of the idea that the three knights commissioned the Tapestry on Odo’s behalf, as well as the chronological limits generally imposed on the Tapestry’s manufacture, are ill-founded, and that many of the issues raised by the Tapestry are best answered if it is taken to be part of a petition commissioned by Wadard, Vitalis and Turold to free Odo from the king’s prison.

Wadard, Turold, Vitalis and the Bayeux Tapestry

While Bishop Odo of Bayeux does not dominate the narrative in the Tapestry in the way that Harold and William do, his presence is nonetheless conspicuous in an artefact that explicitly names very few people. He is identified, and also styled bishop, on two occasions – once between the lunching scene after the Norman fleet has landed in England and the scene in which he and his brother give counsel to Duke William, and again when he urges on the boys in the heat of the battle.¹⁶ His presence is also strongly implied in the scene where William orders the construction of ships, while the siting of Harold’s oath at Bayeux, as opposed to Bonneville or Rouen, also suggests a link between Odo and the Tapestry.¹⁷ Gale Owen-Crocker has suggested that, in addition, Odo is shown on the Breton campaign, wearing the same coloured coat of plates that he wears during the battle of Hastings. The idea is plausible, even though the artists of the Tapestry were consistently inconsistent in the way they portrayed specific individuals.¹⁸

As Bishop Odo was not among the principals in the competition for England’s throne, and as he is given no similar prominence in the written accounts of the Norman Conquest (at least until after the battle was won), his several appearances here, both express and implied, require explanation. And the simplest explanation is that he was somehow connected with the creation of the Tapestry. Thus Bishop Odo has long been the most favoured, if not the only, candidate for those looking for the man who had the Tapestry made.¹⁹

Of course, Odo’s relative prominence could also be explained if the Tapestry had been commissioned by a kinsman or ally of the bishop and/or for a purpose that required some emphasis on the bishop’s role. If it were the case that King William, or Count Robert of Mortain, or Abbot Scolland had commissioned the Tapestry, they might have wanted to celebrate the bishop’s part in events. But if that were indeed the case, it would still be difficult satisfactorily to explain the inclusion of the three knights, Wadard, Vitalis and Turold (this last identified with a reasonable degree of certainty as the father of Ralph fitz Turold of Rochester), in three scenes of the Tapestry.²⁰

Turold is the first to appear. He is named apparently as one of the messengers sent to secure the release of Harold from the clutches of Count Guy of Ponthieu – although it is not clear if Turold is the undersized individual below the name or the figure to the left.²¹ Wadard is named as the Norman army plunders the land around Hastings.²² And just before the battle of Hastings begins, Duke William asks Vitalis about the disposition of Harold’s army.²³

It has long been established that these three knights all had links with Bishop Odo.²⁴ Recent work, particularly by Hirokazu Tsurushima, has also identified relationships with other lords such as Abbot Scolland of St Augustine’s, Canterbury, Archbishop Lanfranc and Haimo the Sheriff.²⁵ But the common link is the bishop. As such, why would other putative patrons have portrayed all three of them in the Tapestry while excluding their own prominent knights and tenants? Did none of Count Robert of Mortain’s knights perform comparable deeds? Did none of the men with more significant landholdings from Abbot Scolland do anything worthy of remembrance? If Queen Edith wanted to celebrate Odo, why did she include a knight – Vitalis – who held such a small amount of land from him?²⁶ And would Adela of Blois, if she had really commissioned the Tapestry in the 1120s (which seems highly unlikely), even have known who these men were?²⁷ It seems equally improbable that the three knights were portrayed simply because they had provided useful information to the designer of the Tapestry.²⁸ And why, if every other narrative produced in this period mentions specific people on account of the deeds they are performing within it, would the designer have included them in order to applaud their (future) managerial prowess?²⁹ Indeed, if Bishop Odo were the patron, why did he single out these three men, especially Vitalis who was (as noted) such a minor tenant.³⁰ J. N. N. Palmer credited Odo with twenty-eight honourial barons.³¹ Did none of the others really do anything worthy of mention? Such exclusivity seems unlikely to have fostered a sense of camaraderie among Odo’s honourial barones.³² It seems more likely to have fractured it.

Moreover, why is it that all three knights are portrayed providing service to the duke rather than to the bishop himself? And who would have remembered that they had performed these rather unglamourous and routinely uncelebrated roles even a few weeks after William’s coronation? Of course, someone must have been in charge of gathering provisions in the Hastings area, but would Count Robert of Mortain or his designer have recalled that it was Wadard? Would Queen Edith or Count Eustace of Boulogne have known that Turold was one of the messengers sent to Count Guy, c. 1064? Would King William himself have remembered who had done what in his army and when? The individuals most likely to have remembered what these knights did were the knights themselves.

Perhaps the only scenario that does not raise unanswerable questions about why these three knights were identified in the Tapestry, and which also explains the appearance of every other named person, with the exception of the mysterious (because she defies identification) Ælfgyva, is that Wadard, Vitalis and Turold commissioned the Tapestry.³³

The objections to this scenario seem to revolve principally around the status and wealth of the three knights, although the necessity of dating the production of the Tapestry to after c. 1082 seems also to have been an issue for commentators. I will address this second issue a little later on.³⁴

Despite its apparent influence, the argument that these three knights were not wealthy enough to commission the Tapestry seems to be without foundation. According to Palmer, Wadard held forty-five estates in Domesday Book, worth £143 6s. 8d. by Tsurushima’s reckoning, mostly from Bishop Odo but with two held from St Augustine’s.³⁵ Turold's son, Ralph, held some thirty estates in Kent and Essex, overwhelmingly from Odo, and Tsurushima valued his overall estate at £106 14s. 6d.³⁶ Unidentified Ralphs held six more estates, worth £25 10s., from Odo in four counties, and it is possible that some of this land also belonged to Turold’s son. His descendants also held land of the fee of Le Plessis-Grimoult in Normandy, which William I had restored to Bayeux cathedral in 1074.³⁷ Vitalis was not in the same league, at least so far as landholding was concerned. Tsurushima calculated the yearly value of his lands at only £38 6s. 6d., of which £10 was in estates held from Odo. But the extent of his lands does not provide the full picture, for Vitalis was also involved in the lucrative trade in Caen stone between Normandy and England. Although it is not clear if he owned any of the ships used in that business himself, he certainly acted as an agent for both King William and Abbot Scolland, and so it is likely that he was a man of greater means than the Domesday value of his estates suggests.³⁸

Writing of late Anglo-Saxon England, Christine Senecal suggested that ‘only the most powerful aristocrats would have held on the order of something like £150 of land, and would have been the lords of many men … . They probably would have had enough wealth to establish or heavily endow their own religious communities, have paid retainers, or commission books’.³⁹ Wadard fitted into this category and Turold of Rochester was not far behind – although Vitalis must remain something of an unknown quantity. It is, therefore, likely that the three men together could have paid for the Tapestry, although we are not in a position to reach any conclusion on the matter because we simply do not know how much the Tapestry cost to manufacture. How much, for example, would one of the embroiderers have been paid each day? Was their level of skill equivalent to the value of a knight paid 1s. per day, or to the horn blowers or hound handlers who each had 3d. per day according to the Constitutio domus regis?⁴⁰ If the embroiderers were nuns under the auspices of St Augustine’s, would they have been paid at all?⁴¹ And how much would the materials have cost? There were no precious materials to purchase. The Tapestry is comprised only of linen and wool, the latter dyed with inexpensive ingredients – madder, woad and indigotin.⁴² In 1174, 830 ells of everyday cloth along with some other materials cost the king only £28 17s 4d.⁴³ But even if we suppose that the linen backing was purchased, it could have been the case that the woollen threads used for the stitching came from sheep kept on the knights’ own land, dyed as part of the day-to-day activities practised on their estates, and thus constituting little or no additional cost. This is not evidence to show that the knights could afford to commission and pay for the Tapestry, of course, but it does preclude an assertion that they could not.

Moreover, if the knights were working as agents of Bishop Odo, as in Brown’s scenario, they might well have had access to the considerable revenues produced by the bishopric of Bayeux. Or, if Richard Gameson, Howard Clarke and Pastan and White are right to see the hand of Abbot Scolland behind the references to Mont-Saint-Michel and the Breton campaign in the Tapestry, additional funds, at the very least, might have been provided by the abbot.⁴⁴ Scolland certainly had reason to support the attempt to restore Odo to liberty. The bishop of Bayeux had been a friend to his abbey before his imprisonment, as well as a useful counterweight to Archbishop Lanfranc.⁴⁵ That Abbot Scolland played a role in the creation of the Tapestry is also suggested by the shape of his career and the influence of St Augustine’s manuscripts on the designer of the Tapestry, as well as by the depiction, in the margin above the image of Mont-Saint-Michel, of a seated abbot who has been identified as Scolland by Howard Clarke.⁴⁶ There is no reason, however, to see Scolland as having commissioned the Tapestry himself, or as its designer.

