remain unknown. It is only in about 1049 that we hear of him, at which point it is recorded that William, who was now able to exert his authority more firmly in western Normandy, appointed him as the Bishop of Bayeux. Odo was certainly young for such an important promotion. There is conflicting evidence as to his precise year of birth, but it is quite possible that he was only thirteen years old and at any rate he would have been well below the canonical age of thirty. Despite William's sensitivity on the subject of his bastardy, he remained on close terms with his mother and the preferment of Odo was the first of many favours that he would grant his half-brothers. This is not surprising. Nepotism was a widely accepted practice, and in a dangerous and untrustworthy world reliance on ties of blood cannot be said to be entirely without purpose. William governed Normandy, and afterwards conquered England, with a closely knit network of loyal nobles, often related to the ducal family. Odo's brother Robert was made Count of Mortain around 1055 and so began his own long and rather colourless career of loyal service to William. Odo was made of different stuff: he was too self-important to be a sycophant and his ambitions knew few bounds. Before 1066, however, the evidence of his activities is sparse. The office of bishop that Odo had acquired was as much political as religious. It also promised considerable rewards, something which no doubt stimulated his appetite for further wealth and luxury. He appears as a witness to some of William's charters, attended ecclesiastical councils and would have overseen the establishment of the cathedral school at Bayeux, which later became something of a training ground for Norman bishops and administrators in conquered England. The cathedral itself, so intimately connected with the later history of the Bayeux Tapestry, was at this time steadily being rebuilt on the foundations of an older Carolingian edifice. The construction of the new building, which had already commenced under Bishop Odo's predecessor, continued under his youthful direction.
In about 1051 William married Matilda, the daughter of Count Baldwin of Flanders. Politically, it was a good match and it was achieved despite the initial opposition of the Pope on grounds of consanguinity. William's continued attachment to his lowborn mother is illustrated by the fact that prior to the wedding Matilda, a lady of the noblest blood, was placed in the care of Herleva. Not long afterwards the newly-weds founded two abbeys in Caen and the two abbatial churches still stand there today, proud monuments to their founders, gazing across at each other from opposite sides of the town. So far as is known, William remained faithful to his wife and together they had nine children. They must have made an odd couple, though. William was a large man, increasingly given to corpulence as he grew older, whereas Matilda was unusually small. The lady to whom the Bayeux Tapestry was so often attributed was (on the evidence of the bones discovered in her grave at her church at the Abbaye aux Dames in Caen) only about 4 feet 3 inches tall.5
Despite this astute marriage, the early 1050s were a time of considerable danger for William. There was nothing certain about his hold on the duchy, still less was his rise to preeminence in northern France inevitable. To the leaders of neighbouring territories his growing power was an increasing threat and they readily joined attempts to depose him. In 1053 Duke William's uncle, William of Arques, plotted to usurp the duchy for himself and to this end assembled a coalition of neighbouring rulers hostile to William. To make mattersworse, King Henry dramatically reversed his earlier policy and in alliance with Count Geoffrey of Anjou launched an invasion of the duchy as well. The duke swiftly besieged and defeated William of Arques; amongst the latter's supporters, Count Enguerrand of Ponthieu, brother of the tapestry's Guy, was killed in action. King Henry retreated for the moment but he and Count Geoffrey were soon back,