Where was King Harold Buried?

The Death of the King
On a hilltop 7 miles from Hastings in the early morning of 14 October 1066, two great armies prepared to fight for the throne of England.

The last Anglo Saxon king of England Harold Godwinson, who had been crowned King Harold II just nine months earlier, faced the army of Duke William of Normandy, who believed he was the rightful heir to the throne. By the end of the day thousands lay dead on the battlefield, including Harold, and his two brothers Gyrth and Leofwine, and by Christmas the victorious William would be crowned King of England in London.

Harold and his army had just won a hard-fought battle at Stamford Bridge, near York, where he had defeated another claimant to the English throne, Harald Hardrada, King of Norway, on 25 September. This was a decisive victory for the Anglo Saxon army which effectively brought to an end the Viking period in England.

When Harold heard of William’s landing on the south coast he immediately marched his battle-weary army from Stamford Bridge to meet them in the battle for the crown of England near Hastings in East Sussex.

Tradition claims Harold fell after taking an arrow in his eye as depicted on the Bayeaux Tapestry.

However, an early source describes Harold being hacked to death by Norman knights:

"The first, cleaving his breast through the shield with his point, drenched the earth with a gushing torrent of blood; the second smote off his head below the protection of the helmet and the third pierced the inwards of his belly with his lance; the fourth hewed off his thigh and bore away the severed limb."

At dusk, after some nine hours of ferocious fighting, the battle was finally over, with the death of their king the Anglo Saxon Army disintegrated, the outcome would change the course of English history.

In 1070 Pope Alexander II ordered the Normans to do penance for killing so many people during their conquest of England. The following year William founded an abbey on the site of the battle, which, according to an early tradition, its high altar was placed on the exact spot where Harold’s body had been found. This became known as Battle Abbey.

Where Was King Harold Buried? 
The whereabouts of the remains of King Harold after the battle have become something of a mystery. We would expect to find him buried in Westminster Abbey alongside other Anglo Saxon kings such as his predecessor Edward the Confessor. But we have no grave for Harold.

One story claims the body of the King was found on the battlefield with his two brothers nearby but Harold had been stripped of all his regalia and could not be positively identified. Edith the Fair, his mistress or second wife, came to identify his dismembered body by from 'marks known only to her'.  Yet where his body went from there remains a mystery; there are claims that Edith had responsibility for the burial.

A chronicler says that Harold’s mother Gytha offered William her son’s weight in gold in order to recover the body and give it a Christian burial. But William refused and Harold’s remains were brought to the Duke’s camp and given to a certain William Malet, said to be related to both William and Harold. However, there is no account of what William Malet did with Harold’s remains if he did indeed have responsibility for them after the battle.

The story goes that Duke William did not want Harold’s burial spot to become a shrine for discontented Anglo Saxons and had his remains buried at a secret location. The contemporary writer William of Jumièges claimed that Duke William had the body buried under a cairn on the shore. Other stories claim that William gave Harold a Viking burial, in otherwords he was cremated.

The Waltham Chronicle records two monks who took part in the search for Harold’s mutilated corpse. Waltham Abbey in Essex is a favoured spot for Harold’s burial to where his body was transported in secrecy at the order of Duke William. Edith had a demesne not far from Waltham Abbey and his family owned the local manor, unsurprisingly sources from the 1100s refer to Harold's burial at Waltham Abbey. However, as was fashionable in these times for high status individuals, it is possible that Harold had a 'heart burial' in which his heart was buried at Waltham and a separate location to the rest of their body.

Waltham Abbey Church 

There has been an Anglo Saxon church on the site at Waltham since the 7th century. Harold had received the church as part of the estate of the Anglo-Danish Thegn called Tovi the Proud, which had passed to King Edward the Confessor on Tovi’s death. The 12th century Waltham Chronicle contains the Legend of the Holy Cross which records how, in 1016, a large black marble cross had been found on a hill in Somerset on another of Tovi’s estates and taken to Waltham by an ox-cart. The Holy Cross became an item of veneration and pilgrimage.

Harold rebuilt and lavishly endowed the church, which was re-founded and dedicated in 1060. A tradition claims that Harold’s relationship with Waltham began when as a child he had been miraculously cured of paralysis by the Holy Cross of Waltham.

Harold stopped at Waltham Abbey on his dash south to Hastings following the battle at Stamford Bridge to pray before the Holy Cross but it is claimed that on this occasion the cross bowed down to Harold - an ill omen. His Anglo Saxon army used “the Holy Cross” as their battle cry at Hastings.

It seems any grave memorial to Harold at Waltham was lost and the Holy Cross with it during Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries, the last of the religious houses to close in 1540. The Abbey Church of Waltham Holy Cross is all that remains today and serves as the parish church of the town of Waltham Abbey.

Harold's 'grave stone' at Waltham Abbey

In the 1960’s grave stones, which we see today, were placed on the former site of the High Altar of Waltham Abbey as a memorial to Harold. The inscriptions reads: 

"Harold King of England. Obit 1066" and "This stone marks the position of the high altar behind which King Harold is said to have been buried 1066".

The Search Continues
In the 1950’s an idea developed that Harold’s body had been moved to Bosham Church at Chichester Harbour on the West Sussex coast. This of course may tie in with William of Jumièges’s claim that Duke William had the Anglo Saxon king buried on the shore.

During work at Bosham Church in 1954 an Anglo Saxon grave was discovered near the chancel close to a grave containing the remains of King Cnut’s 8-year old daughter who had drowned in the nearby river. The head and part of a leg were missing which seemed to match the description of Harold’s death by the Norman knights as above.

 Analysis of the bones in the Anglo Saxon grave at the time suggested someone older than Harold but it does remain a possibility when we consider legends that Harold did not die in the battle of Hastings but lived on to old age.

The 12th century Vita Haroldi, originally kept by Waltham Abbey, claims that Harold left the battlefield alive and went abroad to raise military support to retake the throne. Unsuccessful in raising an army he returned to England and ended his days living as a hermit before dying at St John’s Church in Chester. 

This theory of Harold’s survival was developed further and in 2014 amateur historian Peter Burke had a ground-penetrating geological radar survey carried out at Waltham Abbey to try and locate Harold’s grave. The theory, based on the Vita Haroldi, argues that the king recovered and lived for 40 years after the battle of Hastings before going back to Waltham to die. 

Stratascan, the team that discovered Richard III’s grave two years previously, said the scan was positive and identified an unmarked grave close to markings on an ancient wall in the grounds of Waltham Abbey Church as highlighted by Mr Burke. An application was submitted to English Heritage to exhume the grave believed to be the final resting place of King Harold but has so far been denied.

In 2017 two amateur historians followed Harold’s trail to St Michael's Church, Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, claiming four surviving, intact high status Norman stone coffins in a vault under the church may hold Edith, King Harold and his brothers Gyrth and Leofwine. Edith is recorded in the Domesday Book as the owner of the Manor of Stortford.

This short piece barely scratches the surface; theories about the whereabouts of the body of Harold abound yet it seems the true story of what happened to the last Anglo Saxon king of England after the battle of Hastings will never be known for certain.

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