The Bayeux Tapestry: New Approaches

By Michael J. Lewis

The Bayeux Tapestry, perhaps the most famous, yet enigmatic, of medieval artworks, was the subject of an international conference at the British Museum in July 2008. This volume publishes 19 of 26 papers delivered at that conference. The physical nature of the tapestry is examined, including an outline of the artefact's current display and the latest conservation and research work done on it, as well as a review of the many repairs and alterations that have been made to the Tapestry over its long history. Also examined is the social history of the tapestry, including Shirley Ann Brown's paper on the Nazis' interest in it as a record of northern European superiority and Pierre Bouet and François Neveux's suggestion that it is a source for understanding the succession crisis of 1066. Among those papers focusing on the detail of the Tapestry, Gale Owen-Crocker examines the Tapestry's faces, Carol Neuman de Vegvar investigates the Tapestry's drinking vessels and explores differences in its feast scenes and Michael Lewis compares objects depicted in the Tapestry and Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 11. The book also includes a résumé of four papers given at the conference published elsewhere and a full black and white facsimile of the Tapestry, with its figures numbered for ease of referencing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Release date: Jan 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9781842175347

Book preview

Introduction

Michael J. Lewis

The seeds of the British Museum’s conference on the Bayeux Tapestry, and hence this volume, were sown early one Sunday morning at the International Medieval Congress, Kalamazoo. Shirley Ann Brown, Gale Owen-Crocker and I had just presented papers in a session dedicated to the Bayeux Tapestry, ‘New Threads on the Bayeux Tapestry’, chaired by Dan Terkla. Rather off-the-cuff – no doubt with post-paper euphoria (though the audience were not exactly on their feet screaming for more) – I suggested to Dan and Gale that it ‘would be good’ to have a conference on the Bayeux Tapestry in London. ‘Great!’ they replied, ‘Organise it!’

The venue (the British Museum) was easy to arrange, but it was clear getting together appropriate speakers and organising funding was going to be more problematic. It was agreed to invite speakers, but also to have a general call for papers that might entice people researching the Tapestry we did not know. Soon we produced a list of about 20 people who had published new and exciting work on the Tapestry and who were invited to speak about it. However, there was a catch. We could offer no funding nor cover any expenses; grant applications were made to both the British Academy and British Museum’s Research Board, but neither was successful. Given that many of the people we invited were from overseas, we were not too hopeful that many would accept the offer, but to our surprise most did. In fact, we had enough speakers for two days, and it was clear that we would have to be extremely selective in choosing from those who answered the general call for papers.

With the speakers chosen, it was relatively easy to group them into sessions: history and archaeology, patronage, production and design, people, detail and symbolism, theory and modern. By January 2008 the conference was being publicised. We were keen that as many people as possible would come, so the fee was set as low as possible, and barely covered the cost of refreshments.

The British Museum owns plaster-casts of the Bayeux Tapestry made by Charles Stothard in about 1817, and it was decided to exhibit these during the conference. It was also investigated whether it would be possible to display a fragment of the Tapestry, now in the Bayeux Tapestry Museum, that Stothard removed at about the same time the casts were made: the place from where the fragment was cut had been restored many years before the Tapestry fragment, once owned by the Victoria and Albert Museum, was repatriated. However, the expense of delivering the fragment was prohibitive for such a short loan, and so the creation of a facsimile was organised. Sylvette Lemagnen (the Tapestry’s curator) facilitated a meeting between Chantal James (an embroiderer in Bayeux) and myself, so that a full-size reproduction of the fragment could be commissioned. It was this that was displayed at the British Museum during the conference.

By early summer 2008 the conference was capturing the imagination of the popular press. Various participants in the conference were being contacted by newspaper and radio stations for their views on the Tapestry. BBC History Magazine (July 2008) featured the Bayeux Tapestry in an article that examined current debates, but also inferred that the Tapestry should be returned to England on the basis that most scholars believe it was made in Canterbury. The media loved it, and ticket sales increased.

The conference was a success, with over 180 people from across the world making the trip to the British Museum. No doubt some dipped in and out of sessions, but the majority ignored the sunny weather and immersed themselves in new work on the Tapestry.

