. The book of the Bayeux tapestry : . fundamental pieces of evidence—Wace and the Tapestry—both say Bayeux. William had a castle above theriver Touques at Bonneville, and ruins of it, or of a later construction upon itssite, can be seen to-day ; but it is a good two days march from Bayeux. The French word parliament meant, of course, any general assembly for dis-cussion, and was here used of something earlier than any representative assembly,though these were already springing up in the Spanish March of the Pyrenees, towhich district we owe the origin of representative institutions. 3 I have n
. The book of the Bayeux tapestry : . fundamental pieces of evidence—Wace and the Tapestry—both say Bayeux. William had a castle above theriver Touques at Bonneville, and ruins of it, or of a later construction upon itssite, can be seen to-day ; but it is a good two days march from Bayeux. The French word parliament meant, of course, any general assembly for dis-cussion, and was here used of something earlier than any representative assembly,though these were already springing up in the Spanish March of the Pyrenees, towhich district we owe the origin of representative institutions. 3 I have never understood why this third messenger should have been con-fused with Harold himself. The Latin inscription is quite clear: Here theygave to Harold the Crown of King. The people holding the axes are not Harold,neither is the man offering the crown, that I can see. 4 The Tapestry, of course, does not show Freemans famous Palisade, andthat for an excellent reason. The Palisade never existed outside the imaginationof Oxford. XIX. The first three sections of the Bayeux Tapestry must be taken together,for they describe one incident, which is the departure of Harold from Bosham,the port of Chichester, and a manor of his own. Of strictly contemporaryevidence to that journey we have none. We can only guess that the yearin which it was taken was the year 1064. As to its motive the BayeuxTapestry gives of course the current Norman version, or rather hints at the Confessor is in his palace at Westminster. It is important tonote the conventional signs of his rank, the sceptre and the crown. It is thereappearance of the same symbols in the crowning of Harold—which was inthe Norman version his supreme act of treason—that is particularly insistedupon. Edward, thus officially presented as it were, is giving a message: thatis certainly the symbolism of the attitude, and it is exceedingly likely, though
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