The Three Knights as Petitioners

The wealth and standing of the three knights, and their connections with other tenants-in-chief, gave them the social standing necessary to make their petition to King William. Indeed, considerably more humble individuals seem to have been able to gain a hearing at court. William of Jumièges was but a monk of his abbey when he wrote the first version of his Gesta Normannorum ducum, but his status did not prevent his work from making a favourable impression on the duke. Indeed, such was Jumièges’s success that the recently-crowned King William would subsequently ask him to enlarge the text to justify his conquest of England. Around 1174, Jordan of Fantosme, who was perhaps merely a clerk of the bishop of Winchester, wrote his verse Chronicle in an attempt to reconcile king and rebels after the Great War of 1173–4.⁴⁷ While ducal acta reveal abbots making petitions on behalf of their houses, lesser figures occasionally played a role, too. A monk of Saint-Père of Chartres called Geoffrey petitioned Duke William for a grant of judicial power in Brullemail in 1050 x 1060.⁴⁸ Gauzelin, a monk of Marmoutier who had been put in charge of its Norman property in the Cotentin, petitioned King William for help against the unjust actions of one of his Norman vicomtes, c. 1080.⁴⁹

Perhaps more problematic was the knights’ standing in relation to King William. Here we might see a larger obstacle that Wadard, Vitalis and Turold had to overcome. While one or another of the three knights had tenurial relationships with Bishop Odo, Abbot Scolland, Archbishop Lanfrance, Haimo the Sheriff and Ranulf Peverel, they are not known to have had any such relationship with King William. Nor is Vitalis’s work in obtaining Caen stone for William’s palace at Westminster likely to have given him any useful leverage. That was, after all, a commercial relationship with no obligations outside whatever contracts were made, and those contracts were anyway probably agreed upon without the king’s direct involvement. The three knights might well have thought that the absence of any direct link with the king, before the Salisbury oath of 1086, would lessen the strength of their petition. Thus they would have needed to highlight their fidelity and service to the king and his cause in order to make up for the lack of a tenurial relationship and to generate a sense of obligation that might otherwise have been lacking. And that is why they portrayed themselves in the Tapestry at the appropriate moments. Their roles might not normally have been considered worthy of remembrance, but the knights could only work with what they had. Fortunately, their appearances could be made to come at pivotal moments in the narrative, so that ‘both visually and in terms of the “plot”, the three men play a far more important role in the tapestry than one would expect from their status’ and, indeed, from their actions.⁵⁰

Even if the knights’ relationship with William were not an issue, reminding the king of their role in events may be supposed to have been intended to highlight their bona fides and to suggest an obligation to consider their requests.

The Tapestry as a Petition: Could it Date from after 1082?

If the Tapestry were intended to be used as part of a petition for the release of Odo from King William’s prison, then it was necessarily intended to be seen by the king. That being the case, the concerns raised by historians such as H. E. J. Cowdrey need to be addressed. Cowdrey remarked that:

we do not know whether William the Conqueror ever set eyes upon the Tapestry; we may reasonably wonder whether, if he did, he was pleased by what he saw. Especially after Odo of Bayeux's fall from favour in 1082 he would hardly have welcomed the depiction of the Conquest as something of a consortium of himself with his half-brothers. A king so insistent as he upon his regality would not have warmed to an emphasis upon that of Edward and Harold but to reticence with regard to his own. Whatever the origins of the Tapestry, it was not designed with William's sensibilities in view, or, probably, for regular or occasional display in a royal context, whether in Normandy or in England’.⁵¹

In addition to the two issues raised by Cowdrey – the presentation of the Conquest as a joint-stock enterprise and the description of Harold as ‘king’ – a number of historians have remarked, even if only in passing, on the Tapestry’s failure to record Edward the Confessor’s designation of William as his successor.⁵²

While Odo does play a prominent role in the Tapestry, as noted above, he does not dominate the narrative, and the only time his role might be considered in any way essential was during the battle itself when he urged on ‘the lads’ – although it is perhaps worth noting that the role of Count Eustace in the Carmen is similarly limited. Would King William, in any event, have objected to a depiction of the Conquest that portrayed the campaign as the work of a consortium? The importance of a condominium between the duke and his subjects more broadly had been the principal theme in the first version of the Gesta Normannorum ducum, c. 1057, in which William of Jumièges emphasised that Normandy was strongest when the duke and his subjects worked together.⁵³ As King William apparently asked Jumièges to return to his work after 1066, presumably with the intention that he might similarly reconcile Normans and English, it may be supposed that the king was not averse to the idea of such a partnership, provided that his leadership was not in question. That the Conquest was the work of a consortium of the duke and his leading subjects is also emphasised by the ‘ship list’ and by the narratives that recorded it.⁵⁴ The Carmen, for example, which was probably also part of an attempt to reconcile Count Eustace of Boulogne with King William, highlights the role played by Count Eustace and some Norman lords. As Eustace was indeed restored to his lands, taking that approach did not apparently alienate the king.⁵⁵ Even the eulogising account penned by William of Poitiers explicitly highlights the role played by members of the duke’s court and army during the Hastings campaign, although it does always give William the final say.⁵⁶

Moreover, the importance of Odo in the Conqueror’s administration was so great that even if William might not have liked being reminded, he could hardly have objected to it. William of Poitiers had recognised Odo’s contribution to the Conquest and subsequent settlement, c. 1075. The castle at Dover, he says, was entrusted to Odo, who was, ‘well known to be the kind of man best able to undertake both ecclesiastical and secular business’.⁵⁷ Poitiers then went on to heap praise on the bishop:

He never took up arms, and never wished to do so; nevertheless he was greatly feared by men at arms, for when need arose he helped in war by his most practical counsels as far as his religion allowed. He was singularly and most steadfastly loyal to the king, his uterine brother, whom he cherished with so great a love that he would not willingly be separated from him even on the battlefield, and from whom he had received great honours and expected to receive still more.⁵⁸

He was seen as second only to his brother in the kingdom by Orderic and Malmesbury.⁵⁹ He was certainly second to the king alone in terms of his landed possessions. The depiction of Odo in the Tapestry would seem consistent with this line, and to remind William of Odo’s role before and during the Hastings campaign would seem to have been both fair and apt. It was also essential if the Tapestry were to do its job.

Indeed, it is entirely possible that King William was supposed to feel a little uncomfortable when reminded of Odo’s role in events. Those making petitions to king, lords or saints sometimes sought to rebuke or shame the principal, with the intention of forcing them to satisfy their requests.⁶⁰ That shaming might take a variety of forms and could be linked with ingratitude or kinship or with unjust behaviour and/or a failure to live up to the obligations of lordship. Such shaming might simply result in the petition being granted, but it might also force a show of penitence. Æthelred II, for example, seems to have been made to feel ashamed of his misappropriation of church property during the 990s and consequently decided to perform a public penance as part of the restoration of that property. That penance involved shaming himself and some of his counsellors.⁶¹ Similarly, King William’s own father, Duke Robert the Magnificent, had been obliged to listen as diplomas were read out in his court denouncing the alienations of church property that he had sponsored during his youth and recording their restitution.⁶² Jordan Fantosme’s poem of c. 1174 sought to achieve reconciliation between Henry II and his rebellious son and their supporters by reminding Henry II that he was partly to blame for the situation. Henry had crowned his son and made the king of Scots do him homage: ‘After this crowning and after this transfer of power you took away from your son some of his authority, you thwarted his wishes so that he could not exercise power’.⁶³ Henry II had forced the young king into rebellion and must accept his share of the blame. Such words obliged the king to examine his own conscience while bringing him to forgiveness. In this instance, the Tapestry perhaps suggested that William had been both ungrateful and unjust in his treatment of his half-brother, making its message comparable to the petition presented to William Rufus by his magnates after his victory at Rochester in 1088 (at least as recorded in the 1130s by Orderic Vitalis):

Odo of Bayeux is your uncle and is a consecrated bishop. He helped your father to dominate the English and stood by him in many dangers and anxieties. What is to be done with such a man? God forbid that you should lay hands on a priest of the Lord or shed his blood. In such an undertaking remember what Saul did in Nobz and what he suffered in Mount Gilboa. Who could be so wicked as to persuade you to condemn a bishop of the Lord who is also your uncle? No one. We all beg you therefore to be merciful to him and allow him to return to Normandy to his see.⁶⁴

This discomfort was temporary, however. Once Odo had been restored to liberty, if not to favour, the narrative of the Tapestry would no longer cast shame on the king. Some of the fables might still have acted as warnings against prideful behaviour, the lunching scene might still have reminded viewers of Odo’s fall from grace, but now with a moral complexion rather than a political one. The Tapestry would nonetheless function as an unproblematic celebration of William’s victory over Harold. It could also, perhaps, have performed the related function of reconciling those English lords who attended the court and saw it with their Norman king, on account of the way the background to the Conquest was depicted.