Although the call for papers expressed a hope that the talks given at the conference might be published, there were no firm plans to take this forward at the time. However, the need became increasingly apparent and desirable. Soon after the conference I was contacted by several delegates, and some who could not attend, wishing to have a formal record of the proceedings. It was also the view of the majority of speakers that formal publication would be useful, and so I was tasked to find an appropriate publisher.

Several were contacted. Whilst most were broadly supportive, the general view was that conference proceedings (in a pure sense) were less desirable than a volume of collected papers brought together for the purpose of publication. The British Museum expressed an interest in publishing the proceedings as a British Museum Research Publication, but felt that since the Bayeux Tapestry was not a British Museum object it was not entirely appropriate. Instead the museum’s publications committee recommended Oxbow, and I am extremely grateful they offered a contract to publish this book.

The order of the papers published here differs from that given at the conference, where it was necessary to group papers in sessions (of three or four talks). Invariably some groups worked as cohesive units better than others. In this volume the papers are ordered as follows:

Patronage

It is the view of most scholars that the Bayeux Tapestry was commissioned by Bishop Odo of Bayeux and Earl of Kent, the maternal half-brother of William the Conqueror, for the following reasons: first, the Tapestry highlights Odo’s role in events to an extent that greatly exceeds that in any other account of the Conquest; second, besides the major historical characters, only four others are mentioned by name, of whom Turold, Wadard and Vital are believed to be retainers of Odo; third, Odo’s bishopric is the setting for a central point (Harold’s oath to William) in the narrative; fourth, there is a strong correlation between the Tapestry’s imagery and Canterbury illuminations, produced within Odo’s earldom, and hence a likely source of inspiration for the Tapestry designer.

Whilst this hypothesis has not been universally accepted, those proposing alternatives (to date) have failed to be persuasive, and two new theories are presented here. Carola Hicks argues that Queen Edith had the Tapestry made at Wilton, perhaps as a gift for William himself. Like her father (Earl Godwin), Edith was politically astute. After the Conquest, she supported the new regime, but also commissioned the Vita Ædwardi Regis, which celebrates both King Edward and the Godwins. Who better than Edith to commission the Tapestry (embroidery work, rather than a work in another medium), putting forth ‘both sides of the argument’?

In contrast, George Beech argues that the Tapestry was produced at St Florent of Saumur in the Loire Valley. He proposes that the Tapestry was commissioned by William himself for propaganda purposes, and that the project was taken forward by Abbot William of St Florent in gratitude for Duke William coming to the aid of his father, Rivallon of Dol, in 1064. For Beech this helps explain the inclusion of the ‘Breton Campaign’ in the Tapestry and the designer’s (apparent) interest in the buildings and topography of Brittany (although this is disputed by M. Lewis 2007a, and others). Together, both papers challenge the orthodoxy that Odo commissioned the Tapestry and provide new avenues for research.

History

Two very different, but related, studies next consider the history of the Bayeux Tapestry. Shirley Ann Brown examines the Nazi documentation and study of the Tapestry in 1941, which is a reminder that, whether or not the Tapestry had propaganda value in the years after the Conquest (as outlined by Bouet and Neveux, in this volume), it was certainly utilised for such purposes during World War II, as it was when Napoleon planned to invade Britain in 1803. Also evident in this paper is the relationship between the study of history and the socio-political context that influences historians, consciously or unconsciously: history is written by historians, not necessarily the victors.

Richard Burt focuses on two moments (both exhibitions) in the history of the Bayeux Tapestry, and considers how this material object can be viewed differently depending on the viewpoint and training of those who study it. Burt also looks forward to the role of new media in presenting the Tapestry in as many ways as possible. Although he finds problems with traditional approaches to Tapestry studies – those that take positivistic historicist stances, for instance – he does recognise their value. By offering new-media alternatives, it is hoped new technology can open up new lines of research on the Tapestry and other artworks.

Materiality

The next cluster of papers considers the Tapestry as a physical object. Sylvette Lemagnen looks at how the Bayeux Tapestry is exhibited today and outlines the special conditions needed to keep the artefact (and its visitors) safe. She explains the conservation and research work that took place on the Tapestry, in 1982–3, when it was removed from public display prior to installation in its new exhibition. During this conservation work the Tapestry was removed from its backing strip and the reverse photographed for the first time: many of the images she publishes here have not been previously seen. Consequently, Lemagnen discusses the back of the Tapestry, in the hope of opening new avenues of Tapestry scholarship.

