1066 - Andrew Bridgeford [121]
It is impossible to know exactly what Wadard and Vital did on the battlefield of Hastings, what role they had, what feats they performed. Perhaps, however, the reason for their inclusion in the tapestry lies not in the events of 1066 but those involving Odo and Eustace a year later. It has been suggested in this book that the Bayeux Tapestry might have been commissioned by Count Eustace II of Boulogne as a gift of reconciliation to Bishop Odo following his abortive attack on Odo's castle at Dover in the autumn of 1067. If the 1067 rebellion forms the unspoken background to the explicit story told in the Bayeux Tapestry, then it will have determined how the story is presented and the choice of characters. Could it be that Odo's knights Wadard and Vital were also in some way involved in the 1067 incident? All the accounts of this incident agree that Eustace's attack was beaten back by a small number of knights who had been left in charge of Odo's castle. Could this be the answer to the riddle? Might the small number of Odo's unnamed defenders of Dover Castle against Eustace's attack have included Wadard and Vital? Wadard and Vital might easily have been among the remnant of Odo's knights defending Dover Castle after the bulk of his men had departed with him to the north of the Thames - indeed, perhaps they were the primary knights left in charge of the castle. On this scenario, Eustace would have crossed swords, perhaps literally, with one or other of them, and perhaps both. What is more, they might have been the knights who were responsible for capturing his nepos. If Eustace sought a reconciliation with Odo following his attack on Dover Castle, and the release of his nepos, it would have been entirely appropriate to acknowledge the skill and bravery of Odo's knights, Wadard and Vital, who had inflicted upon him so resounding a defeat against the odds.
There is some evidence to connect Wadard, in particular, with Dover and the defence of its castle. The Domesday Book, compiled in 1086, records that he held six houses in Dover as Odo's tenant (which is more than any other sole tenant mentioned). Wadard, then, clearly had an interest in Dover. There is some further, striking evidence to link Wadard with the defence of Dover Castle. The Domesday Book does not tell us how its defence was organised. But, strangely enough, surveys which date from two centuries later can be used to show that there is an obvious correlation between the defence of Dover Castle and the lands held by certain tenants of Odo, including Wadard. What is remarkable in the thirteenth-century surveys is that we find that various landholdings similar to those held by tenants of Odo (not only in Kent but elsewhere as well) carried with them the feudal duty to supply knights to defend Dover Castle. One of the most important of these landholdings was known in the thirteenth century as the barony of Arsic; Arsic corresponds to the core of the lands held by Wadard at the time of Domesday. The coincidence is slavish and must have been administratively very cumbersome. The implication is that the thirteenth-century arrangements simply followed, and can be used as evidence for the defence of Dover Castle established by Odo. Manors which were held by Wadard from Odo at the time of the Domesday Book in counties as far apart as Surrey, Dorset, Essex, Kent, Oxfordshire, Warwickshire, Wiltshire and Lincolnshire are all found to owe a duty of garrisoning Dover Castle in the thirteenth century, despite their geographical distance from the fortress. The Domesday Book does not generally deal with military service, but there are two entries regarding Wadard