The Tapestry’s failure to depict King Edward’s nomination of William as his heir can be more quickly explained as irrelevant. As Laura Ashe noted when discussing the death-bed scene, ‘it does not matter what Edward said to, or intended for, Harold. God intended that Harold should not have the kingdom … . Only the words to God, in the form of the oath, and the words by which God’s vengeance is played out, appear in the Tapestry’.⁶⁵ Certainly, William of Poitiers mentioned Edward’s designation of Duke William, but that was because his work was intended to be copied and disseminated in a way that the Tapestry could not be, and he wanted to remind his wider audience, including the English and their leaders, that the choice of William as king had been made by Edward and accepted by them, thus providing the new Norman king with greater legitimacy.⁶⁶ But the designation was irrelevant to the story as told on the Tapestry, because that story focused instead on the relationship between Harold and William. For the Tapestry’s purposes, then, it was the oath that Harold had sworn to support William’s claim at Bayeux (and/or Bonneville and/or Rouen) that took centre stage, which should have precluded Harold from taking the throne for himself, even if he had been designated by Edward on his deathbed.⁶⁷

The earlier part of the Tapestry, which has been seen to depict Harold in a favourable light, is closely connected to the narrative of betrayal because it acts to show how Harold was bound to William and, perhaps, to explain why William and the English could have been duped by him in January 1066.⁶⁸ The Tapestry shows that Harold crossed to the continent where he had to be rescued from the clutches of Count Guy of Ponthieu by Duke William. He then returned to Normandy with William, and demonstrated his gratitude, fidelity, and prowess by taking part in the Breton campaign. He was then brought into a closer and perhaps more formal relationship with William, symbolised by the bestowal of arms. Finally, he ‘swears the oath’ – which, although not made explicit, is clearly his oath to support his new lord’s claim to the English throne, as any informed contemporary looking at the Tapestry would have recognised. The Tapestry thus shows a developing relationship, with layers of obligation binding Harold more closely to William. Harold is shown in the body of the Tapestry to be grateful and courageous. But the fables and images in the margins warn that that William and the English are being duped.⁶⁹ And thus it was that a ‘true report came unexpectedly, that the English land had lost its king and that Harold was wearing its crown’.⁷⁰

If there was little for King William to get offended about in the way Harold was portrayed, might he have been more upset to see Harold described repeatedly as ‘king’?⁷¹ Although Harold is rarely named ‘king’ in the surviving Norman sources, it does happen occasionally. William of Jumièges styled Harold ‘king’ twice in his Gesta Normannorum ducum, written c. 1070.⁷² The author of the Carmen, writing c. 1070, styled Harold ‘king’ on several occasions, apparently not to the detriment of any related petition to restore Eustace of Boulogne to favour.⁷³ William of Poitiers, also writing c. 1075, was more reticent, but nonetheless the rhetoric of his work reveals an understanding that Harold had been crowned and that he was de facto king, even if an illegitimate and perjured one. The opening words to Book II, for example, do not leave much room for doubt: ‘the English land had lost its king and that Harold was wearing its crown’; nor does Duke William’s response to the English messenger interviewed before the battle: ‘If according to a true and equitable judgement the Normans or the English decree that he (Harold) ought by right to possess this kingdom, let him possess it in peace’.⁷⁴

No other surviving narratives were produced by Norman writers during William’s reign, so for the later part of the reign we are forced to rely on William’s acta, which unfortunately do not shed much additional light, and which might not date from much later in the reign anyway. The documents make very few references to Harold, probably because his grants were effectively voided after William’s succession; this, too, would be the case with Robert Curthose’s grants in Normandy after 1106, even though he had been recognised as the rightful duke at the time.⁷⁵ The acts that do style Harold ‘king’ are all early.⁷⁶ But those that style him simply ‘earl’ (comes) – all produced for only one beneficiary, Westminster abbey – might also date from the middle of the 1070s, making them contemporary with William of Poitiers’s work.⁷⁷ Taken together, then, the evidence does not clearly suggest an official and/or consistent view on Harold’s kingship. Even at the end of William’s reign, Domesday Book allows that Harold held the kingdom, and although this was probably an error in a document that almost always styles Harold earl and does its best to erase his reign from the record, that error is telling.⁷⁸

If the evidence suggests a degree of uncertainty and inconsistency in how Harold was to be styled, can we conclude that King William would have been offended by the way that Harold was portrayed in the Tapestry? More importantly, because we are here primarily concerned with the production of the Tapestry, was any ‘official’ decision to deny Harold the royal title public knowledge? By way of comparison, after Henry I had conquered Normandy from his brother in November 1106 he seems to have decided not to style himself duke of the Normans, but even so great a figure as Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury seems not to have been informed of that decision, and had sent at least two letters to the king before becoming aware of it.⁷⁹ In Harold’s case, anyone reading the Gesta Normannorum ducum or William of Poitiers’s Gesta Guillelmi (c. 1082) might well have concluded that Harold could be styled king without causing controversy, especially as the monks of St Augustine’s Canterbury or St Andrew’s Rochester did not, to the best of our knowledge, receive any royal acts styling Harold merely ‘comes’. Indeed, the ultimate failure of any belated ‘official’ attempt to deny him the royal title and a reign is exposed by all those later sources that continued to treat Harold as a king regardless of whether or not they were content to follow the second strand of the ‘official’ line and portray him as a perjured usurper.⁸⁰ It is not at all clear, then, that those who commissioned and made the Tapestry would have known that their work might cause offence, even during the 1080s.⁸¹

The Tapestry as a Petition: How Might It Have Made Its Case?

If there is no solid reason to think that the Tapestry was unsuitable for presentation to King William, then how might it have acted as a part of a petition on Bishop Odo’s behalf?

First, as we have seen, there are the reminders of the role played by Bishop Odo at key moments. Of these, the lunching scene in particular needs further discussion.⁸² The scene depicts the traditional lunch before a battle. As Isidore of Seville remarked in his Etymologies: ‘Lunch is named for the “preparations for eating”; hence the ancients properly called the food for all the soldiers before battle “lunch”, and hence the exhortation of the general, “Let us eat lunch like men about to dine in the infernal regions”’.⁸³ The bishop, almost certainly Odo, presides over one of the tables and blesses the food. There is a fish in front of him and, if its position means that he will also be consuming it, it perhaps tells us something about his piety, for it may be that the bishop is conspicuously fasting, so as to attract God’s favour for the forthcoming battle (that the other diners are eating chickens suggests that it is a feast day). As a result, we may see here an additional aspect of Bishop Odo’s support for his brother’s war, through fasting and prayer.

The scene itself appears to be staged in a way that suggests it should be read as more than a lunching scene, however. Historians, beginning with Laura Hibbard Loomis in 1927, have tended to see it as based on a Last Supper and thus perhaps showing a Mass presided over by the bishop.⁸⁴ There is no good reason to interpret the scene in this way, however. A better interpretation is that the scene was intended to echo Balshazzar’s feast, narrated in the Book of Daniel. At Balshazzar’s feast, the king had ordered the use of the gold and silver vessels that his father had looted from the temple at Jerusalem, just as William’s army was eating food that had been looted from the area around Pevensey:

In the same hour came forth fingers of a man’s hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote … . The king cried aloud to bring in the astrologers, the Chaldeans and the soothsayers. And the king spake and said to the wise men of Babylon, Whosoever shall read this writing, and shew me the interpretation thereof, shall be clothed with scarlet, and have a chain of gold about his neck, and shall be the third ruler of the kingdom.⁸⁵

The red-clad figure pointing to Odo’s name to the right of the table is pointing to writing on a wall. And the likelihood that the Tapestry is evoking Balshazzar’s feast seems all the more so when we recall what the writing said. As the prophet Daniel explained the message to Balshazzar: ‘This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God has numbered thy kingdom and finished it. TEKEL; thou art weighed in the balances and found wanting. PERES; thy kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians’.⁸⁶

Such words would seem entirely fitting for the deposed earl of Kent. As a result of his ambitions and his offence against the king, Odo’s ‘kingdom’ was finished. He had been judged and found wanting by his half-brother. And his ‘kingdom’ had been divided: his earldom of Kent was lost, although his bishopric remained to him. And this interpretation also explains why Duke William was ‘upstaged’ by Odo in this particular scene.⁸⁷

Secondly, when Odo is named in the Tapestry, he is styled ‘bishop’ ‘episcopus’. If the Tapestry does indeed date from after his arrest and imprisonment, then that emphasis on his ecclesiastical position would have been particularly pointed.⁸⁸ According to Orderic Vitalis, during his trial, when he had protested that, ‘I am a clerk and a priest of God; you have no right to condemn a bishop without papal judgement’, the prudent king replied, ‘I condemn neither a clerk nor a bishop, but arrest my earl, whom I have made viceroy in my kingdom, desiring to hear an account of the stewardship entrusted to him’.⁸⁹ But there were objections to this stance, including from the pope. In 1083, Gregory VII wrote a letter to King William, in which he upbraided him for his actions since, ‘in taking captive your brother the bishop you have not had regard as was proper to your own good name, but have set this world’s caution and policy before divine law by attending less than vigilantly to the reverence due to the priestly office’. He went on to note that even Constantine had refrained from judging bishops.⁹⁰ The use of ‘bishop’ to describe Odo might, therefore, have been intended to remind the king of his offence against the canons and thus both to urge him to repentance and to suggest a threat of divine displeasure should he not relent.