By comparing the surviving Tapestry with eighteenth-and nineteenth-century drawings and engravings of it, David Hill and John McSween highlight the many repairs and alterations that have been made to the embroidery, and assess the relevance of these repairs for scholars examining and interpreting the Tapestry. They thus reveal misinterpretations that have been made of certain scenes and images. Hill and McSween also discuss an old chest, in which the Bayeux Tapestry was stored and preserved, which might hold clues to the Tapestry’s original dimensions.

These dimensions are also the focus of Derek Renn’s study, in which he highlights inconsistencies in the published measurements of the individual lengths (now known to be nine), and seeks to assess its original length. To this end, he investigates the backing strip (upon which the Tapestry is fixed), speculates about how much has been ‘cut’ from either end of the embroidery and suggests how long those ‘lost lengths’ might have been. He also examines the relationship between the Tapestry’s scenes and its joins, which is of great importance for understanding its production.

Figures

As part of a group of papers that discuss various and often enigmatic personalities that appear in the Tapestry, Pierre Bouet and François Neveux consider the Tapestry as a source for understanding the succession crisis of 1066. They offer a scene-by-scene analysis of what the Tapestry shows between Scenes 25 and 31, followed by an interpretation of the meaning of these scenes, thereby synthesising their own work and contemporary accounts of the Conquest.

Ann Williams explores status in the late Anglo-Saxon period, with reference to the presentation of Earl Harold in the early scenes of the Bayeux Tapestry, as well as contemporary and near contemporary written sources. She demonstrates that the Tapestry’s visual depictions highlight Harold’s status, and these can be enhanced through the study of Anglo-Saxon literature, law and works such as Domesday Book.

Patricia Stephenson examines the identity of the Tapestry’s enigmatic Ælfgyva, the building in which she is depicted and why she is shown there. Through an examination of various written sources, Stephenson suggests that this Ælfgyva is Harold’s sister and the Abbess of Wilton, who was cured of blindness. Stephenson argues that the miracle of her cure is what is shown in the Tapestry. She explains why this is relevant to the Tapestry’s account and (like Hicks) argues that the Tapestry was made in Wilton upon the orders of Queen Edith, with the involvement of others.

Most have identified the figure beside Duke William raising his helmet as Eustace of Boulogne, but here David Spear argues otherwise, highlighting weaknesses in the ‘Eustace’ hypothesis, which was first proposed by Charles Stothard whilst recreating a visual record of the Tapestry for the Society of Antiquaries of London. Spear suggests Robert of Mortain is a better fit, both in terms of the visual evidence of the Tapestry itself and the written sources that discuss Robert’s role in the Norman Conquest. Consequently, Spear also asserts that Robert might be depicted elsewhere in the Tapestry, potentially transforming his role in its account of the Conquest.

Hirokazu Tsurushima discusses three figures named in the Tapestry, Turold, Wadard and Vital, in the context of a knight’s role at the time of the Conquest. He attempts to identify these three men, all believed to be retainers of Odo of Bayeux, examines their status, landholdings and associations with the Bishop of Bayeux and explains why these men appear in the Tapestry.

Michael Davis explores why Leofwine and Gyrth, brothers of King Harold – the only casualties of the Battle of Hastings mentioned by name – are singled out for special treatment in the Tapestry. He examines contemporary and near-contemporary sources for clues, but finds little explanation. Instead, by arguing that the Tapestry was made during Odo’s imprisonment by William (1082–7), he concludes that the Tapestry highlights the deaths of Harold’s brothers to emphasise fraternal loyalty. By producing the Tapestry, Odo thus hoped William would forgive him for his transgressions, which clearly did not work.

Detail

The final group of papers explores detail in the Bayeux Tapestry. Often overlooked, such close readings broaden understanding of the Tapestry’s sources, production and meaning(s).

Gale Owen-Crocker provides a detailed examination of the Tapestry’s faces, in the hope of showing whether or not the work is that of one or more hands, and whether any differences are particular to the Tapestry’s nine sections. She highlights variations in the Tapestry’s portraiture, including facial features, presentation angles and colouring. She also notes how the artist/s use/s facial differences to highlight important figures and infuse the visual display with emotion.

