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00:00The year of our Lord, 991, a menacing fleet approached the coast of East Anglia.
00:20Nearly a century after King Alfred's victory over the Vikings, the Northmen were back.
00:29The Viking fleet sacked Ipswich and then made landfall here on an island in the Blackwater
00:36Estuary near Malden in Essex.
00:43There then took place one of the great battles of English history.
00:48On the seaward side, there were the hordes of the most dangerous invader yet faced by
00:53an English king.
00:55On the landward side, there were the forces of the most sophisticated monarchy in Western
01:01Europe.
01:02For England, in 991, was the first nation state.
01:08It wasn't a modern state, of course, but it did have representative institutions.
01:13It was ordered.
01:14It was united.
01:15And above all, it was rich.
01:18But now, that wealth and political sophistication was up against the most viciously effective
01:25contemporary fighting machine.
01:28Could it survive?
01:29Our story begins nearly 20 years before the Battle of Malden.
01:57In 973, King Edgar of England, great-grandson of Alfred the Great, came to Bath to be crowned
02:04for the second time.
02:19His second coronation celebrated the fact that Edgar had managed to establish his leadership
02:26over the whole island of Britain.
02:29But the heartland of his power was a country then called Engla-land, and it was England's
02:37wealth and stability that had enabled Edgar to establish the first British Empire.
02:44England's stability was founded on the close relationship between monarch and people.
02:50He could not rule without their participation, and his power and laws protected them from
02:56exploitation by local warlords.
03:02As a result, the country was experiencing an age of unusual prosperity, and, under royal
03:09patronage, English art and literature flourished.
03:16This is how the king liked to be seen, not as a warlord, but as a Christian ruler.
03:25Here Edgar is making a gift of land to a Winchester monastery, but the gift was more than just
03:31an act of Christian piety.
03:36By gifts such as those recorded in this charter, Edgar was serving another god.
03:42The idea of a united Engla-land, as it was then known, because monasteries like Winchester
03:49were national institutions.
03:52They held land all over the country.
03:54They were centres of a self-consciously English culture, and, above all, they were royal.
04:01All this was good PR, but it was also vital practical politics, because Edgar's England,
04:08the unified England, was only a few decades old.
04:13There was always the possibility that it could be destroyed by enemies abroad, or, still
04:19more dangerously, at home.
04:28Only two years after the ceremony at Bath, Edgar died, and immediately there was trouble.
04:35At that time, for all the political sophistication of England, there were no fixed rules of succession.
04:45Fatally, Edgar had two surviving sons.
04:49The elder was crowned king, but just three years later, he was attacked and killed by
04:55his own brother's henchmen here at Corfe.
05:07This herringbone stonework once adorned the first floor of the royal hall where the crime
05:13was planned.
05:16The murder brought to the throne the dead man's half-brother, a man who is remembered
05:22today as one of the worst kings ever to wear the crown.
05:27His name was Æthelred, still known today as the Unready.
05:34His real nickname, though, was Unred, that is, badly advised or counseled.
05:40It's a pun on his own name of Æthelred, meaning noble counsel, and it's a product of hindsight,
05:48first appearing almost a century later.
05:51It's also, at least for the earlier decades of the reign, unfair.
05:57England in the 990s enjoyed something of a golden age of church building and of legal
06:03and administrative reform, and this despite the reappearance of the Danish raiders.
06:09They'd been almost too much for Alfred the Great himself.
06:14Now would Æthelred, the Unred, fare?
06:31Æthelred's task had recently got much harder.
06:36These banks and ditches are the remains of a Viking barracks.
06:40They're laid out with geometrical military precision.
06:45The barracks were built by the Danish king to impose his will on his own people,
06:51and they are a potent symbol of a tough new professionalism
06:56which now characterised the Viking world.
07:04Englishmen a century before had beaten off the Scandinavians,
07:08and now a far greater storm was about to break over their heads.
07:14First, refugees from the Danish rulers would seek to restore their fortunes
07:20by raiding in England.
07:23And then the Danish kings themselves turned the full force of Trelleborg,
07:29the formidable military machine,
07:31and the organisational and engineering skills on England.
07:36It was blitzkrieg, shock and awe
07:42as the English troops assembling at Malden were soon to find out.
08:07From their base on the island near Malden,
08:10the Viking fleet threatened the whole of eastern England.
