1066 - Andrew Bridgeford [117]
What, then, could be the true reason for making an allusion to the scandal of Ælfgifu of Northampton at this point in the Bayeux Tapestry? The import of the scene remains enigmatic; the answer can only be guessed. A principal contention of this book is that Count Eustace II of Boulogne is a much more important person in the tapestry than has conventionally been thought. He may even have been its patron. To depict the scandal of Ælfgifu is not simply to hold her up for vilification and amusement, it is to vilify the product of her illicit connivances, Swein and Harold Harefoot. It is to remind those observers of the eleventh century who knew of the matter that Swein and Harefoot were of low and illicit birth (those who did not know would simply be amused by the enigma). Indeed, the most obvious way, and perhaps the only way, of illustrating ignominious birth, purely pictorially, is to make an allusion to the parent. If the true point of the scene is to show up the bad blood of Swein and Harefoot, the chief point of that must have been to vilify Harold Harefoot in particular.22 It was Harold Harefoot who was primarily responsible for the terrible murders of Alfred and so many men of Boulogne in 1036. This was something that directly affected Count Eustace. Whatever he thought of Earl Godwin, the vilification of Harefoot would not have been inimical to his own viewpoint.
Nor would it be inimical to a point of view more favourable to the memory of Earl Godwin, for it singles out for vilification, not Godwin, but, by implication Harefoot. Harold, like his father, would presumably have argued that Harefoot alone was responsible for the crimes of 1036. At any rate, to show up Harefoot in the tapestry represents common ground between a Boulonnais and a more Godwinist point of view on the grisly matter of Alfred's murder and the slaughter of the men of Boulogne. Perhaps the artist's intention was to do no more than that.
20
Wadard and Vital
On 13 February 1932 a meeting of the Society of Genealogists took place at its assembly room in Bloomsbury Square, London. Geoffrey H. White, one of the most eminent genealogists of his time, rose to his feet to read a paper on 'The Companions of the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings'.1 White's paper had been eagerly anticipated. It had come to the society's attention that, following a considerable amount of research, a bronze plaque had been unveiled the previous June at Falaise Castle, the birthplace of William the Conqueror, recording the names of 315 knights who had fought by his side at the great battle. A similar, though not identical, list had been compiled in the 1860s for the church of Dives-sur-Mer. Already a note had been published in the society's journal concluding that the celebrations that had marked the unveiling of the Falaise Roll were 'socially delightful', 'admirable in their international effect', and even 'gastronomically laudable', but the list itself was 'of no value whatsoever' for serious historical purposes. If the Falaise Roll could not be trusted, many British persons, previously to be seen glowing with unusual pride at the thought that one of their ancestors had invaded the country in 1066, would be summarily deprived of this distinction. Geoffrey White, Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, was now to give his learned opinion on the matter.
He approached the question with dry humour. White pointed out that an ancestor who came over with William the Conqueror was formerly regarded as an appendage that no English gentleman should be without. 'When a man rose in the world,' he continued, 'one