It is apparent that several manuscripts produced in Canterbury influenced the Bayeux Tapestry’s designer, but one, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 11 has received little attention. Michael Lewis considers the relationship between the imagery of the Bayeux Tapestry and Junius 11, highlighting the differences and parallels, arguing that Junius 11 might have been available to the Tapestry designer. His thesis has repercussions both for those studying the design of the Tapestry and for those debating the date and production of Junius 11.

Carol Neuman de Vegvar considers the Tapestry’s drinking vessels and explores differences in its feast scenes. She considers parallels in archaeology and literature and examines the evidence for the vessels’ use. She hypothesises that the English and Norman choices of drinking vessels imply a moral dimension, which influences interpretation of the Tapestry narrative.

Jill Frederick explores the scene in the Tapestry in which Harold rescues two Normans from the River Couesnon. In the border below this scene an armed man pursues six eels, whilst he himself is chased by a string of animals, one gripping or chasing the other. Frederick examines the meaning of these depictions, and their relevance in the wider Tapestry narrative. She concludes that the eels provide a commentary on Harold’s potential for duplicity and his eventual treachery.

Jane Geddes examines a door at Hastings depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry, in light of new archaeological work on an Anglo-Saxon door at Hadstock Church, which is now dated to about the same time as the Bayeux Tapestry. With reference to other early medieval doors and antiquarian drawings of Hadstock Church, she argues that the accuracy of the door in the Tapestry provides evidence that the Tapestry designer did (at times) refer to actual objects for his visual depictions. She also gives (in an appendix) a full assessment and analysis of the door at Hadstock Church.

In the final paper, Linda Neagley explores the relationship between spatial representation, visual experience and oral performance in the Bayeux Tapestry. She explains how the understanding and experience of visual images differed in the medieval period from today, and shows why this is important when attempting to understand the Tapestry’s narrative. While situating the Tapestry in a broad representational context, Neagley proposes a provocative new theory that explains how the Tapestry would have physically engaged a medieval viewer and so offers insights into how an eleventh-century audience experienced and used it.

The Patronage of Queen Edith

†Carola Hicks

Various candidates have been suggested as potential patrons of the Bayeux Tapestry: Odo, William, Eustace, Turold and Matilda among others. To narrow the field, it might be helpful to suggest three main criteria. Firstly, the Tapestry seems to have been commissioned by someone who wanted to put both sides of the argument, who was concerned with validating the Norman victory, yet still expressed some understanding of the English position. Secondly, the references to contemporary characters and recent incidents suggest manufacture in a period fairly soon after 1066. Thirdly, it is significant that the chosen medium was embroidery rather than, say, illumination, wall painting or carving. These factors create a tentative profile that fits someone not previously considered despite having qualifications as relevant as the other names – someone depicted in the Tapestry, directly concerned in the unfolding events, familiar with the complex historical background, someone with motive, means and opportunity, and an established record as a patron. Edith Godwinson, widow of King Edward, sister of King Harold, friend of King William, fulfills all the requirements and, in addition, had particular expertise in embroidery.

Regarding its sympathetic attitude to the English, the first half of the Tapestry tells Harold’s story, and the narrative seems to imply that he was the victim of fate. The winds blew him off course (Scenes 5–6), Guy of Ponthieu arrested him (Scene 7), William rescued him (Scenes 12–10, reversed, Scene 13) and put him under a considerable obligation. Despite Harold’s gallant conduct in the Brittany campaign (Scenes 16–21), William did not let him go home until he had agreed to swear on relics (Scene 23). Then he had to obey Edward’s deathbed command to succeed him as king: the Tapestry makes it perfectly clear that Harold did not seize the crown illegally but had to choose between keeping an oath made under duress or obeying the final command of his dying sovereign, even though he knew William would take vengeance. The battle scenes (Scenes 48–58) show what a very close call it was, while the mangled corpses in the borders are a poignant souvenir of the losers rather than the victors.

The Tapestry’s many ambiguities imply that it was a narrative created for a new order, a court-based audience which included those who might have fought on either side at Hastings. Therefore the patron needed to be someone with a foot in both camps, an English person who lived under the Norman occupation, but who was still concerned to defend Harold’s reputation. The Tapestry also records the deaths of his brothers Gyrth and Leofwine (see Davis, in this volume); and earlier in the story, the bearded man (Figure 130) present at Harold’s meeting with William at Rouen may be Harold’s brother Wulfnoth or nephew Hakon, who were hostages in Normandy. With the additional presence of Edith (Figure 228) in Edward’s deathbed scene (27–8), the Godwin family were well represented.

