1066 - Andrew Bridgeford [46]
For days he had been drifting in and out of consciousness. Like a pale winter sun appearing now and again behind sombre clouds, old Edward would awaken briefly, mumble something unintelligible and then fall once more under the shadow of a long deep sleep. At one point, however, he started and then he spoke up (the author of the Life tells us) in a clear and healthy voice. He told the assembled group about a dream that he had just had. Edward, in his delirium, had dreamt that two long-dead monks, whom he had known in Normandy, had come to him bearing a terrible message from God. They told him that the holders of the highest offices in England all 'the earls, bishops and abbots and all those in holy orders'- were not what they seemed to be. They were not the servants of God; they were in league with the devil. Within a year and a day of Edward's death, the monks told him, God would punish the whole of England by delivering it into 'the hands of the enemy' and that 'devils shall come through all this land with fire and sword and the havoc of war'. Only when a green tree was cut in half at the middle of its trunk and the upper part transported three furlongs away, and the two parts joined themselves together without the slightest human intervention, and the conjoined tree then sprouted a profusion of leaves and bore fresh fruit, only then would the sins of the people be forgiven and England find respite from its suffering.6
The story of this strange dream owes much, of course, to the fact that the author of the Life was writing after the Battle of Hastings. With the benefit of hindsight he knew the subsequent course of events. The dream-story, and its implicit likening of the Normans to 'devils' sent by God, is revealing nonetheless. It shows how the Norman Conquest appeared to the English, as they tried to comprehend the totality of their defeat. It also shows how the Conquest sometimes appeared to continentals from beyond the borders of Normandy, men like the anonymous Flemish author of the Life of King Edward. In this view, Duke William did not have a lawful claim to the English throne. He was an unwanted pretender, but after he had won the sheer fact of his victory was undeniable. God, the author of all things, must surely have caused that victory. He cannot have done so because William was right, but rather in order to punish the English. It followed that prior to 1066 the English must have been sinful - and sinfulness is never particularly hard to find once you start looking for it in earnest. In the world-view of the time this seemed to be the lesson to be learnt from the Bible. When David sinned, the author of the Life notes, God's vengeance fell from the heavens upon the whole people of Israel.7 Was this not (the people asked themselves) what had really happened to England in 1066?
The little company gathered around Edward's bed 'were sore afraid' and 'stupefied and silent from the effect of terror'when they heard him speak of this dire prophecy. The author of the Life now points his finger explicitly at Archbishop Stigand, whose embroidered counterpart is seen leaning over the king's bed, with his eyes fixed intently on the king. 'He ought to have been the first to be afraid . . . [but] with folly in his heart he whispered in the ear of [Earl Harold] that the King was broken with age and disease and knew not what he said.' Stigand was a great survivor. He was a man with