In the year 1066 a comet appeared, one of the rare kind bright enough to be seen by multitudes and taken as an omen.
Sky scene in England after sunset on 1066 April 24.
We now know that it was one of the many visits of the comet we call Halley’s. Edmond Halley proposed that a comet he observed in 1682 was the same as others seen at intervals of around 77 years and would return in 1759 – which it did, after he had died in 1742.
This was the foundation of comet science: the understanding that many of these cometae or “hairy stars” are periodic, traveling in elliptical orbits.
Recorded visits of 1P Halley – the first comet known to be periodic – stretch back to 240 BC, and several seemed omens of drastic events. The appearance in 66 AD even presaged the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans four years later.
And 1066, a thousand years after that. It was a time of strife in England.
The Bayeux Tapestry is a pictorial narrative of that strife, and includes an image of the ominous “star.”
Our chance to see the Battle of Hastings
The tapestry was brought out of France for the first time, to be displayed in London’s British Museum for nine months, from 10 September 2026 until 11 July 2027.
The astronomical background was fully described and diagrammed in Mankind’s Comet, the book Fred Schaaf and I put together in 1985, anticipating the comet’s 1986 visit. The human history needs to be retold. There have been shifts of interpretation, partly from clues in the tapestry.
Isti mirant stella, “These look, or gaze, or wonder at the star.” The mark over the A was probably a contraction for M. Better Latin might have been mirantur
Succession crisis
Edward III, called the Confessor for his pious character, was the last English king of the line that started around 495 AD with Cerdic, first Saxon immigrant. Edward died childless in January 1066, and this set off a scramble of claimants to the kingship.
His great-nephew Edgar, called Aetheling (“scion of the family”), was the nearest male heir, but was young and had no real chance.
The Witan, the council of wise ones, probably seeing the threats from overseas, chose as the dying king’s successor the most powerful and resolute earl, Harold, eldest surviving son of Earl Godwin of Wessex. Under Anglo-Saxon law, the Witan’s decision was enough; blood relationship was not essential.
The regional lords of England were earls (Old English eorl); their counterparts in France were dukes (French duc, Latin dux, “leader”).
A dukedom is not enough
The Normans – Northmen – were Viking raiders from Norway, Denmark, and Sweden who settled in a coastal part of France that became Normandy. Their leader Rollo, or Rolf the Ganger, became in 911 first duke of Normandy under the king of France, and they came to speak French.
William II, seventh duke, claimed the kingdom of England, on two grounds. It had been promised to him, he alleged, in 1051 by his distant cousin Edward the Confessor, whose mother was Emma, sister of William’s grandfather.
Second and awe-inniting:
In 1064, Harold was in a ship sailing through the strait of Dover. According to one source, he intended to go to Normandy and recover some English hostages. The ship was wrecked on the Picardy coast of northeastern France. Harold was seized by Count Guy I of Ponthieu; who let Harold be taken by William to Normandy.
A dour William and an agitated Harold
When William waged a war in Brittany, Harold took part, rescued some Norman soldiers from a quicksand near Mont Saint Michel. William honored Harold as brother-in-arms and knighted him; claimed this meant that Harold owed him fealty; and that Harold in Bayeux cathedral, with hands touching two reliquary caskets on altars, swore to be loyal to William and support his right to the English throne. If so, it was extracted under duress or by trickery from a captive in a vulnerable situation. When Harold accepted the Witan’s coronation, William represented this as perjury against God.
It enabled him to obtain the endorsement of Pope Alexander II, who gave the Norman army his blessing and a papal banner to carry. And, according to Norman chroniclers, of the Holy Roman emperor Henry IV, or of his advisers, since he at age 16 was a minor.
William had reason to be aggressive in asserting his own status. He was an illegitimate son of Duke Robert the Devil, and was called William the Bastard before he became The Conqueror.
Hardrada
A far-fetched claimant from the opposite direction was Harald III, king of Norway, known as Harald Hardrada, “hard ruler,” or, in one chronicle, “Thunderbolt of the north”; another exemplar of the bullying self-aggrandizing top-men who continue to afflict our world.
He was the last and worst Viking, a military adventurer, exaggeratingly described as seven feet tall. At age 15 he raised troops to help his half-brother King Olaf II in the battle of Stiklestad against Canute on 1030 July 29. Olaf was killed, the sky darkened; legend connected this to a solar eclipse, which actually happened on August 31; it became one of the miracles that made Olaf Norway’s martyred patron saint.
Harald had to flee into exile, through forests of Norway and Sweden, to Kiev, the Viking colony that was to become Ukrainian Kyiv; then on along the rivers to Byzantium. He was a mercenary soldier, joined the Byzantine emperor’s Varangian Guard. In wars on rebels in Sicily and Bulgaria he committed gruesome atrocities. He enriched himself with plunder, shipping it for storage at Kiev. In 1046, having learned of moves made by personages in Norway, he returned to maneuver himself into that kingship.