As for chronology, the Tapestry must have been made within a few years of Hastings, a turbulent period when William’s position in England was far from secure, and when the Tapestry’s role of reconciling English and Normans was most relevant. Intended for display in a great hall, its story reinforced the fellowship of old campaigners, but could also help newer supporters of the Norman cause justify their drastic shift in allegiance.

In the months following his coronation, William demanded surrender and tribute from the cities of the southwest. These included Winchester, which Edith held as part of her widow’s dower. Consulted by the city elders, she negotiated a peaceful settlement by offering fealty to William and paying her share of the tribute he demanded. As a result he allowed her to retain her rights of residence there. This contrasts with the fate of her own mother, Gytha, who, together with a group of rebel Englishwomen, fled to exile in St-Omer, Flanders. For Edith, it was evidently preferable to come to terms with the Normans than to lose her lands and wealth. It also suited William to behave magnanimously to the widow of the anointed king and kinsman who, he claimed, had appointed him his heir. So Edith was one of the few English who retained lands and properties after the Conquest. The Domesday Book records that she continued to hold large parts of Wessex, and also had lands in Buckinghamshire, East Anglia and the Midlands (Williams and Martin 2002). This contrasted with William’s general attitude towards the English, according to William of Malmesbury (iii.254): ‘he found almost none of them trustworthy – behaviour which so exasperated his ferocity that he deprived the more powerful among them first of their revenues, then of their lands, and some even of their lives’ (Mynors et al. 1998, 471).

Edith also found favour with the Norman chroniclers. William of Poitiers (ii.8) noted her support for William, alleged that she had backed his claim to the throne in preference to that of her brother and described her as intelligent as a man (Davis and Chibnall 1998, 115). William of Malmesbury (ii.197) agreed that she was ‘a woman in whose bosom there was a school of all the liberal arts ... [;] you were astonished by her learning’ (Mynors et al. 1998, 353). She maintained her new role as William’s respected kinswoman so successfully that after her death at Winchester in December 1075, William gave her body exceptional honours; according to William of Malmesbury (iii.273), ‘there was evidence of ... deep feeling in the funeral which he [William] arranged for Queen Edith, who by his care was buried in Westminster Abbey near her husband, and has a tomb lavishly decorated with gold and silver’ (Mynors et al. 1998, 503). Commissioning the Tapestry for William might have been a contributing factor in all this good will, her distinctive way of professing her loyalty to the new king. The Tapestry also tactfully flattered the almost equally powerful Odo, Earl of Kent and regent when William was out of the country, for he is the third main character; his followers and tenants, Wadard (Figure 366) and Vital (Figure 425) are also featured. At the same time some reinstatement of Harold’s reputation would have been beneficial to her as his sister.

Edith had already commissioned an interesting project that celebrated the lives of her family as well as that of her husband, the book subsequently known as the Vita Ædwardi Regis (Life of King Edward; Barlow 1992). Probably begun in 1065, it seems to have been intended as a history of the Godwins meant to help them retain power in the event of Edward’s death: he and Edith had no children, but there were other potential candidates for the succession. The second half of the book, however, was completed after the Battle of Hastings and concentrated on establishing Edward’s saintliness.

There was an excellent model for the Vita in the form of a work commissioned a generation earlier by Edith’s mother-in-law, the formidable Queen Emma, a manipulative woman who had fully grasped the art of self-promotion. Although she died over a decade before the adventures of 1064–6, she helped to mould them. Daughter of Count Richard I of Normandy, grandson of the Viking founder of Normandy, Rollo, her marriage to the English king Æthelred II was a diplomatic triumph, but her life became perilous when he was overthrown by the Danish invader, Swein ‘Forkbeard’. She and her children fled to Normandy, but after the deaths of Æthelred and Swein, she left her son Edward with his uncles and cousins (including young William, the duke’s bastard son), in order to return to England and marry Swein’s son, King Cnut, as a symbolic act of reconciliation. The birth of a son, Harthacnut, seemed to confirm the success of their union.

