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The Earl of Bretagne is at this moment at war with Duke William, and the latter attaching Harold to his party, from whom indeed he receives effectual service, arrives at Mount St. Michel, passes the river Cosno (to which we have before alluded), and arrives at Dol in Brittany. Parties are seen flying towards Rennes. William and his followers attack Dinant, of which the keys are delivered up, and the Normans come peaceably to Bayeux; William having previously, with his own hands, invested Harold with a suit of armour.

Harold shortly returns to England, but not before a very important circumstance had taken place. William and Harold had mutually entered into an agreement by which the latter had pledged himself to be true to William, to acknowledge him as Edward's successor on the English throne, and to do all in his power to obtain for him the peaceable possession of that throne; and as Harold was, the reigning monarch excepted, the first man in England, this promised support was of no trifling moment. William resolved therefore to have the oath repeated with all possible solemnity. His brother Odo, the Bishop of Bayeux, assisted him in this matter. Accordingly we see Harold standing between two altars covered with cloth of gold, a hand on each, uttering the solemn adjuration, of which William, seated on his throne, is a delighted auditor; for he well knew that the oath was more fearful than Harold was at all aware of. For "William sent for all the holy bodies thither, and put so many of them together as to fill a whole chest, and then covered them with a pall; but Harold neither

saw them, nor knew of their being there, for nought was shown or told to him about it; and over all was a phylactery, the best that he could select. When Harold placed his hand upon it, the hand trembled and the flesh quivered; but he swore, and promised upon his oath, to take Ele to wife, and to deliver up England to the duke; and thereunto to do all in his power, according to his might and wit, after the death of Edward, if he should live, so help him God and the holy relics there! (meaning the Gospels, for he had none idea of any other). Many cried 'God grant it!' and when Harold had kissed the saints, and had risen upon his feet, the duke led him up to the chest, and made him stand near it; and took off the chest the pall that had covered it, and showed Harold upon what holy relics he had sworn, and he was sorely alarmed at the sight."

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CHAPTER IX.

THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY.-PART II.

"But bloody bloody was the field,

Ere that lang day was done."-HARDYKNUTE.

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IMMEDIATELY after the solemn ceremony described in the foregoing chapter, Harold is depicted as returning to England and presenting himself before the king, Edward the Confessor. "But the day came that no man can escape, and King Edward drew near to die." His deathbed and his funeral procession are both wrought in the tapestry, but by some accident have been transposed. His remains

are borne in splendid procession to the magnificent house which he had builded (i.e. rebuilded), Westminster Abbey; over which, in the sky, a hand is seen to point as if in benediction. It is well known that the Abbey was barely finished at the time of the pious monarch's death, and this circumstance is intimated in an intelligible though homely manner in the tapestry by a person occupied in placing a weathercock on the summit of the building.

The first pageant seen within its walls was the funeral array of the monarch who so beautifully rebuilt and so amply endowed it. Before the high altar, in a splendid shrine, where gems and jewelry flashed back the gleams of innumerable torches, and amid the solemn chant of the monks, whose "Miserere" echoed through the vaulted aisles, interrupted but by the subdued wail of the mourners, or the emphatic benediction of the poor whose friend he had been, were laid the remains of him who was called the Sainted Edward; whose tomb was considered so hallowed a spot that the very stones around it were worn down by the knees of the pilgrims who resorted thither for prayer; and the very dust of whose shrine was carefully swept and collected, exported to the continent, and bought by devotees at a high price.

We next see in the tapestry the crown offered to Harold (a circumstance to be peculiarly remarked, since thus depicted by his opponent's wife), and then Harold shows right royally receiving the homage and gratulations of those around.

But the next scene forbodes a change of fortune: "ISTI MIRANT STELLA," is the explanation wrought

over it. For there appeared "a blasing starre, which was seene not onelie here in England, but also in other parts of the world, and continued the space of seven daies. This blasing starre might be a prediction of mischeefe imminent and hanging over Harold's head; for they never appeare but as prognosticats of afterclaps."

Popular belief has generally invested these illomened bodies with peculiar terrors. "These blasing starres-dreadful to be seene, with bloudie haires, and all over rough and shagged at the top." They vary, however, in their appearance. Sometimes they are pale, and glitter like a sword, without any rays or beams. Such was the one which is said to have hung over Jerusalem for near a year before its destruction, filling the minds of all who beheld it with awe and superstitious dread. A comet resembling a horn appeared when the "whole manhood of Greece fought the battaile of Salamis." Comets foretold the war between Cæsar and Pompey, the murder of Claudius, and the tyranny of Nero. Though usually, they were not invariably, considered as portents of evil omen: for the birth and accession of Alexander, of Mithridates, the birth of Charles Martel, and the accession of Charlemagne, and the commencement of the Tátár empire, were all notified by blazing stars. A very brilliant one which appeared for seven consecutive nights soon after the death of Julius Cæsar was supposed to be conveying the soul of the murdered dictator to Olympus. An author who wrote on one which appeared in the reign of Elizabeth was most anxious, as in duty bound, to apply the phenomenon

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