Road to Hastings: 978-1066

In AD 1066, Duke William II of Normandy, later known as William the Conqueror, won a decisive victory at the Battle of Hastings, but the complex drama that engendered that battle began years earlier, with the marriage of Aethelred the Unready to Emma of Normandy, and culminated at the death of Edward the Confessor. Childless, Edward used his lack of an heir as a diplomatic tool; over time, he likely promised the throne to several competing interests, resulting in conflicting claims. On his deathbed, he named Harold his successor, but according to the Bayeux Tapestry and other Norman sources, the legitimacy of Harold's accession was nullified by his having earlier sworn an oath to defend William's right to the throne. William, with the support of the Norman aristocracy, crossed the Channel to Pevensey and then moved his mercenary army to Hastings. Harold had moved his own forces from Yorkshire through London and into Sussex, and the two adversaries collided somewhere near where Battle Abbey now stands. The English were gradually worn down, Harold was killed, and William advanced on London. English leaders submitted to him, and he was crowned on Christmas Day. Too few scholars have disputed where the decisive battle occurred. In this comprehensive study, Stephen C. Fletcher propounds that the absence of archaeological evidence, along with archaeological finds nearby, supports the claim that the generally accepted battle site might not have been the true location-a claim that seems readily substantiated when he compares the site to the 11th-century chroniclers' conflicting descriptions of events.