Cnut’s most trusted follower was the Englishman, Godwin, Earl of Wessex, who threw in his lot with the new Danish regime and was rewarded with the hand of a kinswoman of Cnut, a significant match which established a truly Anglo-Danish dynasty: they gave Danish names to their older sons, Swein, Harold and Tostig, and English ones to the younger boys, Gyrth, Leofwine and Wulfnoth. Edith, the eldest daughter, was named after an English royal saint. Godwin’s unquestioned loyalty earned him wealth, lands and title, and he became the most important subject in the land.

Cnut’s sudden death in 1035 led to a succession crisis, when Emma ignored the claims of Edward, still in Normandy, and campaigned for her younger son, Harthacnut. But Godwin backed another claimant, Harold ‘Harefoot’, an older son of Cnut by a former liaison with Ælfgifu of Northampton (the Tapestry’s mysterious Ælfgyva (Figure 135) in Scene 15 is sometimes identified with her). Emma naturally hated Harefoot and his mother, but he became king after the murder of Alfred, Emma’s second son by Æthelred, a murky scandal in which Emma and Godwin were both implicated. She sought refuge in Flanders, where she remained until 1040, when Harefoot died and Harthacnut claimed the throne. Emma’s influence as queen-mother seemed assured when she persuaded her sickly, childless son to solve the succession problem by inviting his half-brother Edward to return from Normandy to become co-ruler and king designate.

The book that she commissioned in 1042, the Encomium Emmae Reginae (The Praise of Queen Emma:Campbell and Keynes 1998), represented Emma’s slanted interpretation of recent political events and the actions of people still alive. Even its illustrated frontispiece places her centre stage, queen to two kings and queen-mother to two more, receiving the manuscript from its tonsured author who kneels at her feet, while Harthacnut and Edward merely watch from the side. This work had no precedent because it was not the biography of a long-dead saint, but dealt with recent political events, just as Edith’s commission would do a generation later.

Emma’s vision of family goodwill masked the reality of what was to come. When Harthacnut died in 1042, Edward became sole king. Within a year, he took long-awaited revenge on his mother by confining her to her estate at Winchester and depriving her of all lands and treasures. Edward’s affinities were Norman-French, but his survival depended upon the support of the Anglo-Danish Godwin clan, with whom he became further linked by his marriage to Edith in 1045. Edward tried to free himself from the whole family in 1051 by sending them into exile and banishing Edith to a nunnery. But they returned and Edith was reinstated as queen. Godwin died in 1053, and Harold became the new Earl of Wessex.

The Encomium Emmae Reginae inspired the Vita Ædwardi Regis. The latter’s author dedicated the book to Edith, its patroness, and praised her as the woman who had revived his career and rescued him from poverty by commissioning the work (Barlow 1992, 2–5). Stylistic and literary parallels suggest he was trained at the monastery of St Bertin in St-Omer, a centre of learning whose monks specialised in hagiographical writing. One possible author was Goscelin, who came from St Bertin to England in 1058. He wrote saints’ lives for foundations in Wessex, including Wilton, where Edith had been educated, and after whose tenth-century saintly foundress she was named. He became her chaplain there after Hastings, and the Vita referred specifically to the place and her connections with it. He was later associated with St Augustine’s, Canterbury (where he included a favourable mention of Bishop Odo in his life of Abbot Hadrian).

Although the first half of the Vita (i.6) presented Edward as rather less impressive than the splendid Godwins, it was highly flattering to Edith: she was a paragon, ‘a woman to be placed before all noble matrons or persons of royal or imperial rank as a model of virtue and integrity’ (Barlow 1992, 65). Begun while Edward was still alive, it was completed in the light of the dramatically changed circumstances after Hastings. The second half was devoted to the late king, now described as in a conventional saint’s life, performing miracles as proof of his sanctity. The saintliness was a brilliant projection which turned his failure to produce an heir into a positive celebration of his alleged celibacy and therefore of Edith’s chastity. The book described her as being more like a daughter to him than a wife, and thus emphasised her ongoing role as a saint’s virtuous widow.

The Norman chroniclers adopted this clever gloss: William of Jumièges (vii.9) stated that the marriage was ‘only in name. It was said that both actually always remained virgin’ (van Houts 1992, 109). So it was her virginity which gave William his lawful claim to the English throne. This was a reputation she was determined to maintain to the end. As William of Malmesbury (ii.197.3) reported, despite scurrilous gossip that ‘during her husband’s life and after his death, she was not free from suspicions of misconduct’, she was determined to die with her reputation intact. ‘On her deathbed, she satisfied those who stood round on oath, at her own suggestion, of her perpetual virginity’ (Mynors et al. 1998, 353).