08:15The Danes' first move was to send a messenger to the English,
08:19demanding money with menaces.
08:22Æthelred's commander retorted that they should come across the causeway
08:26and fight it out like men.
08:31The English were defeated, but not for the last time.
08:35The defeat became the stuff of legend and of literature,
08:39the subject of a famous Anglo-Saxon war poem,
08:43which encapsulates exactly the Dunkirk spirit of the English warriors.
08:49But it also tells about the men who fought,
08:52describing the soldiers as haloed,
08:55from all over the country.
08:58There's an aristocrat, so the poem tells us,
09:01from the Midlands, called Elfwynn.
09:04Then a local man at Essex, Yeoman, called Dunera.
09:09And from far off Northumbria, a warrior called Eskfurth.
09:16In short, it was an epic battle.
09:21So, every region of England is represented in this rogue hall of the army
09:27and each rank of society, from the top almost to the bottom.
09:32The result is to emphasise the unity of the English and the Danes,
09:38and the unity of the English and the Danes,
09:41and the unity of the English and the Danes,
09:44and the unity of the English and the Danes,
09:47The result is to emphasise the unity of England
09:51as a country in which a common sense of nationhood
09:54overrode distinctions of locality or class.
09:59Now, the poem is propaganda, of course,
10:02but it's unusual propaganda at a time when, in most of Europe,
10:07horizons were much narrower
10:09and loyalty to a local warlord came first and last.
10:18CHEERING
10:26The English defeat at Malden was just the beginning.
10:30For the next ten years, it seemed that nothing would stop the Danes.
10:40After the battle at Malden, the English paid tribute to the Vikings
10:45in the hope of persuading them to leave,
10:48and the word Dængeld entered the language.
10:52The wealth of England, built up in the years of peace,
10:56began to drain across the North Sea.
11:04For deliverance, King Æthelred looked across the Channel.
11:09In 1002, the king married Emma, sister of the Duke of Normandy.
11:18Normandy was named after its conquerors, the Northmen.
11:22It was, in effect, a Viking province in France.
11:26Æthelred hoped that this alliance would stop the people of Normandy
11:30from helping their Danish cousins.
11:34But, in his new queen, Æthelred may have been getting
11:38more than he bargained for.
11:41Emma is the first English queen to emerge fully into the light of history.
11:47She was handsome, astute and fertile,
11:52and she knew how to use a woman's power,
11:55which consisted largely in marriage and childbearing.
12:00The result was that from the moment she married Æthelred
12:03and took up residence here at Winchester,
12:06she became the axis round which English politics turned.
12:11For Emma was determined that, let who will be king,
12:15it should be her children who sat on the throne of England.
12:30But Æthelred would need more than a marriage alliance to survive.
12:35Under the stress of the Danish invasion,
12:38Æthelred's kingdom dissolved into vicious fractional disputes.
12:45In the course of the struggle for power,
12:47many of the ablest men in England perished.
12:50The fragile unity of Malden was shattered.
12:59As Danish fleet followed Danish fleet into a bitterly divided England,
13:04resistance against the invaders crumbled.
13:10By 1014, King Æthelred had been driven into exile in France.
13:15Just 40 years after the glory days of King Edgar,
13:19it seemed that all hope for the House of Wessex was gone.
13:25Now the Danish king, Sweyn, had taken the throne of England.
13:39But then there was a lucky reprieve for the English,
13:42and King Sweyn died just a few months after his victory.
13:46The crisis that followed highlights the resilience
13:50and the sophistication of the English political system.
13:55The surviving English leaders invited Æthelred to return as king,
13:59on certain conditions.
14:01As a pledge of good faith, he sent his young son Edward
14:05as a hostage to London to begin negotiations.
14:09The complaints against Æthelred included high taxation, extortion
14:13and the enslavement of free men.
14:16By the end of the talks, Æthelred was forced to agree
14:19to govern within the rules established by his predecessor.
14:23And we can reconstruct the broad terms of the agreement
14:27because they were copied into the national book of record,
14:30the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
14:33This is the passage in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
14:36which tells us about those events in 1014.
14:40It says that Æthelred would be their faithful lord,
14:44would better each of those things they disliked,
14:47and that each of the things would be forgiven,
14:50which had been done or said against him.
14:53Then was full friendship established,
14:56in word and in deed and in compact on either side.
15:02Embedded here, in the prose of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,
15:07is the text of the formal written agreement
15:10between the king and his people.