His ambition was to rebuild a Viking North Sea empire, like that of Canute, who had ruled Denmark, Norway, and England. After years of vain attempts to conquer Denmark, Harald turned his attention to England. He maintained that he had, in a complicated way, inherited a deal made by Harthacnut, one of the sons of Canute.
Brother betrayer
Tostig was the third son of Earl Godwin, after Sweyn and Harold. Sweyn died in 1052, on returning from a barefoot pilgrimage to Jerusalem, penance for sins he had been accused of (mistakes he made during his attempts to bring about peace across the border in Wales).
Tostig (name probably an erosion of Thorstein) was made earl of Northumbria, which meant all of England north of the Humber. He had poor success governing it, failed to fend off raids from Scotland, over-taxed the Northumbrians, executed some when they objected; became so unpopular that in 1065 they rose in rebellion and marched south, intending to demand of King Edward that Tostig be deposed, outlawed, and exiled. Harold, sent by Edward to meet the rebels and negotiate, agreed, seeing that Tostig had no chance of reinstatement; making of his brother a bitter enemy.
Tostig accused Harold of fomenting the rebellion; refused to step down; started his own rebellion against his brother, who was now king; gained a force of Flemish mercenaries; invited the monster of Norway to join him. Which Hardrada did, sailing over with three hundred ships in September of 1066. The combined fleets of Tostig and Hardrada sailed up the Humber and won a first battle on 20 September against two earls at Fulford, near York, which they captured next.
Harold hastened north with an army from London, 210 miles in 5 days, and on 25 September at Stamford Bridge surprised the allied enemies – who had taken off their armor, it was a hot day – and annihilated them. Harald Hardrada got the “six feet of English soil” that Harold had promised him; Tostig was respectfully buried in York Minster.
Ill winds
Just when the whole northern coast had been thrown open to the invader from Norway, the south coast was open to the invader from Normandy.
William had openly declared his intention to annex England; Normandy was over-populated with barons eager for slices of English estate; they were joined by greedy adventurers from all over Europe. The transport ships were ready on the Normandy coast, but were held up by winds from the north. Meanwhile by September the English defenders on the south coast ran out of supplies, and had to be disbanded. The fleet had to be brought back into the Thames, losing any chance of intercepting invaders.
The next bad news came. The wind had changed to southerly. The Norman fleet crossed the Channel, to land in Pevensey Bay on September 28.
With no time to rest after fighting at Stamford Bridge, Harold and his men force-marched again, this time nearly 300 miles in 18 days. He gathered irregular troops on the way, but still had only half of the levies of England.
Senlac
The waiting Normans were rested and prepared. They built a castle at Hastings; and ravaged the country to make Harold hurry.
He arrived on the morning of October 14, still hasting with the impetus that had won him the previous battle. But this time it was to find himself on ground chosen by the enemy: a low ridge that came to be called Senlac – French corruption of a Saxon word meaning “sandy stream,” but famously interpreted as Sang-Lac, “blood lake.”
It was at first a strong defensive line, on which the English stood with overlapping shields. The Norman archers’ arrows bounced off or flew over. But the left wing of William’s army was a contingent of probably unwilling Bretons. They retreated; some of the English, though told by Harold to stay in formation, ran down in pursuit. Other versions say that the flight of the Bretons gave William the idea of ordering a feint retreat. Either way, the rash pursuit gave the chance for William’s spearmen to charge up the slope and break the English line.
The battle lasted all day, until the remnant of English footmen was surrounded on the hill, still beating off wave after wave of cavalry and archers. Harold lost his brothers Gyrth and Leofwine. Then he was killed by, according to the usual story, an arrow in his eye.
Some of his leaderless men fought on till nightfall. Others made a stand at a place called Malfosse. William’s cavalry advance to the Thames was stopped by a force of citizens, who held the fortified London Bridge. After burning Southwark to terrify them, William had to withdraw and take a long way around.
Over the next years there were many uprisings, such as for Edgar Aetheling, or for surviving children of Harold. Resistance infuriated William, and most was crushed ruthlessly, especially Northumbria in the “Harrying of the North.”
Woman amd child fleeing a house as Norman soldiers set it on fire
Hereward the Wake held out on the “Isle” of Ely in the Fens. There was a rising at Exeter, to which Harold’s mother, Gytha, had fled.
Gentle Swan
Gytha had pleaded with William to be allowed to find the body of her son for Christian burial. William refused.
