The lord of Normandy and Maine could now stop and reckon his chances of becoming lord of England also.While our authorities enable us to put together a fairly full account of both Norman and English events, they throw no light on the way in which men in either land looked at events in the other.Yet we might give much to know what William and Harold at this time thought of one another.Nothing had as yet happened to make the two great rivals either national or personal enemies.England and Normandy were at peace, and the great duke and the great earl had most likely had no personal dealings with one another.They were rivals in the sense that each looked forward to succeed to the English crown whenever the reigning king should die.But neither had as yet put forward his claim in any shape that the other could look on as any formal wrong to himself.
If William and Harold had ever met, it could have been only during Harold's journey in Gaul.Whatever negotiations Harold made during that journey were negotiations unfriendly to William; still he may, in the course of that journey, have visited Normandy as well as France or Anjou.It is hard to avoid the thought that the tale of Harold's visit to William, of his oath to William, arose out of something that happened on Harold's way back from his Roman pilgrimage.To that journey we can give an approximate date.Of any other journey we have no date and no certain detail.We can say only that the fact that no English writer makes any mention of any such visit, of any such oath, is, under the circumstances, the strongest proof that the story of the visit and the oath has some kind of foundation.Yet if we grant thus much, the story reads on the whole as if it happened a few years later than the English earl's return from Rome.
It is therefore most likely that Harold did pay a second visit to Gaul, whether a first or a second visit to Normandy, at some time nearer to Edward's death than the year 1058.The English writers are silent; the Norman writers give no date or impossible dates;they connect the visit with a war in Britanny; but that war is without a date.We are driven to choose the year which is least rich in events in the English annals.Harold could not have paid a visit of several months to Normandy either in 1063 or in 1065.Of those years the first was the year of Harold's great war in Wales, when he found how the Britons might be overcome by their own arms, when he broke the power of Gruffydd, and granted the Welsh kingdom to princes who became the men of Earl Harold as well as of King Edward.Harold's visit to Normandy is said to have taken place in the summer and autumn mouths; but the summer and autumn of 1065 were taken up by the building and destruction of Harold's hunting-seat in Wales and by the greater events of the revolt and pacification of Northumberland.But the year 1064 is a blank in the English annals till the last days of December, and no action of Harold's in that year is recorded.It is therefore the only possible year among those just before Edward's death.Harold's visit and oath to William may very well have taken place in that year; but that is all.
We know as little for certain as to the circumstances of the visit or the nature of the oath.We can say only that Harold did something which enabled William to charge him with perjury and breach of the duty of a vassal.It is inconceivable in itself, and unlike the formal scrupulousness of William's character, to fancy that he made his appeal to all Christendom without any ground at all.The Norman writers contradict one another so thoroughly in every detail of the story that we can look on no part of it as trustworthy.Yet such a story can hardly have grown up so near to the alleged time without some kernel of truth in it.And herein comes the strong corroborative witness that the English writers, denying every other charge against Harold, pass this one by without notice.We can hardly doubt that Harold swore some oath to William which he did not keep.More than this it would be rash to say except as an avowed guess.
As our nearest approach to fixing the date is to take that year which is not impossible, so, to fix the occasion of the visit, we can only take that one among the Norman versions which is also not impossible.All the main versions represent Harold as wrecked on the coast of Ponthieu, as imprisoned, according to the barbarous law of wreck, by Count Guy, and as delivered by the intervention of William.If any part of the story is true, this is.But as to the circumstances which led to the shipwreck there is no agreement.
Harold assuredly was not sent to announce to William a devise of the crown in his favour made with the consent of the Witan of England and confirmed by the oaths of Stigand, Godwine, Siward, and Leofric.