15:13It is the Anglo-Saxon Magna Carta,
15:16but, as it's 200 years earlier,
15:19it's the true foundation of our political liberties.
15:36It was probably here that the negotiations took place
15:40in the Anglo-Saxon predecessor to London's Guildhall,
15:45which today is festooned with monuments to parliamentary heroes.
15:56The Agreement of 1014
15:58was the first constitutional settlement in English history,
16:03and it began a tradition which descends through Magna Carta,
16:07the Petition of Right and the Reform Acts,
16:10right down to the present.
16:12But in 1014, of course, there was no guarantee
16:15that those constitutional ideas would survive and flourish.
16:20There was no guarantee even that England would survive.
16:24Indeed, it seemed rather unlikely,
16:28for Swain of Denmark had a son.
16:31His name was Canute, and Canute was determined
16:34to win back what he thought of as his inheritance of England.
16:39The struggle with the Danes would continue.
16:42Would English freedoms, as well as English independence, be lost?
16:55Within months of the Agreement, which had restored him to his kingdom,
16:59the old King Æthelred was dead,
17:01and the war with the Danes continued with renewed ferocity.
17:05In 1016, Swain's son, Canute,
17:08smashed the English army and took the crown.
17:19In later years, Canute was to build this church
17:22as a memorial to the slain on the site of the battlefield.
17:27It was a pious Christian gesture.
17:30Even so, the English had good cause to fear him.
17:37There was another side to Canute.
17:40In the months following the battle,
17:42he launched a bloody purge,
17:44which struck at the very top of the Anglo-Saxon elite.
17:48The leading earls were executed,
17:50and the survivors were killed.
17:53Just who, the English would have wondered, was their new ruler?
17:58A Christian king or a usurping barbarian tyrant?
18:23Canute's background was in the now alien world across the North Sea,
18:28amongst the longships and sagas of his Viking ancestors.
18:42This was a fiercely energetic society,
18:45which had dispatched Viking fleets right across the North Hemisphere,
18:49from Russia, perhaps, to America,
18:51but no Viking career had been as astonishing as Canute's.
18:58Canute was the most successful Viking ever.
19:02His ancestors had raided England.
19:05He conquered it.
19:07They had exacted tribute.
19:09But, as King of England, he controlled English taxes,
19:13the English mints and the English treasury,
19:16and he poured out their wealth on his Danish followers.
19:19And he did all this whilst he was still a teenager.
19:23No wonder his skulls hailed him as the true heir of Ivan the Boneless,
19:28the master of the longships and the greatest Dane of them all.
19:33And yet, strange to tell, in England,
19:36Canute went native and became more English than the English.
19:42Why?
19:50Back in England, no-one was more worried for the future
19:54than Æthelred's widow, Emma.
20:00Her children were in exile.
20:02Her power, status and wealth were in jeopardy.
20:10What would she do now that there was a new king in England?
20:16Well, she married him.
20:19Canute might have conquered England,
20:22but Emma, it seemed, had conquered Canute.
20:26It might even have been a love marriage,
20:29the elegant Norman queen and her bit of Danish rough.
20:34But, as usual with royal marriages,
20:36the political was more important than the personal,
20:40for their marriage symbolised the reconciliation
20:43of the English with their Danish conquerors.
20:46It helped to neutralise the possible rival claims to the throne
20:50of Emma's children by Æthelred.
20:53And, above all, it marked the seduction
20:57and the transformation of Canute himself.
21:04Both outsiders, Canute and Emma,
21:07found themselves adapting to the English tradition
21:10of kingship.
21:12This drawing records the gift of a giant gold cross
21:16to the new minster in Winchester,
21:19that is, to the very same abbey whose charter King Edgar
21:23had granted nearly half a century before.
21:27Canute is obviously emulating Edgar,
21:30and this wasn't just for show.
21:32Within two years of his victory,
21:34Canute had endorsed Æthelred's agreement
21:37of 1014,
21:39and even his Viking court poets followed the pattern,
21:43hailing him as Canute Under Heaven,
21:47the foremost great lord.
21:50This is an exact literal representation of the picture here.
21:56Nothing better illustrates this transformation
21:59than the famous story about Canute and the waves.
22:03Canute's courtiers claimed that his power was so vast
22:07that he could command the tide.
22:09To Canute, this was blasphemy,
22:11and to prove it, he told them to carry his throne to the seashore
22:15where he ought to go.