Thirdly, the appearance of Count Robert of Mortain with Odo and William before the commencement of the battle, and perhaps at other points in the narrative, might have been intended to stress the importance of family, and thus to remind William of the essential support provided by his half-brothers during the campaign and to associate Count Robert with this petition for Odo’s release.⁹¹ While William of Malmesbury described the count as ‘dense and slow-witted’, William of Poitiers put him at the head of the group of luminaries who advised William, and David Spear has highlighted the role Count Robert played in the west of the duchy, his refoundation of the abbey at Grestain, which was carried out with the support of both Odo and Duke William, and the statement in the De obitu that remembered Robert as ‘the king’s brother, whom he trusted in everything as befitted their close relationship’.⁹² Family is one of the overarching themes here, as is trust. And it might also have been a particularly important one if Count Robert were as concerned to gain the release of his brother from William’s prison, c. 1082, as he was in 1087. Orderic says that when King William was lying on his deathbed, it was Count Robert who led the calls for Odo’s release: ‘Therefore the count of Mortain was deeply grieved, begged for mercy for his brother both in person and through his friends, and wearied the dying man with his entreaties’.⁹³ Count Robert’s appearance in the Tapestry, then, was probably intended to join his pleas for his brother’s release to the petition presented on Odo’s behalf by Wadard, Vitalis and Turold.

Fourthly, after the Normans have landed at Pevensey and taken their lunch, the Tapestry pictures a castle being constructed at Hastings. As there is no reference to the fortification at Pevensey, this is the first castle that the Tapestry shows in England. Its construction is overseen by an unidentified figure who might have been William or Count Robert of Mortain but could equally have been someone else.⁹⁴ If it was indeed somebody else, then a likely candidate would be Humfrey of Le Tilleul ‘who had held the castle of Hastings from the day of its foundation’. Even if King William could not recall the name of the earliest castellan of Hastings, the scene might have reminded him that,

certain Norman women, consumed by fierce lust, sent message after message to their husbands urging them to return at once, and adding that unless they did so with all speed they would take other husbands for themselves. As a result, Hugh of Grandmesnil, who was governor of the Gewisae, that is the region round Winchester, and his brother-in-law Humfrey of Le Tilleul … and many others departed from the country heavy at heart, and unwilling to go because they were deserting the king whilst he was struggling in a foreign land. They returned to Normandy to oblige their wanton wives; but neither they nor their heirs were ever able to recover the fiefs which they had held and chosen to abandon.⁹⁵

This scene, then, might have been intended to remind King William of how some who had campaigned with him and whom he had raised to positions of importance had abandoned him before the conquest had been fully achieved. Bishop Odo, in contrast, had remained steadfast, remaining in England and defending the kingdom in William’s interest even when the king himself had returned to the duchy.

Fifthly, there is the reference to Count Eustace of Boulogne during the battle.⁹⁶ There have been arguments about the identity of the figure in question, arising from the fact that this part of the Tapestry has been damaged and restored. Most recently, David Spear has remarked that he has been unable to find Eustace’s name spelt ‘Eustatius’ in eleventh-century texts other than in the Tapestry itself, asserting that the name is instead always written ‘Eustachius’.⁹⁷ Norton has consequently stated that ‘this effectively rules out Eustace’.⁹⁸ However, Spear was perhaps mistaken. The earliest manuscript of the Gesta Normannorum ducum, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 517, which might date from the end of the eleventh century and which is believed to have found a home in Canterbury at an unknown date, spells Eustace ‘Eustatius’, as it is found in the reconstructed scene.⁹⁹

The argument that this figure is Count Eustace thus continues to stand and remains one key to understanding the intended purpose of the Tapestry. As Shirley Ann Brown stated in 1989:

Both Eustace and Odo had played important roles in the Hastings venture, and at certain points in their careers both (Eustace in 1067 and Odo in 1082) had suffered the disgrace of a falling out with the king, losing their extensive English lands and revenues as punishment. Forced back across the Channel, each man would have had to launch pleas for his reinstatement. Both may have chosen to do so, at least as one avenue open to them, by reminding William of their contribution to his successful invasion of England. The heroism of Eustace became part of a poem about the Battle of Hastings, and Odo’s multi-faceted, key role was highlighted in a visual account of the larger story of William and Harold’s struggle for power. Since by 1077 the Count of Boulogne had been received back into William’s good standing, he could be used by Odo and his apologist as a topical example in a plea for clemency and reconciliation.¹⁰⁰

The way that the scene is constructed emphasises the comparison. It begins with Bishop Odo encouraging the boys, with the narrative moving from left to right as usual. Duke William is then shown lifting his helmet, with Eustace turning to point at him. Eustace’s posture reverses the flow of action so that Odo and Eustace book-end the scene, emphasising the connection between the two men and the disparity in their treatment by the king.¹⁰¹ And this is also why Eustace was placed here, at an event where his role was not highlighted by the Carmen. His depiction in the Tapestry depended on Odo’s actions, not on his own.¹⁰²

Sixthly, the ambiguities that have been seen in the Tapestry’s narrative fit the interpretation that it was part of a petition to free Odo at least as well as they support the idea that the Tapestry was pro-English. This is particularly true of the fables found in the margins. While these might have been intended as satirical or cynical comments on the secular world in general, or as expressing an English view of the Norman conquest, some of them might equally have been intended to criticise the way that William had treated his half-brother (and his other Norman supporters).¹⁰³ A number are first employed and, indeed repeated, in that part of the Tapestry which deals with Harold’s crossing from Bosham to the continent before his return to England. These are most likely to relate to Harold’s actions and ambitions. Others only appear later, after the arrival of the Norman army at Pevensey. These are the fables which seem more likely to have been levelled at William. They include Lion, Wolf and Fox; Wolf and Donkey on Trial; Eagle, Hare and Sparrow/Eagle, Hare and Dung Beetle; and Fawn and Lion. In Lion, Wolf and Fox, the three animals go hunting. The wolf catches a ram, the fox a stag, and the lion a goose. The lion then asks the wolf to propose a division of the spoils. The wolf suggests that they each eat what they caught, and the lion then savages him; when the fox is asked how the food should be shared, he tells the lion to eat what he wants. In Wolf and Donkey on Trial, the wolf encounters the donkey and proposes that they hold a trial to establish whether the wolf’s sins are worse than the donkey’s; if they are, the wolf will let the donkey go free, if they are not, the wolf will eat him. The wolf confesses many serious crimes, the donkey just one trivial sin, but the wolf denounces the donkey’s offence as the vilest of crimes and eats him. In Eagle, Hare and Sparrow, the eagle catches the hare and is about to eat it. The sparrow sees the doomed hare and taunts it, but consequently fails to spot the hawk swooping down on her. If this group should instead be interpreted as a reference to Eagle, Hare and Dung Beetle, as White has also suggested, then it depicts a fable in which the eagle abuses the beetle’s hospitality by eating the hare while it is under the beetle’s protection, and the dung beetle takes revenge by destroying the eagle’s eggs, thereby threatening her lineage with extinction. The last fable in the upper border might depict Fawn and Lion, in which story a fawn saw a lion in a fury and feared the worst for all the other beasts, since his behaviour had been intolerable even before he lost his senses. ¹⁰⁴

These fables could all have been interpreted as being about William’s conduct and his attitude towards his subjects – Odo in particular. Some closely reflect the complaints levied by the rebels of 1075, as reported by Orderic:

He did not reward the supporters who raised him above his own people as he ought to have done, but showed ingratitude to many who had shed their blood in his service and on the slightest pretext punished them with death as if they had been enemies. To victors who had endured wounds he gave barren estates, wasted and depopulated by his army; and after they had made these lands fertile he began to covet them, and either took them back or appropriated part of them. All men hate him; and his death would cause great rejoicing.¹⁰⁵

In addition, the lunching scene with its echoes of Balshazzar’s feast could also have been made to apply to William, and thus to serve as another warning against his over-ambition. The ambiguity here might also have put Odo and William on a similar footing, providing another useful lesson for the king to take to heart. Indeed, the way that the lessons of Balshazzar’s feast could be made to apply to William as much as Odo is also found in Orderic’s interpretation of the bishop’s fall. Orderic remarked that Odo’s arrest ‘fulfilled the saying of Fulgentius in his book on mythology, “He who seeks more than his deserts will sink below his present station”’.¹⁰⁶ These are the opening words of the Fable of Ixion, a story that asserted more generally that ‘all who aspire to dominion by arms and violence are one moment held aloft and the next cast down, like a wheel which at no time has a fixed high point’.¹⁰⁷

Seventhly, and finally, there are a number of scenes and images in the Tapestry that look as though they were intended to be humorous. The addition of such scenes was perhaps rhetorical, in that it was intended to break up and provide a diversion from the serious narrative of the Conquest. But it might also have been intended to soften King William’s attitude, for it seems that the king could be moved with humour. William of Malmesbury noted that: ‘Lanfranc managed the king with a holy skill, not sternly upbraiding what he did wrong, but spicing serious language with jokes. In this way, he could usually bring him back to a right mind, and mould him to his own opinions’.¹⁰⁸ Among those images which might have raised a smile are the juxtaposition of Count Guy on an asexual mule and Duke William on a priapic horse; the depiction of Turold as a dwarf (if it was the case that he was simply a little shorter than most of his contemporaries); the enigmatic Ælfgyva scene; and the knight in scene 56 who is so keen to hit his opponent that he has jumped right out of his saddle. There are also a number of humorous images crowded around or into the lunching scene, which might be especially important given that scene’s clear focus on Bishop Odo. An ox is charging at one of the Norman plunderers, who is looking back with his axe at the ready; a Norman tries to blow a drinking horn (unless this is the horn-blower who summons the diners to their food); and the workers constructing the castle at Hastings hit each other with their spades. Indeed, the use of Balshazzar’s feast as an analogue to Odo’s fall might have been intended to provide some wry amusement for William, too.

