See you yon stilly woods of oak
And the dread ditch beside
Oh that was where the Saxon broke
On the day that Harold died.
Rudyard Kipling
In the autumn of 1065, the king of England, Edward the Confessor lay dying. The great abbey built within the marshes on Westminster, to which he had devoted all his time and energy, was completed, but he was too ill to go to the consecration, and was represented by the Queen.
By his own generation, Edward was venerated as a Saint, but to our own he would have been more worthy of regard had he done his duty in that position to which God had called him, namely ruling his kingdom well and firmly, dispensing justice to all and sundry, and rearing up heirs to succeed him in his high office. But all this he left to the greatest of his earls, Harold, second son of Godwine.
In the early tenth century , England was divided into three great earldoms, Northumbria and the north under Siward: Mercia, central England into which Nottingham falls, under Leofric, and the southern counties Wessex, under Godwine. But by Christmas 1065, Siward was dead, and his son, Waltheof, too young to have any influence on events of the time, Edwin and Morcar, brothers, the grandsons of Leofric were all powerful in the north, and Harold Godwineson had for years carried on the administration of the whole kingdom, and very ably had he done that. So that when the King died on January 5th, the Witan, those thanes actually in attendance on their master chose Harold as their King, and he was crowned in the new abbey on January 6th.
The need for haste was urgent.
There were two "foreign" claimants for the English crown, Harold Hardrada, King of Norway, and William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy. It was obvious that King Harold would have to fight one or both of these for his throne.
Harold did what he could. He relied on Edwin and Morcar to defend the north, and he himself with the levies of Wessex kept watch on the southern shores.
Harold Hardrada attacked first, and utterly and completely routed Edwin and Morcar's levies at Fulford and took York. All spring and summer William of Normandy had been preparing for invasion and Harold with the Wessex levies had been waiting for him. In those days it was one thing to get together an army when every man was a fighting man, but a very different matter to keep it together, idle and with the harvest to be got in. Harold's force was therefore dwindling, when the desperate news from Yorkshire sent him rushing northward. That march is one of the wonders of history; comparable to that of Marlborough to fight the battle of Blenheim. Harold met and destroyed the Norwegian forces at Stamford Bridge: tradition has it that when Hardrada asked for parley, Harold answered "seven feet of English earth; more perhaps as you are taller than most men". He kept his promise.
But following on this success came the news that the Normans had landed at Pevensey. Harold was obliged to hurry south, leaving Edwin and Morcar to gather their scattered forces, and follow as swiftly as they could. But there was no love lost between the House of Godwine and the House of Leofric, and because of this a kingdom was lost. Edwin and Morcar preferred to stand on the sidelines and await the result, thinking that they might make terms with the victor and the kingdom be divided. But in William they had mistaken their man; their subsequent destruction commands no sympathy. Harold has been blamed for engaging the Normans too quickly - it has been suggested that a wiser course would have been to delay, in order to gather all the forces available, and any stragglers that might be following him, but as one historian pertinently suggests "What was the point of waiting for men who made up their minds not to come?"
As it was, the result of the battle was a very near thing. At two points in the struggle; especially had William been killed when his horse was shot from under him, or the fatal arrow had missed Harold, the end might have been very different, and it would have been William who dies on the Sussex shore, caught between the terrible English battle-axes (which could cleave through man and horse at a single stroke) and the relentless sea.
For he would never have got back, Harold had a navy which, having returned to London to re-victual after seven months guarding the channel, was on the point of returning to him. Saxon England was already regarded as a Seapower.
But there was no more adequate resistance because there was no Leader. William the Norman was crowned in that very abbey built by Edward the Confessor amid the shouts of panic-stricken Normans and the crash of burning buildings to which they had set fire thinking that the shout of acclamation then as now a part of the coronation ceremony, meant an attack on their duke.
So William the Duke was now William the King, but not yet Conqueror. There were four more years of fighting, campaigns to the west, to the north, to the north again, and last of all the resistance in the Fen country. It was not until Hereward, nicknamed the Wake because he was never to be caught napping, probably the son of Leofric and Lady Godiva ( of the Coventry legend) gave up the hopeless struggle and submitted to William that all the fighting was ended.
Meanwhile, what has been happening in central England, to Nottinghamshire where Gedling lies? (or Ghellinge or Gedlinge as it is variously known in the records).
Before the conquest, the lord of large parts of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire was one Otti or Otta, and he was succeeded by his son Tochi. After the Conquest there is no further record of Tochi, although other English names are found in the district, for instance Unlof at Lenton, Fredgis at Radcliffe on Trent and Ulvert at Radcliffe.
Tochi would almost certainly have been called up by his overlord Morcar, and may have lost his life at Fulford or Stamford Bridge fighting against the Norwegian Harold Hardrada. He was almost certainly not at Hastings for Morcar was not there.
We speak of the Norman Conquest but it must be remembered that actual Normans were only a part: men from Brittany, Maine, Anjou, Aqitaine, Flanders, and even from Norman colonies in southern Italy were in William's army. But for the most part they were landless knights who joined William for pay, or the loot he promised, any younger son craving adventure; anyone who had made his home too hot to hold him could be found in William's army or indeed any who craved the blessing of the Church, always, useful both in this world and the next.
"Cold heart and bloody hand now ruled the English land" wailed a chronicler.
But towards the end of the reign, another chronicler strikes a rather different note; "Such good peace made he (the Conqueror) that a man could travel the length and breadth of the land with his bosom full of gold, and no man would harm him".
So one may take one's choice.
Written by: F.M. Swann
Transcribed by: Allen Copsey