22:17Canute, however, refused.
22:20To Canute, this was blasphemy,
22:22and to prove it, he told them to carry his throne to the seashore
22:26where he ordered the waves to retreat.
22:28As he expected, Canute got his feet wet.
22:33The story, if it's true,
22:35was a consummate piece of political theatre,
22:39but what really matters is that the story
22:41is only to be found in the English sources,
22:45for this is Canute as the English wanted to remember him,
22:49that they'd severed from his harsher Nordic roots
22:53and remade in their own image as a Christian and a gentleman.
23:06Canute's rule extended wider than any previous king of England
23:10to Denmark, Norway and even to part of Sweden,
23:14so he needed to delegate power to trusted Englishmen
23:18who ruled whole provinces in his absence.
23:24The powers Canute passed down to these earls, as they were called,
23:28were immense, and, of course,
23:30the earls themselves had their own plans and ambitions.
23:34Here, at Bosom, on the Sussex coast,
23:37lay the headquarters of the most resourceful of these men,
23:41Godwin, Earl of Wessex.
23:44Godwin was quick to attach himself to Canute,
23:48and Canute in turn was impressed with his abilities and connections.
23:53The result was that Canute made him not only an earl,
23:57but the virtual viceroy of the kingdom.
23:59He was even married to one of Canute's remote relations.
24:03Godwin had reached the headiest heights of English politics.
24:08He would not lightly give up what he'd won.
24:14But Canute's death in 1035 threatened everything.
24:20Godwin was forced to make a new alliance,
24:23this time with the woman who'd pulled the strings behind the scenes
24:27for the past 30 years, Queen Emma.
24:33Emma was determined that her son by Canute should succeed
24:37rather than her children by Æthelred.
24:40As Canute's right-hand man, Godwin agreed,
24:43so when Æthelred's sons did try for the throne,
24:46Godwin's troops moved against them.
24:51Little did Godwin imagine that,
24:53after six years of intense political infighting,
24:56the elder of Æthelred's sons
24:58would be the only claimant to the throne left alive.
25:02He would be known to history as King Edward the Confessor.
25:08CHORAL MUSIC PLAYS
25:15The coronation of Æthelred's son, Edward Winchester, in 1043,
25:20seemed to draw a line at last
25:23under the turmoil of the Danish invasions.
25:30It marked the return of the House of Wessex,
25:33who had ruled in England for more than three centuries.
25:40In later times, the king would be deemed a royal saint.
25:44Having no children, he was thought to have been celibate,
25:47and the image grew up of King Edward the saintly confessor.
25:55But in his own time, things were rather different.
25:59The real Edward, far from being a saint,
26:02was a man and a king of his own times,
26:06and he did everything that an 11th-century king was expected to do.
26:11He was often seen at the head of his troops and his navy.
26:15He was an enthusiastic hunter, and, of an evening when he relaxed,
26:20he liked to listen to bloodthirsty Norse songs.
26:24Of course, like most Christian kings, he was a supporter of the church
26:29and particularly showy in his devotions.
26:32But his childlessness, it seems certain, was a result of mere ill luck
26:38and not of a dedication to celibacy,
26:41as his later monkish admirers claimed.
26:48His coronation took place in the summer of 1043.
26:53His coronation put Edward at the head of the most prosperous kingdom in Europe,
26:58but he faced one serious obstacle,
27:01the political power of Earl Godwin of Wessex.
27:08Edward had personal as well as political reasons for hating Godwin.
27:13Not only had Godwin kept him from the throne six years before,
27:17Godwin also stood accused of a dreadful crime.
27:22When Edward and his brother had first bid for the throne,
27:26Edward's brother was captured and imprisoned at Ely.
27:29There, a gruesome fate befell him.
27:34His eyes were gouged out, and, as a result, he died.
27:41Now Godwin swore that he was not responsible, but few believed him.
27:47Edward's attitude to this over-mighty Earl was anything but saintly.
27:53Instead, his reign was to be dominated
27:56by the struggle between the king and Godwin's family.
28:00The prize was England itself.
28:05Here, at Deerhurst, near Gloucester,
28:08was once one of the most important churches in England.
28:12It was probably founded in the 8th century.
28:16But during the reign of the Confessor,
28:19the king gave all its lands away to two other monasteries.