Once the Tapestry was completed it was presumably taken to the court to be presented to King William (assuming that he was still alive at this point). The difficulties of moving the rolled-up Tapestry were by no means insurmountable, and indeed, the arrival of such a bulky gift might well have added to the theatre of the petition, just as the delivery of Henry I’s (short-lived) gift of 75 kilograms of Norman and English pennies to the nuns of Fontevraud at Michaelmas was probably all the more impressive for the visual impact of their arrival, unloading, and inspection.¹⁰⁹ Nonetheless, the smith of Beauvais, on whom Duke Robert the Magnificent is said to have lavished gifts in return for a pair of knives, was probably fortunate that the two horses he was given could move by themselves and carry the 100 livres he had also received.¹¹⁰ No matter how it arrived, however, it seems unlikely that the Tapestry would have been brought before the king rolled up. It could not have done its job that way. More likely the Tapestry would have been hung using the loops attached to the cloth, so that the king could be ushered into the chosen room (one of the rooms in the new White Tower would have sufficed) to be confronted by the great frieze of cloth with its scenes picked out in vivid colours.¹¹¹

Although the hanging and subsequent inspection need not have taken very long, it is worth noting that some petitions were made over an extended period of time. For example, the Normans petitioned God for the restoration of the young Duke Richard I c. 945 through the masses and psalms of churchmen across Normandy and Brittany and three days of fasting by the people every month.¹¹² The Penitential Ordinance promulgated by Ermenfrid, bishop of Sion, after the Norman Conquest set out long-lasting penances – effectively petitions for God’s forgiveness – which might in some instances have lasted for the rest of a knight’s life.¹¹³ In 1174, Henry II petitioned for reconciliation with Thomas Becket by walking ‘in bare feet and ordinary clothes’ from the church of St Dunstan to the cathedral, where he offered a gift of £30 to the martyr before being whipped by the bishops in attendance and eighty of the monks; he then spent the night in vigil before the saint’s tomb.¹¹⁴ Those who sought entry to a monastery were obliged to wait outside the gate for three days before being allowed to enter. Pope Gregory VII kept the Emperor Henry IV waiting for three days in the snow at Canossa before granting him absolution.¹¹⁵ When the count of Mortain ‘begged for mercy for his brother both in person and through his friends, and wearied the dying man with his entreaties’, it may be supposed that this process went on over a period of days, too.¹¹⁶ It must also be supposed that where narratives were intended to heal political wounds and/or formed a part of a petition themselves – as with the Carmen or Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle – they were read aloud to the intended audience, which again would have taken a number of hours probably spread over a number of days.

The process of making a petition, particularly one where the petitioner was so far from forgiveness, might thus last a long time. That time was used to weary the opposition, to set out an argument on behalf of the petitioner, and at times to shame the man to whom the petition was addressed into granting forgiveness. In this instance the three knights would have petitioned the king for Bishop Odo’s release and presented him with the Tapestry, displayed for his consideration. But while the king might have been struck by the colours and the workmanship, he would have remained unmoved. Perhaps the knights and their designer had indeed misjudged the king’s mood and the tone of their work. Perhaps, given Count Robert’s efforts in September 1087, King William was simply not yet prepared to forgive his half-brother no matter what present he was offered and no matter the appeal to his sense of justice and obligation. Thus, the Tapestry would have been taken down again, rolled up, and carried away, to be handed over to Bishop Odo when he was finally released on the king’s demise. And so it would have found its way to Bayeux, where it might have been seen by twelfth-century writers before disappearing from view until the fifteenth century – by which time it had found a new use as a monument to the power of the cathedral’s relics.

* * * * * * *

This essay has suggested that historians have been too hasty in dismissing the possibility that Turold, Wadard and Vitalis commissioned the Bayeux Tapestry on behalf of Bishop Odo of Bayeux. These knights’ positions and wealth, the association of Wadard and Vitalis with St Augustine’s Canterbury, their bonds of lordship and affection with Bishop Odo, and their portraits in the Tapestry make such claims plausible. Certainly, the arguments that have been raised against their involvement are flimsy, being based on a number of unfounded assumptions, and should be rejected.

Indeed, some of the broader foundations that work on the Tapestry has been built on are rather shakier than has often been supposed, too. The argument that the Tapestry was expensive to produce, and could thus only have been commissioned by a wealthy patron, seems to rest solely on assumption. It has been supposed by a number of historians that the Tapestry contains an argument, or a number of them, but the fact that the manufacture of the Tapestry was itself intended to act as part of an argument seems to have been dismissed. In contrast, the thesis presented here has attempted to relocate the Tapestry in an ongoing dialogue aimed at liberating Bishop Odo from prison. The arguments made here also highlight just how much we do not know about how petitions were made and presented in the Anglo-Norman zone during the later eleventh century. As part of that discussion, I have suggested that we do not know whether styling Harold ‘rex’ in the 1080s would have been anathema to William’s regime. Those who have argued that it would have caused offence have been obliged to rest their cases on slight evidence that must be interpreted in a particular way in order to support them. But even if there were an official line on Harold, how well known was it? If the loyal and literate citizens of Kent had read the Gesta Guillelmi, they would not have found much there to warn them against describing Harold as king, although they would have found the focus on his perjury, which provided the turning point of the Tapestry’s embroidered story. If they had not heard published in the shire court royal acts styling Harold only as earl, or if those acts had apparently referred to a period before 1066, would they have had any cause to change that opinion? Would they, in other words, have heard in them an implied repeal of Poitiers’s narrative? Until we can answer those questions, it seems premature to dismiss the possibility that the Tapestry was, as suggested previously by Werckmeister and Brown, made as part of a petition to gain the release of Bishop Odo from his half-brother’s prison.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Prof. Leonie Hicks, as well as the two anonymous referees, for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

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Mark Hagger

Mark Hagger is a reader in medieval history at Bangor University. His work focuses on Norman and Anglo-Norman government and administration, charters, and narratives. He is the author of William: King and Conqueror (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012) and Norman Rule in Normandy, 911−1144 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2017).

Notes

¹ The most detailed accounts are: Orderic Vitalis, Historia Ecclesiastica, ed. and trans. Marjorie Chibnall. 6 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969–1980), 3: 38–44; William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum: The History of the English Kings, eds. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson, and Michael Winterbottom, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 506.

² Mark Hagger, Norman Rule in Normandy, 911–1144 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2017), 9–18.

³ Hagger, Norman Rule, 19–22.

⁴ The dating of the Carmen is somewhat uncertain. Frank Barlow suggested that it was written after the fall from favour of Eustace of Boulogne in 1067 and his restoration if not exactly to favour then at least to his English estates, which took place at an unknown date before William of Poitiers wrote his Gesta Guillelmi. See Frank Barlow, ‘The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio’, in Studies in International History Presented to W. Norton Medlicott, eds. K. Bourne and D. C. Watt (London, 1967): 35–67, reprinted in Frank Barlow, The Norman Conquest and Beyond (London: Hambledon, 1983): 189–222 (200); The ‘Carmen de Hastingae proelio’ of Guy Bishop of Amiens, ed. and trans. Frank Barlow (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1999), xli; Otto K. Werckmeister, ‘The Political Ideology of the Bayeux Tapestry’, Studi Medievali, third series 17 (1976): 535–95 (585–6) and notes.

⁵ It is unlikely that the knights would have had sufficient familiarity with much of the art that might have influenced the design themselves, although they might have been better acquainted with the chansons. The suggestion that the Tapestry’s narrative borrowed from chansons was suggested by, for example, Charles R. Dodwell, ‘The Bayeux Tapestry and the French Secular Epic’, The Burlington Magazine, 108 (1966): 549–60. The influence of imperial Rome, in particular Trajan’s Column, was suggested by Werckmeister, ‘The Political Ideology of the Bayeux Tapestry’, 535–48 and has been supported by, for example, Gale Owen-Crocker, ‘Stylistic Variation and Roman Influence in the Bayeux Tapestry’, Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art and Architecture, 2 (2009): 51–96, reprinted in Gale Owen-Crocker, The Bayeux Tapestry: Collected Papers, Variorum Collected Studies Series (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012): V. 1–35 and Howard B. Clarke, ‘The Identity of the Designer of the Bayeux Tapestry’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 35 (2013): 119–39 (132–3). The use of Roman imagery in an embroidery intended for the king would reflect the use of such imagery in, for example, William of Poitiers’s Gesta Guillelmi and the poem Plus tibi fama, written as early as 1070. Similarly, Bishop Hugh-Renard of Langres (1056–84) predicted that King William would become an emperor, while Baudri of Bourgeuil stated that he had indeed risen from consul to become a caesar (see Elisabeth M. C. van Houts, ‘Latin Poetry and the Norman Court 1066–135: The ‘Carmen de Hastingae Proelio’, Journal of Medieval History, 15 (1989): 39–62 (42); idem. ‘Rouen as Another Rome in the Twelfth Century’, in Society and Culture in Medieval Rouen, 911–1300, eds. Leonie V. Hicks and Elma Brenner, Studies in the Early Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013): 101–24 (105–6)); Werckmeister, ‘The Political Ideology of the Bayeux Tapestry’, 562.

