5 January – 24 September 1066
Riccall and Fulford, 1066
Edward the Confessor dies childless on 5 January 1066, and the next day Harold Godwinson, Earl of Wessex, is crowned king. Harald Hardrada claims the throne through an agreement of 1038 between Magnus the Good and Harthacnut, and William, Duke of Normandy, claims it too. Harold’s brother Tostig, driven out of his earldom of Northumbria by a revolt in October 1065, is in exile in Flanders.
Harold enthroned as king of the English beside Archbishop Stigand, a scene of the Bayeux Tapestry, about 1070Wikimedia Commons, Norman or English embroiderers, Public domain (KingHarold Coronation BayeuxTapestry.PNG)
In May 1066 Tostig raids the south coast of England from the Isle of Wight to Sandwich. He then sails north and raids Norfolk and Lincolnshire, until the earls Edwin of Mercia and Morcar of Northumbria drive him off. Deserted by most of his men, he spends the summer in Scotland with King Malcolm III.
Harold and Tostig quarrel at the table of Edward the Confessor, from Matthew Paris’s Life of King Edward the Confessor, about 1255, Cambridge University Library, MS Ee.3.59Wikimedia Commons, Matthew Paris, Public domain (Cambridge, University Library, MS Ee.3.59, fol. 24v.png)
Harald gathers his fleet at Solund at the mouth of the Sognefjord and leaves his son Magnus to rule Norway. He takes on men in Shetland and Orkney, where the earls Paul and Erlend Thorfinnsson join him, and meets Tostig at the Tyne on 8 September. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gives Harald 300 ships, and modern estimates of his army run from 7,000 to 15,000 men. The fleet burns Scarborough, enters the Humber and sails up the Ouse to Riccall, 14 km south of York.
On 20 September Edwin and Morcar block the road to York at Fulford, with the Ouse on their right and a marshy beck, now Germany Beck, on their left. The English attack first and push back the weaker Norwegian right, but Harald brings his best troops against their centre and the English line breaks. York surrenders on 24 September. The Norwegians return to their ships at Riccall, and hostages from all of Yorkshire are to be brought to them at Stamford Bridge.
Harald lands near York and defeats the Northumbrians at Fulford, from Matthew Paris’s Life of King Edward the Confessor, 13th centuryWikimedia Commons, Matthew Paris, Public domain (Battle of Fulford.png)
Sources
- Kelly DeVries, The Norwegian Invasion of England in 1066 (2003), pp. 236 to 259.
- Frank Barlow, The Godwins (2002), pp. 134 to 135.
- Charles Jones, Finding Fulford: the Search for the First Battle of 1066 (2011), pp. 197 to 214.
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