28:24One was his great new abbey at Westminster,
28:27and the other was his own monastery.
28:31What was Edward doing,
28:33giving the lands of an English monastery to a French abbey?
28:38The answer lies in his struggle with Godwin,
28:41because Edward had decided that the solution
28:44to Godwin's dominance in England was for him to look abroad,
28:49to support us in North America.
28:52He had no choice.
28:54The solution to Godwin's dominance in England
28:57was for him to look abroad,
28:59to support us in northern France and Normandy.
29:03They were his mother Emma's people.
29:06He spoke their language,
29:08and he'd spent his long years of exile amongst them.
29:11So soon after he became king, he started to grant English lands,
29:16like Deerhurst here, and English offices to Frenchmen and to Normans.
29:21They were his party, and in time he hoped they would make him
29:25strong enough to turn the tables on Earl Godwin.
29:29And soon his pro-French policy culminated in the offer to a Norman
29:35of the greatest plumb of patronage of them all.
29:44In 1051, Edward sent a messenger to France to his cousin William,
29:49the young Duke of Normandy.
29:54The message was an offer of the crown of England itself.
29:58In retrospect, it looks as though Edward was taking a decision
30:02of huge political significance and deciding, no less,
30:06that the future of England should be Norman, not Anglo-Saxon.
30:15But, at the time, it looked very different.
30:18For Edward's offer to William was not irrevocable.
30:21He might yet have children of his own, and even if he didn't,
30:25he could always change his mind about his eventual heir.
30:29For wisely, Edward used the great expectations of the succession
30:34as a device to manage the politics of the reign.
30:38And it was this tactic, not geopolitical strategy,
30:43which was behind the offer of 1051.
30:46Godwin was too strong, so talking up William as his heir
30:50might yet bring down the over-mighty Earl a peg or two.
30:55And so he proved.
31:01The flashpoint came later in the year.
31:03After a visit to the king, one of Edward's French followers,
31:07Eustace of Boulogne, was returning to France.
31:11On reaching Dover, his men put on their armour
31:14and roughly demanded food and lodging from the townsfolk.
31:18There was uproar.
31:31By the end of the night, 19 Frenchmen were dead
31:34and 20 English, with many more injured.
31:37In rage, Eustace complained to the king.
31:44He immediately adjudged Eustace to be the aggrieved party
31:48and ordered Godwin to go and punish the men,
31:52his own men, of Dover.
31:55It was a calculated insult and Godwin refused.
32:06The refusal was a direct challenge to the king's authority.
32:10Edward pounced, summoning troops from all over the kingdom.
32:14He demanded that Godwin come to Gloucester to stand trial.
32:19Here, at his estate of Beverston, just a few miles away,
32:23Godwin prepared for the showdown.
32:29He knew that in Gloucester, Edward was assembling his army.
32:33Now Godwin did the same.
32:36It was to his stronghold here that Godwin summoned his troops.
32:41The site was strategically important, hence the later castle.
32:45It was also on the borders of Godwin's great earldom of Wessex.
32:50So, as Godwin's troops assembled, the stage seemed set for civil war.
32:56Englishmen against Englishmen.
32:59Because both the leaders, Godwin here at Beverston
33:02and Edward, 10 miles away at Gloucester, were spoiling for a fight.
33:07Godwin, because victory was his only chance of escaping ruin,
33:11and Edward, because he thought that at last
33:14he'd got his great enemy on the ropes.
33:18But the followers of both the king and the earl
33:21saw the situation very differently.
33:32What happened next is one of the most astonishing episodes
33:36in all of medieval history.
33:40Faced with the prospect of civil war, Edward's supporters held off,
33:45and the Anglo-Saxon chronicle tells us why.
33:50The two armies contained almost all that was noblest in England.
33:54They therefore prevented the battle,
33:56so that the country would not be at the mercy of our foes,
34:00whilst engaged in a destructive conflict between ourselves.
34:05Here again, the Anglo-Saxon chronicle gives us clear evidence
34:09of the extraordinary political sophistication of Anglo-Saxon England.
34:14For its account here of the Agreement of 1051
34:18shows that the lessons of Æthelred's reign had been fully learned.
34:22For in 1051, the sense of common, collective nationhood
34:27was strong enough to bind the political elite together,
34:30to face down the disruptive, destructive behaviour of any one man,
34:36however powerful and whoever he was.
34:49After the stand-off at Gloucester, both sides agreed to meet in London.
