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By Root 651 0

tapestry is following the tenor (though not the detail) of the Carmen's story. We have seen how the word FRANCI in the tapestry is also a subtle indication where the artist's sympathies lie, for pictorially it appears to designate the French fighting under Count Eustace rather than the Normans. There is further intriguing evidence of this. Few things are more obscure than the origins of heraldry, the system of inherited family devices, painted on shields, that has traditionally been taken as first appearing only in the twelfth century. Clues as to the life and customs of Count Eustace II of Boulogne are few and far between, but in her groundbreaking book published in 1980, Origins of Heraldry, Beryl Platts ingeniously argued that heraldry has its origin in the practices of the counts of Boulogne and their kinsmen, men who shared a common inheritance from Charlemagne. According to Platts, following the Norman Conquest it was Count Eustace II of Boulogne, and not the Normans or the Angevins, who first brought heraldry to the British Isles.

The Bayeux Tapestry is usually thought to belong to a pre-heraldic age and the emblems on its banners and shields have generally not been considered as heraldic or even proto-heraldic symbols. Eustace's own banner in the tapestry has, frustratingly, defied conclusive identification.6 However, Platts pointed out that in the great depiction of the advancing knights at Hastings, the leading horseman - the one who bears down on the line of upright English axe men - carries a banner on his lance-tip that seems to bear the three roundels or balls (boules) arranged in a triangle that to this day are part of the heraldry of Boulogne [scene 49].7 This is an extraordinary discovery, not only for the history of heraldry but for that of the Bayeux Tapestry as well. It would be hard to over emphasise the iconographic significance of this particular banner. The depiction of the charge at Hastings is one of the most vivid and exciting scenes in the whole of the work. The moment when the first charging knight reaches the first standing English housecarl and plunges his bannered lance into the Englishman's shield marks the true commencement of the historic battle. It is as if everything else has been leading up to this point and the tapestry shows Boulogne, not Normandy, leading the way. Once more the argument that the tapestry is covertly pro-Boulogne seems to find dramatic support. Platts has also identified (albeit very tentatively) other lance-tip banners borne by the invaders as being emblems of Senlis, Alost and St-Pol or Hesdin-all subsidiary or allied territories of Boulogne.

In the Carmen, the high point of Eustace's role at the Battle of Hastings comes with the death of Harold, for he is said to be one of the four men who delivers a mortal blow to the last Anglo-Saxon king. It is not hard to imagine that, justly or unjustly, Eustace looked upon Harold as the representative of his old adversary Godwin and sought at Hastings to gain revenge for the bloody crimes of 1036 and the humiliations of 1051. It might seem at first sight that the tapestry leaves us guessing, or is simply non-committal, as to the identity of the knight who cuts Harold to the ground [plate 12]. There is, however, an astonishing clue that has lain unnoticed for centuries. As the knight leans over, ready to strike Harold on the thigh, the top of his helmet points horizontally at the disjointed letters TUS: EST, which have been separated out of the words INTERFECTUS EST (was killed). There is no reason why these six letters should have been separated and placed on a lower line in the way that they are, for there would have been ample room for the lettering to have continued on the same line. Are we being told something else? It takes little imagination to reverse the two triplets TUS:EST so that they become EST:TUS, which gives us, in the correct order, six of the nine letters of Eustace's name, as it is spelt in Latin (EUSTATIUS). This raises the extraordinary possibility that the so-called 'Norman knight' who delivers the killer