The second half of the Vita (ii.11) gave a detailed account of Edward’s deathbed (Barlow 1992, 117–25). He was attended by Harold, Robert fitz Wimarch, Archbishop Stigand and Edith, the dutiful personification of mourning who warmed the dying king’s feet in her lap and ‘ceased not from lamenting to ease her natural grief’. Edward’s last words were an ominous vision of ‘fire and sword and the havoc of war’, but he praised Edith’s zealous care of him: ‘she has served me devotedly and has always stood close by my side like a beloved daughter’ – and he commended her and the whole kingdom to Harold’s protection (Barlow 1992, 125). Although their lack of children meant that she had no chance of retaining power as a queen-mother (unlike Emma), the Vita kept her options open by pointing out how like a mother she had been to the young male kinsmen whom Edward brought to court as possible heirs. Most ambitious of all was the underlying attempt to have herself redefined as the king’s seeming daughter, and therefore heir in her own right.

An identical scene (27) features in the Tapestry. Edward reclines in bed, surrounded by three men including a tonsured cleric (Figure 230), while a woman (Figure 228) sits at the end of the bed, wiping away her tears with her veil. This is a conventional image, borrowed, as C. R. Hart (2000, fig. 2) has demonstrated, from illustrations of grieving widows in the Old Testament cycles produced at St Augustine’s, Canterbury (including the Old English Hexateuch, London, British Library, Cotton Claudius B iv, fols 11v, 11r, 12r), manuscripts which provide many other motifs in the Tapestry. Text and Tapestry both make clear that Edith was present as one of the four witnesses to Edward’s final decision about the succession. This was one of her functions as queen, as Pauline Stafford (1997, 265–6) has demonstrated, for Edith had a more than ornamental role in her husband’s court. She stood in for Edward (for example when he was too ill to attend the dedication of Westminster), she witnessed formal events and ceremonies and she organised the royal household.

Having commissioned a written work that flattered her family, she may have turned, after the Conquest, to a medium she really understood to serve a similar function. Creating an embroidered frieze was just a different way of telling a story, and she had access to all the necessary resources. She lived mainly at Wilton, where her staff and tenants included educated clerics, such as Goscelin, and skilled craftspeople. In her dower city of Winchester, there were trained artist-monks, cloth manufacturers and dyers. The sewing skills of Englishwomen were so admired that the general term opus anglicanum (English work) became the specific term for the exquisite vestments and hangings, minutely embroidered in gold thread, silk and precious stones, that were admired all over Europe. Producing fine embroidery was an almost compulsory activity for elite women, whether they were wives or nuns, for it demonstrated industry and virtue, as well as providing textiles of the highest quality for public and private consumption, for display and devotion.

Among renowned aristocratic embroiderers were Cnut’s first wife, Ælfgifu of Northampton, who sewed altar-cloths for the abbeys of Croyland and Romsey, and Ælthelsitha, grand-daughter of Earl Byrhtnoth, who rejected marriage and devoted herself to embroidery. Queen Emma herself was renowned for her sewing skills and presented altar cloths and copes to Canterbury, and a whole range of ornate textiles decorated with gold, silver and precious stones, including a crimson and gold altar cloth and a green and gold altar frontal, to the monastery of Ely. Queen Margaret of Scotland ran a whole artistic workshop in her palace and supervised her women in the embroidery of ecclesiastical garments. There were also precedents for sewn narratives of battle scenes, like those from the Trojan War on the cloak that King Wiglaf of Mercia presented to Croyland Abbey, perhaps sewn by his wife, or from more recent history. Ælfflaed, widow of the Earl Byrhtnoth, who was killed by the Danes at the Battle of Maldon in 991, presented to the monastery at Ely a hanging depicting her husband’s heroic campaigns, which she may have worked herself (Christie 1938, 31–2; Stafford 1997, 143–5). The Vita Ædwardi Regis (i.1) described another set of secular textiles, the purple sails embroidered in gold with scenes of former sea-victories, together with the king’s family tree, on the warship that Godwin presented to Edward on his accession to the throne (Barlow 1992,