The Empty Throne

The crisis of 1066 was born of a single failure: Edward the Confessor died without a child. For a generation England had been ruled by the pious, Normanophile Edward, whose long reign masked a looming succession problem. When he died on 5 January 1066, at least three powerful men believed the crown of England was rightfully theirs — and each had the will and the means to fight for it.

The first was Harold Godwinson, Earl of Wessex, the greatest nobleman in England and the realm's most capable soldier. Edward's deathbed gesture, the English chroniclers said, had commended the kingdom to him, and the Witan — the council of the realm — chose him without delay. Harold was crowned the very next day. But he was not of the old royal blood, and his claim rested on election and Edward's dying wish rather than descent.

The second was William, Duke of Normandy, across the Channel. William insisted that Edward, his distant kinsman, had long ago promised him the throne — and, more damningly, that Harold himself had sworn a sacred oath to support that claim while a guest (or captive) in Normandy. To William, Harold's coronation was not just a rival claim but perjury, and he prepared to enforce his right by invasion, securing the Pope's blessing for a holy war against an oath-breaker.

The third was Harald Hardrada, King of Norway and the most feared warrior in the north, who pressed an old dynastic claim and was egged on by Harold's embittered exiled brother Tostig. Thus by the autumn of 1066 England faced two great invasions at opposite ends of the kingdom. The true English heir by blood — young Edgar the Ætheling, last of the House of Wessex — was a boy with no army, brushed aside by harder men. The stage was set for the most decisive year in English history.