Extra

October 14, 1066

Phil Allen
Tuesday October 11, 2016 - 12:36:00 PM

We are weeks away from a fateful day for both city and country. It could presage catastrophe. Healing could take generations, if there is time this time.

As we prepare, let us reflect upon another such moment, the one date every English-speaking schoolboy was once expected to know. On Friday, October 14, evening newscasts may conclude with a brief commemoration of that heated day-long battle. It too ended around supper time. It will be quietly observed around here, if at all, but look for an ad in The Times.

Because it lies in the peace of 950 years of distance, the Battle of Hastings reposes as indifferently in the modern mind as the shaded uphill field upon which it was fought. There is no nod to it in cinema, probably because the ‘knights in shining armour’ deal was centuries away. Shakespeare and Co. avoided it, despite its rich dramatic underpinnings. Hell, even the ceremonial kneeling cushions wondrously embroidered by the ladies of Exeter Cathedral omit the losing king’s presence—he alone of over 1000 years of English rulers. In 1950, Hope Muntz’ bardic The Golden Warrior redressed these oversights in an overlooked literary masterpiece.  

‘Dynasty’ and other TV big-family opera—much less political campaigns—have nothing on the potent engagements of the past for a vacated throne, when real knives let real blood. The story that ended at dusk on Caldbec Ridge concluded a 24-year gulf of peace from two centuries of Viking predation and rule in England. This placid era was limply overseen by the piously distant king Edward the Confessor. Raised in Latinized Normandy (also founded by Vikings who forsook their sea-faring ways) as a royal exile and finding it preferable to his own realm, he named its young martial and self-possessed Duke William –a contemporary of fellow blood letters El Cid and Macbeth--as his heir. This character would eventually rape the envy of Europe, as his fellow bored young nobles, in the early ‘biker’ stage of chivalry, felled nearby regions of ‘Francia’, then Sicily, and Jerusalem. William was not bored or distracted. 

When the Confessor died in January 1066, Saxon nobles elected Harold Godwinson to succeed him; they could do this, and this beau gallant ran Edward’s land anyway while the king dithered. The son of a self made commoner, Earl Godwin of Wessex, he had every quality of goodness and greatness as understood by men of his day, and some we can appreciate today. Both made him the ideal tragic figure, as fingers of fate set to loosen his brief grip on the crown. He was seen as a usurper, an upstart, a perjuror, the victim of a coordinated diplomatic offensive highlighted by Papal sanction—the U.N. Resolution of its day. Even God made a gesture: the Eastertide appearance of an usually bright Halley’s Comet. Something was about to happen. 

Many anguished sources exist on the subject, for those keen on it, but the prime reason we are who we are is that the wind misbehaved. Unseasonably blowing from the north, it allowed a lightning invasion of north England by the Vikings, which Harold met and defeated at Stamford Bridge (Sept. 25). Exit the Viking Age. Then the wind turned southerly, allowing William—who’d flipped when he heard he’d been passed over—and his host of seasoned men-at-arms to cross the Channel to southern England. Worlds collided outside Hastings at nine on October 14, as mounted ‘fascist banditti’ (Thomas Paine’s words) bought by promises of land and gold wore down a farmers’ militia shield wall, and that of the Saxon English was turned upside down. Pow. 

The Normans brought differences of a sudden binding and unpleasant finality. The erasure of identity has been likened to Nazi occupation and ethnic cleansing. Among them: the icy class system, which forbade interbreeding with the conquered (shortly overlooked); the Fitzgeralds (a Norman name) who subdued Ireland; the Domesday Book, a tax code source guide, and Robin Hood and Hereward the Wake as later Saxon guerillas and heroes of the dispossessed. The Normans also brought an ‘Urban Shield’ militarization of local legal authority, and erected tall castles and fortresses to show enduring power. What notable good they brought was set without popular consultation by an implacably grim S.O.B.: King William I, crowned on Christmas. 

Some English got even though, and in plain sight. David J. Bernstein’s The Mystery of the Bayeux Tapestry tells of the Canterbury designer and stitchers who told the English side in symbols sewn in throughout its 200 feet. That it was ordered by a Norman lord for his great hall and displayed over high-born guests also makes it one of the great works of subversive art. 

Soon, our forebodings will be answered, and not by invaders. However, possible aftereffects may make them feel to us as though they arrived from outside. Meanwhile, bring in the harvest, enjoy the playoffs, and visit your parish church and election booth. The Saxons gave us that.