34:54When they got there, it was Godwin's turn
34:57to find that his support had evaporated.
35:01The two sides faced each other across the river,
35:04Godwin and his borough of Southwark on the Surrey side,
35:08the king ensconced in the Roman city of London itself,
35:12the city refortified by his ancestor, Alfred the Great.
35:17As the messengers came and went across the Thames,
35:21Godwin began to realise that the game was up.
35:25He had nowhere to go politically
35:27and he had nowhere to hide in England either.
35:30At last, as his remaining soldiers melted away,
35:34Godwin fled into exile.
35:37His family went with him.
35:39Edward was triumphant.
35:41With his people's support, his policy had been successful.
35:46He was master in his own house, he felt,
35:49and he was able to put into place the final plank of his pro-French policy.
35:59It was then that Norman sources tell us
36:02that Duke William of Normandy crossed to England.
36:07There he did homage to Edward,
36:09a Norman potentate pledging his loyalty to an English king.
36:14It was a public display of their close relationship.
36:17It confirmed the promise of the crown.
36:19But to Edward, it must have seemed that his dominion now spanned
36:23not only England, but across the Channel to France as well.
36:27But Edward little knew that within months, Godwin would return.
36:39In 1051, King Edward of England had established his power
36:43over the whole of his kingdom,
36:45and especially over his enemy, Earl Godwin of Wessex.
36:49But when, the very next year, Godwin returned to the Thames
36:53with a new army and fleet,
36:55the king discovered that there were limits to his power.
36:59Godwin's aim was the restoration of his earldom of Wessex.
37:05Wary of Edward's newfound dominance,
37:08the English political community changed sides.
37:14The very people who, in 1051, had first prevented the fighting
37:19and then ensured that Godwin lost the political contest,
37:23now took his part.
37:27As a result, Edward was persuaded to reinstate Godwin
37:31and to banish many of his French and Norman supporters.
37:35Not for the last time, the political notion had made it clear
37:40that the idea of England was greater than any individual,
37:44even than the king.
37:48None of the big players in 1052 much liked the terms of this compromise,
37:53but the broader political community did,
37:56because it guaranteed their peace, prosperity and freedom.
38:01And they, not Godwin or Edward, were the real victors of the crisis.
38:10The new political settlement lasted for more than a decade.
38:14After Godwin himself died in 1055,
38:18his place in the kingdom was taken by his children.
38:22Harold, his eldest son, inherited his richest lands,
38:26the earldom of Wessex.
38:28Another son, called Tostig, was made Earl of Northumbria,
38:32but his behaviour there was harsh, grasping and incompetent.
38:37After ten years of Tostig, the people of Northumbria had had enough
38:42and they rebelled in 1065.
38:51As the revolt reached its climax, Harold abandoned his brother
38:56and Tostig was driven into exile.
39:00The Northumbrian Revolt was the beginning of the final
39:04and unexpected crisis of Edward's reign and of Anglo-Saxon England.
39:10The House of Godwin, which united and dominated England
39:14for the last 50 years,
39:16was now in the hands of the English,
39:19and the English were now in the hands of the English.
39:23The House of Godwin, which united and dominated England
39:27for the last 50 years, was irretrievably split
39:31and Harold's own brother Tostig had become his most dangerous enemy.
39:43This beautiful embroidery, made in England
39:46but preserved in the Cathedral at Bayeux in Normandy,
39:50is a contemporary record of the momentous events which unfolded
39:54in the wake of the Northumbrian Revolt.
40:01Here is Bosham Church, its chancel arch apparently drawn from life.
40:12It was from Bosham that Harold apparently embarked on a voyage to France.
40:21We don't exactly know what the purpose of his voyage was,
40:26but we do know that it ended in shipwreck
40:29and his arrest on the French coast.
40:38According to the embroidery's designer, as a result of this arrest,
40:42Earl Harold found himself swearing on two holy relics
40:47to help Duke William inherit the crown of England after King Edward's death.
40:59Harold's oath to William is one of the most controversial events
41:03of English history, and it always has been.
41:06Did it really happen? If so, why?
41:10The Norman chroniclers tell us that Harold swore the oath
41:14of his own free will after he had been rescued by William
41:18following a shipwreck.
41:20Later English chroniclers admit that the oath took place,
41:24but suggest that it was void anyway as it had been sworn under duress.
