The Bayeux Tapestry

Bosham, on the Sussex coast, 1064. Edward the Confessor, King of the English, was ageing and had no son to follow him. He had spent much of his own life in exile in Normandy, and he favored his Norman kin, among them his first cousin once removed, Duke William. Now he called for Harold Godwinson, Earl of Wessex, brother of his own queen, Edith, and sent him across the Channel. Why remains disputed to this day. Norman writers later claimed Harold carried a promise, that he went to confirm the English throne to William. English sources instead suggest a quieter errand, that he sailed to free family members held hostage in Normandy for years. The Bayeux Tapestry itself shows the mission but never explains it, only a man boarding a ship. Harold left from his own manor at Bosham, and the ship that carried him out into open water was heading toward a shore that would not let him leave easily.