⁶ Visual imagery was deemed helpful for the education of a secular audience by numerous churchmen, hence the abundance of sculpture, whether on tympana or capitals or made into friezes, and stained-glass windows in contemporary and later churches. There was also the occasional illustrated chronicle: a copy of Dudo of Saint-Quentin’s De moribus with gaps for illustrations survives as Rouen, Bibliothèque Municipal, MS 1173/Y11; see Leah Shopkow, History and Community: Norman Historical Writing in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1997), 220–1; Benjamin Pohl, Dudo of Saint-Quentin’s ‘Historia Normannorum’: Tradition, Innovation and Memory (York: York University Press, 2015), 32–3, 173–97). There was also an illustrated copy of Otto of Freising’s Chronica (Pohl, Dudo, 29). Illustrations continued to be used to aid understanding even as literacy improved, as in the fourteenth-century Holkham Bible Picture Book; see The Holkham Bible: A Facsimile, commentary by Michelle P. Brown (London: British Library, 2007).

⁷ The influence of illuminations in manuscripts from St Augustine’s Canterbury on the designer of the Tapestry was first suggested by Francis Wormald, ‘Style and Design’, in The Bayeux Tapestry, ed. Frank M. Stenton (London: Phaidon Press, 1957): 24–36. The argument has been widely accepted and is discussed and developed by, for example, Nicholas P. Brooks and H. E. Walker, ‘The Authority and Interpretation of the Bayeux Tapestry’, Proceedings of the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies I. 1978 (1979): 1–34 (10–18); Cyril Hart, ‘The Bayeux Tapestry and the Schools of Illumination at Canterbury’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 22 (2000): 117–67; Richard Gameson, ‘The Origin, Art, and Message of the Bayeux Tapestry’ in The Study of the Bayeux Tapestry, ed. Richard Gameson (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1997): 157–211 (162–4); Gale Owen-Crocker, ‘Reading the Bayeux Tapestry through Canterbury Eyes’, in Anglo-Saxons. Studies Presented to Cyril Roy Hart, eds. Simon Keynes and Alfred P. Smyth (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2006): 243–65; Elizabeth C. Pastan and Stephen D. White, The Bayeux Tapestry and its Contexts: A Reassessment (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2014), 2, 65–7. While some of the models suggested are not always convincing as prototypes (as with the lunching scene), nonetheless overall the argument seems sound. This work, as well as that concerning the English influences in the Latin inscription (see for example, Brooks and Walker, ‘Authority and Interpretation’, 10; Gameson, ‘Origin, Art, and Message’, 164–5 and notes), necessarily acts to undermine the arguments proposed for manufacture in France (Bayeux and Saint-Florent of Saumur): see Wolfgang Grape, The Bayeux Tapestry (Munich, London, and New York: Prestel, 1994), 44–54; George Beech, Was the Bayeux Tapestry Made in France: The Case for St Florent of Saumur (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Xavier Barral i Altet, En souvenir du roi Guillaume: La broderie de Bayeux (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 2016), particularly 362–76, 385–97.

⁸ The abbess of Montvilliers presented William the Bastard with a chalice when petitioning for a gift to add to the nuns’ victuals (Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum: The Acta of William I (1066–1087), ed. David Bates (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), no. 212, at p. 659. Orderic Vitalis noted the giving of gifts by those petitioning for the release of Count William of Mortain, Robert of Etoutteville and others captured at the battle of Tinchebray (Orderic, Historia, 6: 94). Geoffrey Koziol, Begging Pardon and Favor: Ritual and Political Order in Early Medieval France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992): 297–8 notes that contemporaries ‘gave gifts endlessly: to celebrate marriages and seal alliances, to support entreaties for aid, to reward faithful service, and to show that one served faithfully’.

⁹ Shirley A. Brown and Michael W. Herren, ‘The Adelae Comitissae of Baudri of Bourgeuil and the Bayeux Tapestry’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 16 (1994): 55–73 (70); Shirley A. Brown, ‘The Bayeux Tapestry, A Critical Analysis of Publications’, in The Bayeux Tapestry: Embroidering the Facts of History, eds. Pierre Bouet, Brian Levy, and François Neveux (Caen: Presses Universitaires de Caen, 2004): 27–47(29); Pastan and White, Bayeux Tapestry, 30 and n. 118.

¹⁰ Shirley A. Brown, ‘The Bayeux Tapestry: Why Eustace, Odo, and William?’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 12 (1990): 7–28.

¹¹ Werckmeister, ‘The Political Ideology of the Bayeux Tapestry’, 586–7; Brown, ‘Eustace, Odo, and William’, 26–7.

¹² Brooks and Walker, ‘Authority and Interpretation’, 18

¹³ H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘Towards an Interpretation of the Bayeux Tapestry’, Anglo-Norman Studies 10 (1988): 49–65 (53).

¹⁴ Gameson, ‘Origin, Art, and Message’, 161, n. 13.

¹⁵ Pastan and White, The Bayeux Tapestry, 87–104. The argument presented there does not account for Turold, however, who is dismissed as unidentifiable.

¹⁶ Bayeux Tapestry, Scenes 44, 54. The word ‘pueros’ in the latter scene is a reconstruction, although that does not affect the argument here. The Tapestry is available in a number of reproductions, among the most accessible of which is the electronic version available at <https://www.bayeuxmuseum.com/en/the-bayeux-tapestry/discover-the-bayeux-tapestry/explore-online/ >. Odo’s appearances in the Tapestry are well-known, and have been noted by, inter alia, Brown, ‘Eustace, Odo, and William’, 20–1; Cowdrey, ‘Towards an Interpretation’, 50–1; Gameson, ‘Origin, Art, and Message’, 176–7; François Neveux, ‘The Bayeux Tapestry as Original Source’, in Embroidering the Facts of History, 171–95 (179–89).

¹⁷ Bayeux Tapestry, Scenes 35, 22. The location of the oath scene in the Tapestry has been disputed. Cowdrey in particular suggested that there is not enough in the Tapestry explicitly to link the oath with Bayeux or with Odo (Cowdrey, ‘Towards an Interpretation’, 50, n. 4; see also Pastan and White, Bayeux Tapestry, 86, 107–21 for a further discussion of the issue). Others have concluded, in my view correctly, that the Tapestry does indeed show the oath being sworn at Bayeux (for example, Gameson, ‘Origin, Art, and Message’, 181, n. 122).

¹⁸ Bayeux Tapestry, Scene 16; Gale Owen-Crocker, ‘Brothers, Rivals and the Geometry of the Bayeux Tapestry’, in King Harold II and the Bayeux Tapestry, ed. Gale Owen-Crocker (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005): 109–23 (113).

¹⁹ See, for example, the relatively recent discussions in: Brooks and Walker, ‘Authority and Interpretation’, 7–8; Brown, ‘Eustace, Odo, and William’, 20-2; Grape, The Bayeux Tapestry, 54; Gameson, ‘Origin, Art, and Message’, 178–80; François Neveux, ‘The Great Bayeux Tapestry Debate (19th–20th Centuries)’ and ‘The Bayeux Tapestry as Original Source’, in Embroidering the Facts of History, 17–25 (17–21) and 182–6 respectively; Brown, ‘A Critical Analysis of Publications 1988–1999’, 33–4; Owen-Crocker, ‘Brothers, Rivals’, 109–11; Pastan and White, Bayeux Tapestry, 64–72, 84–94, 247–48, 252–3; Christopher Norton, ‘The Helmet and the Crown: The Bayeux Tapestry, Bishop Odo and William the Conqueror’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 43 (2021): 123–49 (123, 137). Other suggestions have included Queen Edith (Carola Hicks, ‘The Patronage of Queen Edith’, in The Bayeux Tapestry: New Approaches; Proceedings of a Conference at the British Museum 16–17 July 2008, eds. Michael J. Lewis, Gale R. Owen-Crocker and Dan P. Terkla [Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2011]: 5–9); Count Eustace II of Boulogne (Andrew Bridgeford, ‘Was Count Eustace II of Boulogne the Patron of the Bayeux Tapestry?’ Journal of Medieval History, 25 [1999]: 155–85); Count Robert of Mortain (David S. Spear, ‘Robert of Mortain and the Bayeux Tapestry’, in The Bayeux Tapestry: New Approaches, 75–80); Abbot Scolland of St Augustine’s Canterbury (Pastan and White, Bayeux Tapestry, 67–70); and King William himself (Norton, ‘The Helmet and the Crown’, 147–9).

²⁰ Turold has been identified as Ralph’s father by, for example, H. Tsurushima, ‘Hic est miles: Some Images of Three Knights: Turold, Wadard and Vital’, in The Bayeux Tapestry: New Approaches, 81–91 (83–5). Hugh Thomas was content to accept that identification: Hugh M. Thomas, ‘Turold, Wadard and Vitalis: Why are They on the Bayeux Tapestry?’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 38 (2016): 181–97 (182).

²¹ Bayeux Tapestry, Scene 10.

²² Bayeux Tapestry, Scene 41.

²³ Bayeux Tapestry, Scene 49.

²⁴ The idea that they were there because of an association with Odo goes back to 1821: T. Amyot, ‘A Defence of the Early Antiquity of the Bayeux Tapestry’, Archaeologia, 19 (1821): 192–208, noted in Pastan and White, Bayeux Tapestry, 83.