41:29And most contemporary English sources don't even mention
41:33Harold's visit to Normandy at all.
41:36Nevertheless, an event like this is difficult to invent
41:40from scratch, so the likelihood is that Harold did swear the oath.
41:45But to what and how seriously is unclear.
41:49Nor does it seem that William took Harold's oath very seriously at the time.
41:55For neither man can possibly have guessed
41:58how swiftly events would overtake them.
42:11At the end of 1065, just after the consecration
42:15of his new abbey at Westminster, King Edward was taken ill.
42:20As he lay on his deathbed, Edward had a prophetic nightmare.
42:25The troubles of England, Edward was told in his dream,
42:29would continue until the trunk of a green tree,
42:34which had been cut in two, was cut off.
42:37The trunk of a green tree, which had been cut in two,
42:41reunited and bore leaf again.
42:44The trunk of the green tree is the House of Wessex,
42:48and clearly England was in for a bad time.
42:54The story comes from a biography of Edward,
42:57commissioned by his queen, Edith.
43:00Like many such works, the book is bitterly partisan,
43:04and particularly hostile to Harold.
43:09This hostility makes the life's account of Edward's deathbed
43:13all the more remarkable.
43:15For it says that Edward, as he lay dying, summoned Harold
43:19and asked him to look after his queen when he was dead.
43:24Did Edward regret his promise to William,
43:27and was he giving the crown to Harold?
43:31Certainly, that seems to be the implication.
43:3715 years on, the difficulties with Godwin,
43:40which had prompted Edward's promise,
43:42must have seemed very remote to the old king.
43:46After Edward's death, Harold claimed the crown for himself.
43:53His move was widely popular, and no-one in England opposed his claim.
43:59So it was that Harold, Earl of Wessex, was elected and crowned
44:04the last Anglo-Saxon king of England.
44:09But from the start, Harold was assailed from overseas
44:13and from several directions.
44:15The king of Norway declared himself rightful king,
44:18aided by the exiled and vengeful Tostig.
44:21In Denmark, a descendant of Cnut did too,
44:25and on his way north, William began preparations for invasion.
44:31The first army to arrive was that of Tostig and the king of Norway.
44:35Harold had to abandon his watch against William on the south coast
44:39to march north to Yorkshire,
44:41where he soundly defeated his brother's forces.
44:47But at the moment of the English triumph,
44:49news came of William's landing in England,
44:52the heartland of Harold's family.
44:54Harold had to act fast.
44:56He forced his exhausted soldiers back down the Roman road
45:00to face the other intruder at Hastings.
45:16This is where the encounter between William and Harold took place.
45:21It lasted all day.
45:24The wise men of 1051 were proved right.
45:28Disunity was dangerous,
45:30and it had fatally weakened English strength.
45:34Nevertheless, on the hill behind me here,
45:37the English soldiers lined up their shield wall
45:40with the same sombre, doggy determination as the men of Malden,
45:45and they withstood assault after assault
45:49from William's cavalry and archers...
45:54..until finally...
45:56..they broke.
46:20The issue was in doubt right to the end of the battle,
46:24but by nightfall, King Harold and many of the English army were dead,
46:30and with them went a whole world.
46:35The slaughter of the English elite on the battlefields of 1066
46:40meant that England was no longer a threat.
46:43The slaughter of the English elite on the battlefields of 1066
46:48meant that England became a very different country.
46:53The Danish invasions had been absorbed,
46:56not so due to William's conquest.
46:59Even the language of politics changed.
47:02Power in England would be wielded henceforth in French, not English,
47:08and history would be written in Latin.
47:14The Battle of Hastings brought an end, after 600 years,
47:19to the Anglo-Saxon adventure.
47:22It had been an adventure which laid the foundations of our freedom
47:26and gave legitimacy to our monarchy,
47:29for the cataclysm of the conquest and its aftermath
47:32has obscured the astonishing political success
47:35of the Confessor's England.
47:38Brought low in Aethelred's reign,
47:40the nation had survived, like Edward himself,
47:43with a national spirit which continued to animate its people
47:47right to the end, the unexpected, unforeseeable end,
47:52here on this hill.
47:55Now, the ideas and institutions of the Anglo-Saxon state
48:00would be tested more harshly than ever before
48:03under new rulers with a new language and new values.
48:08Would they vanish, or would they transmute and survive?
48:38The Battle of Hastings