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of God's will were not the Normans but rather Count Eustace II of Boulogne and his Frenchmen, Eustace the noble heir of Charlemagne whose merits were perhaps being regularly sung and vaunted by the dwarf jongleur Turold in the baronial halls of northern France. Elsewhere the English viewpoint was being silenced and censored, and the role of the non-Norman Frenchmen minimised, but Odo would be taking back to Normandy a work of art that, unbeknownst to him, subtly undermined Norman propaganda in almost every respect. The Bayeux Tapestry emerges from all this not as a Norman work or even a purely English one but as a truly Anglo-French production, foreshadowing the age that dawned with the Norman Conquest, but in ways quite unexpected.

It was at St Augustine's Abbey that one of the versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was kept up, nowadays called the E version. The E version of the Chronicle tends to be the most favourable towards Earl Godwin and his family, but it, like the other versions of the Chronicle, passes over in silence the whole matter of Harold Godwinson's fateful journey to the continent that was the catalyst of all that followed. The truth behind Harold's mission, and with it King Edward's crucial wishes towards the end of his reign, was recorded at St Augustine's not, on this occasion, in ink scratched upon parchment but with colourful stitches pierced through white linen cloth. In this sense, the Bayeux Tapestry can truly be described as the lost Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as well as the secret Chronicle of the House of Boulogne, a generation before the blood of Charlemagne achieved a new pinnacle of success in the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

As long ago as 1935 the French historian Henri Prentout wondered whether there was anything new that could be written about the Bayeux Tapestry, whether, in fact, everything that could be said had already been said.3 The same sentiment is not infrequently expressed today. Such pessimistic notes have often quickly been followed by some fresh insight or intriguing argument. The secrets of this extraordinary work of genius continue to fascinate and beguile us. It is by no means impossible that further astonishing discoveries await to be made.

Notes

1 In Search of the Bayeux Tapestry

1 In a forthcoming study, David Hill and John McSween (The Bayeux Tapestry: The Establishment of a Text) will look closely at how the present appearance of the tapestry differs from the earliest eighteenth-and nineteenth-century drawings and (by the 1870s) photographs of the work. Almost 400 points of difference will be noted, showing either that the pre-18 70 artists were inaccurate or that 'restorers' over the last 300 years have altered some of the details. The early artists were certainly not infallible. Only where a 'change' is supported by photographic and/or forensic evidence can it be accepted without demur. Rather than physically unpicking the work of restorers, the ultimate goal would presumably be to reproduce, in those places where an alteration can be proved, the original appearance of the tapestry in an electronic format for display in the museum next to the tapestry itself.

2 For the tapestry's subversive English point of view, this work is particularly indebted to the studies of Bernstein and Wissolik listed in the bibliography. The view that the tapestry is entirely pro-Norman (which it will be argued is incorrect) also has an academic pedigree and is represented by Grape, Bayeux Tapestry.

2 A Tale of Consequence: The Impact of Conquest

1 Beowulf, lines 994-6.

2 Liber Eliensis, II, 63, p. 136.

3 For general accounts of the Norman Conquest, see R. A. Brown, The Normans and the Norman Conquest; Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest; Douglas, William the Conqueror; Bates, William the Conqueror.

4 Simeon of Durham, Opera Omnia, II, p. 188.

5 Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History, II, p. 233.

6 For example, see Michel de Bouard, 'La chanson de Roland et la Normandie'; Rita Lejeune, 'Le caractere de l'archeveque Turpin'.

7 Song of Roland.

8 Loyd, Origins of Some