²⁵ Tsurushima, ‘Hic est miles’, 83, 84, 86, 87–8.

²⁶ Hicks, ‘The Patronage of Queen Edith’, 6.

²⁷ Barral i Altet, En souvenir du roi Guillaume, 391–7.

²⁸ Tsurushima, ‘Hic est miles’, 90.

²⁹ T. A. Heslop, ‘Regarding the Spectators of the Bayeux Tapestry: Bishop Odo and his Circle’, Art History, 32 (2009): 223–49 (229–32), noted and discussed in Pastan and White, Bayeux Tapestry, 93–4. While Arnulf of Hesdin was remembered for being marvelously skilled at farming, amongst other things, by William of Malmesbury, he did not appear in Malmesbury’s pages because of that agricultural acumen alone, but rather because he was the subject of one of St Aldhelm’s miraculous cures (William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, ed. and trans. Michael Winterbottom, vol. 1 [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007], 654).

³⁰ In contrast, Hugh Thomas has argued that Vitalis’s ‘modestly important’ role before the battle of Hastings gave Odo sufficient reason to name him in the Tapestry but not his other more significant (in terms of landholding) tenants (Thomas, ‘Turold, Wadard and Vitalis’, 187–8).

³¹ J. J. N. Palmer, ‘The Wealth of the Secular Aristocracy in 1086’, Anglo-Norman Studies 22 (2000): 279–91 (285, n. 42).

³² Thomas, ‘Turold, Wadard and Vitalis’, 181, 187–95. Pastan and White made a similar argument for the appearance of Wadard and Vitalis, but in their case with reference to their standing with the abbot of St Augustine’s Canterbury (Pastan and White, Bayeux Tapestry, 87, 95–101).

³³ Ælfgyva is depicted at Scene 15 of the Tapestry. She is similarly described as ‘mysterious’ by Brooks and Walker, ‘Authority and Interpretation’, 8 and as one of the ‘classic mysteries’ of the Tapestry by Clarke, ‘The Identity of the Designer of the Bayeux Tapestry’, 121. See also, for example, Edward A. Freeman, The History of the Norman Conquest of England, 6 vols (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1867–79), 3: 696–9; J. Bard McNulty, ‘The Lady Aelfgyva in the Bayeux Tapestry’, Speculum 55 (1980): 659–68; Eric F. Freeman, ‘The Identity of Aelfgyva in the Bayeux Tapestry’, Annales de Normandie 41–2 (1991): 117–34.

³⁴ Brooks and Walker, ‘Authority and Interpretation’ 18. Pastan and White rejected Werckmester’s ‘wildly speculative theory’, apparently on the basis that Werckmeister failed to provide any justification for his suggestions (Pastan and White, Bayeux Tapestry, 93). Hugh Thomas noted Werckmeister’s thesis, but not why he rejected it (Thomas, ‘Turold, Wadard, and Vitalis’, 187 n. 21).

³⁵ Palmer, ‘The Wealth of the Secular Aristocracy’, 281, 284, 290; H. Tsurushima, ‘Hic est miles’, 85–7; noted in Thomas, ‘Turold, Wadard and Vitalis’, 184.

³⁶ Tsurushima, ‘Hic est miles’, 83–4; Thomas, ‘Turold, Wadard and Vitalis’, 184–7.

³⁷ Regesta, ed. Bates, no. 27; Henri Navel, ‘L’enquête de 1133 sur les fiefs de l’evêché de Bayeux’, Bulletin de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie, 42 (1934): 5–80 (20).

³⁸ See Tsurushima, ‘Hic est miles’, 87–8, including here a quotation from Goscelin of Saint-Bertin’s Miracles of St Augustine which remarks on Vitalis’s involvement in the trade in Caen stone: Pastan and White, Bayeux Tapestry, 95–6; Thomas, ‘Turold, Wadard and Vitalis’, 187.

³⁹ Christine Senecal, ‘Keeping Up with the Godwinesons: In Pursuit of Aristocratic Status in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, Anglo-Norman Studies 23 (2001): 251–66 (265). She goes on to note that even thegns who held land valued at £40 were able to commission the highest quality objects. Robin Fleming concurred: ‘Thegns who held estates valued on the order of £40 per annum would have had total incomes, when measured in silver, of 28.5 pounds weight a year; and if they were able to realise a tenth of this in cash, they would have had fortunes’ (Robin Fleming, ‘The New Wealth, the New Rich and the New Political Style in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, Anglo-Norman Studies 23 [2001]: 1–22 [17]).

⁴⁰ Dialogus de Scaccario: The Dialogue of the Exchequer; Constitutio Domus Regis: The Disposition of the King’s Household, eds. and trans. Emily Amt and Stephen D. Church (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007), 212.

⁴¹ Domesday Book notes that there were four nuns who held four acres of land in alms from the abbot of St Augustine’s next to Canterbury (Great Domesday Book, fo. 12r; Domesday Book: Text and Translation, ed. John Morris, 38 vols [Chichester: Philimore, 1975–86], 1: Kent, § 7.11).

⁴² Isabelle Bédat and Béatrice Girault-Kurtzeman, ‘The Technical Study of the Bayeux Embroidery’, in Embroidering the Facts of History: 83–109 (91).

⁴³ The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Twentieth Year of the Reign of King Henry the Second, AD 1173–74, The Publications of the Pipe Roll Society, 21 (1896), 8. The linen of the Tapestry was almost certainly much finer and thus more expensive than everyday cloth would have been, but there was also much less of it.

⁴⁴ Gameson, ‘Origin, Art and Message’, 172; Clarke, ‘The Identity of the Designer of the Bayeux Tapestry’, 127–33; Pastan and White, Bayeux Tapestry, 116–124.

⁴⁵ See, for example, Regesta, ed. Bates, nos. 84, 85, 87; Brooks and Waller, ‘Authority and Interpretation’, 17; E. Cownie, Religious Patronage in Anglo-Norman England, 1066–1135, Royal Historical Society Studies in History (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1998), 102, quoted in Pastan and White, Bayeux Tapestry, 100.

⁴⁶ Clarke, ‘The Identity of the Designer of the Bayeux Tapestry’, 127–30.

⁴⁷ Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle, ed. and trans. R. C. Johnson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981). That the poem was written with the intention of reconciling Henry II and his supporters with the rebels was proposed by Matthew Strickland, ‘Arms and the Men: War, Loyalty, and Lordship in Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle’, in Medieval Knighthood, IV. Papers from the Fifth Strawberry Hill Conference, eds. Christopher Harper-Bill and Ruth Harvey (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1992): 187–210 and is also discussed in Laura Ashe, Fiction and History in England, 1066–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 82–4.

⁴⁸ Recueil des actes des ducs de Normandie de 911 à 1066, ed. Marie Fauroux, Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie 36 (1961), no. 146.

⁴⁹ Regesta, ed. Bates, no. 200.

⁵⁰ Thomas, ‘Turold, Wadard and Vitalis’, 184.

⁵¹ Cowdrey, ‘Towards an Interpretation’, 53.

⁵² For example, Brooks and Walker, ‘Authority and Interpretation’, 10.

⁵³ Hagger, Norman Rule, 9–18.

⁵⁴ E. M. C. van Houts, ‘The Ship-List of William the Conqueror’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 10 (1988): 159–83.

⁵⁵ For the Carmen see above, n. {4}.

⁵⁶ William of Poitiers, Gesta Guillelmi, eds. and trans. Ralph H. C. Davis and Marjorie Chibnall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 100–2, 132–4, 148, 164.

⁵⁷ Poitiers, Gesta, 164.

⁵⁸ Poitiers, Gesta, 166.

⁵⁹ Orderic, Historia, 3: 42; Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, 1: 506.

⁶⁰ Saints might be rebuked and their relics humiliated by being placed on the ground or covered in thorns if they failed to satisfy those in search of a cure or protect their communities. See Robert J. Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 109–12.

⁶¹ Levi Roach, Æthelred II the Unready (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016), 136–52.

⁶² Recueil des actes de ducs de Normandie, ed. Fauroux, nos. 70, 74; Hagger, Norman Rule, 408–9.

⁶³ Fantosme, Chronicle, 1–2 (ll. 17–19).

⁶⁴ Orderic, Historia, 3: 132.

⁶⁵ Ashe, Fiction and History, 45.

⁶⁶ Poitiers, Gesta, 20, 114, 118, 120. The omission is noted in Pastan and White, Bayeux Tapestry, 214–18.

⁶⁷ The deathbed scene is open to different interpretations. It might depict Edward’s deathbed bequest of the kingdom to Harold, but it might also reflect the scene in the Life of King Edward whereby Queen Edith and the kingdom were placed under Harold’s protection (The Life of King Edward Who Rests at Westminster, ed. and trans. Frank Barlow, second edition [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992], 122–4; and see the discussions in, for example: Brooks and Walker, ‘Authority and Interpretation’, 10; Pastan and White, Bayeux Tapestry 42, 218–23; Ashe, Fiction and History, 44–5; George Garnett, Conquered England: Kingship, Succession and Tenure 1066–1166 [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007], 9, 171).