But Edith the Fair. Her name in Old English was Ealdgyth Swann Hnesce. In folklore she is Edith the Fair or Edith Swan-Neck, though the last word means not “neck” but “soft, tender, gentle, sensitive.” Even now in some dialects, if you are quick to shiver you are “nesh.”
It appears she was Harold’s first love and common-law wife for more than twenty years, before the political marriage he made in early 1066 to another Ealdgyth, daughter of the earl of Mercia, the large middle region of England, whose alliance Wessex needed.
Edith Gentle Swan searched among the corpses on the battlefield, and identified the pieces of Harold’s body by marks on his chest that only she knew.
Norman norm
Duke William II of Normandy was crowned King William I of England in London on Christmas Day of 1066.
For the next three centuries the ruling class of England spoke French.
Ten-sixty-six, the year of the last successful invasion of England, is the date that people brought up through the English educational system remember if they remember no other. From it history seems to begin. The tyrant crowned in 1272 is called Edward I, as if there had been no Edward I the Elder or Edward II the Martyr or Edward III the Confessor.
Bayeux
is a small town just inland from the middle of the Normandy coast. Its name is not related to bay but goes back to the ancient Gauls. It was not the duchy’s capital, but had an important cathedral.
Tapestry
Technically it is not a tapestry, which is woven, usually on a loom. It is an embroidery with wool thread on a strip of bleached linen, actually nine panels of linen stitched together. The end is frayed, and there may have been a tenth panel that was lost. It is huge: about 70 meters (230 feet) long, 50 centimeters (20 inches) wide. The embroiderers with their needles used four types of stitch, and wool colored with ten plant dyes.
Created about 1077, it was kept in the treasury of Bayeux cathedral, until brought on loan to London in 2026.
Who made it?
According to a legend: Matilda of Flanders, William’s wife, and her ladies-in-waiting. So in France it is called La Tapisserie de la Reine Mathilde.
More likely, it was commissioned by William’s half-brother Odo, bishop of Bayeux. He figures prominently in the tapestry, fought in the battle, is shown wielding a mace, a club-like weapon – which has led to the idea that he was bypassing a rule that priests must not shed blood. Odo also is shown stiffening the resolve of William and his troops to continue the attack, so the tapestry may be his pitch to claim credit for the Conquest.
He was rewarded with the earldom of Kent, which contains the English ecclesiastical capital, Canterbury Cathedral. It was probably near there that the tapestry was made, perhaps by nuns, or other English needlewomen, whose embroidery had a high reputation in Europe.
But after being made, the tapestry was shipped to Bayeux in time for the consecration of the cathedral on 14 July 1077. Its great length had been designed to fit along both side walls and the west wall of the nave. There on festival days it was hung, brought out of the treasury.,
Ordering was one thing; designing – drawing the multitude of scenes – surely took weeks. Lines had to be drawn on the linen for the embroiderers to follow. It may have been done by artists with experience of the illuminated religious manuscripts of the time.
There are 58 separate scenes in this linear storybook; 737 animals, including horses, dogs, birds; someone has also counted the human figures, buildings, ships. The stitched letters of the running commentary are Latin. HIC HAROLDUM APPREHENDIT VVIDO, Here Guy arrests Harold.
What you wonder, as you actually look at it, is what the length of those outlines would add up to, if it were possible to estimate, the lines around every horse, ship, leaf, tile, seam in clothing, link in chain-mail armor, eye, finger, every extra miniature in the frieze along the bottom, that the needlewomen had to follow. Miles? And then they had to fill in with stitches of other colors the polygon that every line enclosed.
Something to hide
The tapestry was propaganda. A moral was to be drawn from the story as told by it – from the scene of the altars. Harold swore an oath to God, broke it, rightfully lost his kingdom and life.
If the brain behind it was that of battling bishop Odo – it fits.
There is a questionable story in another scene, that over which is written “King Harold is killed.” On the left, a standing man is struck by an arrow in the eye. On the right, a fallen man is being struck by a horseman with a sword. Either or both might be Harold.
Close examination of the embroidery has revealed that the arrow, which is of unclear shape, was later added or altered.
And contemporary sources, such as the Carmen de Hastingae Proelio,”Song of the Battle of Hasting,” from shortly after 1066, say that four Norman knights hacked Harold to death, dismembered and disemboweled him.
It seems plausible that William, or Odo for him, intimated to the troops that Harold must be not just defeated but killed, otherwise he would become the star of English resistance.
But if the pope were to learn of the savagery with which a Christian leader had allowed the killing to be done, the church’s approval could turn to condemnation. Hence the official line that Harold was killed by a single arrow.
On loan in London
The British Museum’s long installation under glass makes it easy to gaze down at the incredible achievement of the embroiderers. Above each scene is a helpful description, illuminated in the modern electronic sense.