⁶⁸ For discussion, and some alternative views, on the apparently favourable treatment of Harold see, for example, Frank Stenton, ‘The Historical Background’, in The Bayeux Tapestry, ed. Stenton, 9–24 (15); Dodwell, ‘The Bayeux Tapestry and the French Secular Epic’, 50–7; Pierre Bouet, ‘Is the Bayeux Tapestry Pro-English?’, in Embroidering the Facts of History: 197–215; Thomas, ‘Turold, Wadard and Vitalis’, 195–6.

⁶⁹ This is effectively the interpretation set out in Dodwell, ‘The Bayeux Tapestry and the French Secular Epic’, 554. It might also be conjectured that the Tapestry was here responding to a complaint that Duke William should not have allowed the duplicitous Harold to leave his court – rather like the later criticisms of Louis VII’s decision to allow Eleanor of Aquitaine to return to her estates in 1152. That might also explain why the Tapestry perhaps portrays Harold’s departure after the oath as swift and stealthy.

⁷⁰ Poitiers, Gesta, 100.

⁷¹ On this subject see also Ann Williams, ‘The Art of Memory: The Posthumous Reputation of King Harold II Godwineson’, Anglo-Norman Studies 42 (2020): 29–43 (29–36).

⁷² William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis and Robert of Torigni, The ‘Gesta Normannorum Ducum ‘of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis and Robert of Torigni, ed. and trans. E. M. C. van Houts, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992–95), 2: 168, 180.

⁷³ Carmen, ed. and trans. Barlow, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 32.

⁷⁴ Poitiers, Gesta, 100 and 120, respectively, and see also p. 140. The English envoy himself speaks explicitly of King Harold: Poitiers, Gesta, 118. See also Bouet, ‘Is the Bayeux Tapestry Pro-English?’, 209–10.

⁷⁵ Orderic, Historia, 6: 94.

⁷⁶ Regesta, ed. Bates, nos. 223, 286.

⁷⁷ Including Regesta, ed. Bates, nos. 300 (1066×1075), 317 (1066×1086).

⁷⁸ Great Domesday Book, fo. 38r; Hampshire, §1.12, 13; Garnett, Conquered England, 9–33; David Bates, William the Conqueror (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016), 469.

⁷⁹ Anselm of Canterbury, The Letters of St Anselm of Canterbury, trans. Walter Frölich, 3 vols, Cistercian Studies Series, 96, 97, 142 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1990–94), nos. 401, 402, 404, 424, 462.

⁸⁰ As with, for example, John of Worcester, the author of the Waltham Chronicle, and the monk of St Augustine’s Canterbury who added a notice of King Harold’s death to a martyrology. On this subject see most conveniently, Williams, ‘The Art of Memory’, 29–43, particularly pp. 38–41 and notes, and also Elisabeth M. C. van Houts, ‘The Conquest through European eyes’, English Historical Review 110 (1995): 832–53.

⁸¹ Carola Hicks opined that the Tapestry was intended for William, albeit made shortly after the Conquest rather than in the 1080s as suggested here (Hicks, ‘The Patronage of Queen Edith’, 6).

⁸² Bayeux Tapestry, Scene 43.

⁸³ ‘Prandium ab apparatu edendi dictum. Proprie autem veteres prandium vocabant omnium militum cibum ante pugnam; unde est illud ducis adloquium: “Prandeamus tamquam ad inferos cenaturi”’: Isidore of Seville, Etymologies, 20:2, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911); trans. Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach and Oliver Berghof (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 395–6. Sse also Mark Hagger, ‘Lordship and Lunching: Interpretations of Eating and Food in the Anglo-Norman World, 1050–1200, with Reference to the Bayeux Tapestry’, in The English and their Legacy 900–1200: Essays in Honour of Ann Williams, ed. David Roffe (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2012): 229–44.

⁸⁴ Laura H. Loomis, ‘The Table of the Last Supper in Religious and Secular Iconography’, Art Studies (American Journal of Archaeology) 5 (1927): 70–88; Brooks and Walker, ‘Authority and Interpretation’, 15; Martha Rampton, ‘The Significance of the Banquet Scene in the Bayeux Tapestry’, Medievalia et Humanistica, new series 21 (1994): 33–53.

⁸⁵ Daniel, 5:5, 5:7.

⁸⁶ Daniel, 5: 18–21, 22–28.

⁸⁷ Thomas, ‘Turold, Wadard and Vitalis’, 193 and n. 52.

⁸⁸ Odo was, of course, also styled bishop in royal acts and other documents before his fall from favour. The use of the style does not, therefore, help to date the Tapestry. But nor does it impact the argument presented here, which attempts to demonstrate how the word might have been used to make a petition in Odo’s favour after his arrest.

⁸⁹ Orderic, Historia, 4: 42. Malmesbury says much the same: ‘having explained that his fetters were not for the bishop of Bayeux but the earl of Kent’ (Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, 506).

⁹⁰ The Register of Pope Gregory VII 1073–1085: An English Translation, ed. and trans. H. E. J. Cowdrey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 441–2 at 442 (no. 9.37).

⁹¹ Bayeux Tapestry, Scene 44. Spear has suggested that Count Robert also appears with his brothers when the command is given to build ships (Scene 35) and among the knights of the Breton campaign (Scenes 16–20), and that he is the figure who oversees the construction of the castle at Hastings (Scene 45). In addition, Spear conjectured that his name originally appeared where later repairs have intruded the name ‘Eustatius’ (Scene 55 and see below): Spear, ‘Robert of Mortain and the Bayeux Tapestry’, 76–8. While these identifications necessarily remain tenuous, the multiplication of Robert’s appearances does no damage to the suggestion made here.

⁹² Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, 506; Poitiers, Gesta, 100; Jumièges, Gesta Normannorum Ducum, 2: 186; Spear, ‘Robert of Mortain and the Bayeux Tapestry’, 78–9.

⁹³ Orderic, Historia, 4: 98.

⁹⁴ Bayeux Tapestry, Scene 45. That the figure should be identified as Count Robert is suggested by Spear, ‘Robert of Mortain and the Bayeux Tapestry’, 77, following Lucien Musset (Lucien Musset, The Bayeux Tapestry, trans. R. Rex [Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005], 214) and Frank Barlow, Carmen, lxv.

⁹⁵ Orderic, Historia, 2: 220.

⁹⁶ Bayeux Tapestry, Scene 55.

⁹⁷ Spear, ‘Robert of Mortain and the Bayeux Tapestry’, 75.

⁹⁸ Norton, ‘The Helmet and the Crown’, 139.

⁹⁹ Jumièges, Gesta Normannorum Ducum, 2: 176. The provenance is discussed by Elisabeth van Houts in her introduction to her edition at 1: c.

¹⁰⁰ Brown, ‘Eustace, Odo, and William’, 25–6.

¹⁰¹ Suzanne Lewis has noted how the Tapestry as a whole is made up of such ‘relays of smaller units’: Suzanne Lewis, The Rhetoric of Power in the Bayeux Tapestry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 74, quoted in Brian J. Levy, ‘Trifunctionality and Epic Patterning in that Bayeux Tapestry’, in Embroidering the Facts of History, 327–45 (328).

¹⁰² The issue is raised by Brown, ‘Eustace, Odo, and William’, 18.

¹⁰³ See the detailed discussion in Pastan and White, Bayeux Tapestry, 154–82 (Ch. 7).

¹⁰⁴ See Pastan and White, Bayeux Tapestry, 169–71 for the possible identifications and outlines.

¹⁰⁵ Orderic, Historia, 2: 312.

¹⁰⁶ Orderic, Historia, 3: 44.

¹⁰⁷ Fulgentius the Mythographer, trans. Leslie G. Whitbread (Columbus OH: Ohio State University Press, 1971), 79–80. Chibnall stated that Orderic’s trite quotation could not be found, but here she was in error (Orderic, Historia, 3: 44 n. 1).

¹⁰⁸ Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, 90.

¹⁰⁹ Rouen, Archives Départementales de la Seine-Maritime, G 4480; Calendar of Documents Preserved in France, 918–1206, ed. John H. Round (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1899), no. 1459; Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum 1066–1154: II. Regesta Henrici Primi, 1100–1135, eds. Charles Johnson and H. A. Cronne (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), 363 (no. ccxiii).

¹¹⁰ Jumièges, Gesta Normannorum Ducum, 2: 58.

¹¹¹ Given that the Tapestry was hung in the nave of Bayeux cathedral for only a few days every year from at least the fifteenth century, it is unlikely that the process of erecting it was particularly difficult or time consuming.

¹¹² Dudo of Saint-Quentin, De moribus et actis primorum Normanniae ducum, ed. Jules Lair, Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie, 23 (1865), 230; Dudo of Saint-Quentin, History of the Normans: Translation with Introduction and Notes, trans. Eric Christiansen (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1998), 105.

¹¹³ English Historical Documents II, 1042–1189, eds. and trans. David C. Douglas and George W. Greenaway (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1953), 606–7 (no. 81)

¹¹⁴ The Lives of Thomas Becket, trans. Michael Staunton, Manchester Medieval Sources Series (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), 218–19.

¹¹⁵ The Register of Pope Gregory VII 1073–1085, trans. Cowdrey, 221–2 (no. 4.12).

¹¹⁶ Orderic, Historia, 4: 98.