Evolution of the traditional Battle of Hastings engagement narrative

Introduction

Our 2016 book 'The Battle of Hastings at Sedlescombe' contradicts every major aspect of the orthodox Norman invasion narrative. No one has found a single significant error in our analysis, but lots of readers still believe that it cannot be right because so many historians have faith in the orthodox narrative. It is undeniably interesting that such an important theory supported by every subject matter expert for at least two hundred years could be spurious. But the same could once have been said of Geocentrism, Catastrophism and countless other theories that seemed uncontestable at the time.

During forty years of research, we analysed every book and article we could find about the Norman invasion and the Battle of Hastings. Hundreds of them, from which we mapped the development of the the orthodox Norman invasion narrative. This paper is a synopsis of that work. We hope it will help expedite future research into the Norman Conquest. At the end we explain how we think the orthodox Norman invasion narrative could have gone so awry.

Early histories of the Norman invasion

Contemporary accounts with trustworthy original information about the Norman invasion petered out with the Chronicle of Battle Abbey in the late 12th century. A hundred years later, Prose Brut (aka the Brut Chronicle) tried by distill them into a one paragraph synthetic chronicle, cherry picking what its author thought to be the most salient points. Prose Brut proved to be such an excellent base that, much like the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, it was extended with new annals and only stopped being updated in the late 15th century. 

Prose Brut is an important work with more surviving manuscripts than any medieval work bar the Bible. It was the first history of England to be printed and it was printed in the vernacular, perhaps with translations by Caxton himself, making it as popular with lay people as with scholars. According to Lister Matheson, Prose Brut's biographer: "it is no exaggeration to say that in the late Middle Ages in England the Brut was the standard historical account of British and English history". Thus, its entry for the Norman invasion formed the first Norman invasion synthetic narrative:

"a messenger came to him [Harold] and said that William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy had arrived in England with a great army and that he had taken all the land around Hastings and that he had shelled the castle. When the King heard this news, he hurried there with a few of the troops that had remained with him then and when he had come there he made himself ready to do battle with Duke William ... Harold was too impatient and obstinant and he had great confidence in his own strength and he fought with the Duke and with his people, but Harold and his people were defeated and he himself was killed there".

This passage established two core tenets about the Norman invasion: 

1. That Harold headed off for Sussex with an understrength army because he was too impatient, impetuous and arrogant to wait for the rest of his men to arrive
2. That the men Harold took to Hastings were the exhausted remnants of his Stamford Bridge army.

These two notions were still being taught when we were at school, and probably still are. The implication is that Harold's army at Hastings was depleted by losses at Stamford Bridge, scarred by fighting with the Norse, and exhausted after marching up to Yorkshire then down to Sussex in less than three weeks. Raphael Holinshed expanded and extended Prose Brut for his mid-16th century 'Chronicles' series which became the next standard English history reference. Its section on the Norman invasion was responsible for three more core tenets in the orthodox Norman invasion narrative. Two concern contemporary account places that sound like 'Pevensey' and 'Hastings': 

"Duke William at his first landing at Pevensey or Pemsey (whether you will) fortified a péece of ground with strong trenches, and leaving therein a competent number of a men of warre to kéepe the same, he sped him toward Hastings, and comming thither, he built an other fortresse there with all spéed possible"

So, by implication:

3. Places in the contemporary accounts that sound, more or less, like Pevensey referred to modern Pevensey. Those references refer to the initial Norman landing, so it follows that the Normans first landed at modern Pevensey.
4. Places in the contemporary accounts that sound like Hastings referred to modern Hastings. Those references include the location of the secondary Norman landing and the main Norman camp.

Holished's third tenet is that the battlefield is: "whereas the abbeie of Battell was afterward builded", so:

5. Battle Abbey was built on the battlefield, or conversely, the battlefield surrounds Battle Abbey

Holinshed's tenets 4 and 5 seem to be mutually supportive: If the main Norman camp was at modern Hastings, Harold might have tried to attack or blockade it by marching along the crest of the Hasting Ridge; if Harold was on the Hastings Ridge and the Normans advanced from their camp at modern Hastings, the battle might have been fought where Battle Abbey now stands.

David Hume, the famous Scottish philosopher, wrote the next standard English history reference, 'History of England', first published in the mid-18th century. Hume expands Holinshed's narrative with details from Wace's Roman de Rou. He adds four more notions to the orthodox narrative: 

6. Harold resolved to lead a surprise attack on the Norman camp
7. When Harold saw the Normans advancing, he ordered the English army to leave their camp and defend a nearby hill, with the implication that the Normans were forced to fight uphill
8. William "divided his army into three lines" to attack the English, placing himself in the middle division, Bretons on the left, Franks on the right, with the implication that the three divisions attacked from the same direction.
9. The English shield wall proved to be impenetrable by force, and was only breached late in the day by a ruse, the famous feigned retreat

The authors of Norman invasion accounts through to the end of the 18th century were chroniclers. They made no attempt to analyse the sources or the events, or to put them in context, or to delve into the leaders' psyche, or to map events to real places on the ground. This was left to modern historians.

Augustin Thierry

One of the first modern historians, if not the first, was Frenchman Augustin Thierry.  He analysed the Norman invasion in his milestone 1824 book 'The Norman Conquest', perhaps the first modern history book. He realised that the orthodox narrative inherited from Hume contained a major inconsistency: Harold is supposed to have raced down to Sussex with an understrength army intending a surprise attack on the Norman camp, but he deployed a static defensive shield wall in the battle. Thierry proposed that, upon his arrival in the theatre of war, Harold realised the Norman camp was too well guarded, so:

10. Refused to retreat to safety, perhaps thinking it would be an abrogation of his responsibilities to abandon land that had been trusted to his care
11. "was obliged to moderate his impetuosity" and "suddenly changed tactics, entrenching himself behind ditches and palisades to await a Norman attack"
12. Fortified his position "on all sides with a rampart of stakes and osier hurdles"

Thierry does not propose a shape for the English shield wall. He just says that they were deployed on a "long chain of hills", presumably meaning the Hastings Ridge, at the place "which as ever after been known as Battle". But, by implication from tenet 12, it seems to us that he thought the shield wall was enclosed, and this had been standard practice in battles between infantry and cavalry since Roman times. Thierry never visited the theatre of war. E H Creasy seems to have realised that an enclosed shield wall would be inconsistent with the geography at Battle - see below - so he added the thirteenth and last tenet:

13. The English shield wall was open and straight or straightish

Every historian that has written about the Norman invasion for the next 150 years incorporated most or all of these thirteen tenets into their narrative. In our opinion, all bar two of the them are wrong. The exceptions are the feigned retreat and three pronged Norman attack, which could apply anywhere. The others are based on plausible interpretations of statements from the contemporary accounts for which there was no reason to be sceptical at the time. This was, after all, before excavations at modern Hastings and Battle Abbey, before Margary's rediscovery of the route of the Rochester Roman road, and before the science of geomorphology had been devised, so historians assumed that inconsistencies in the local geography were because it had changed since the battle.

Many post-Thierry analyses try to add something to his core narrative. Typically, this is a new permutation of the following variables: the size of the armies, the location of the English camp, the direction of the Norman attack, the length and/or shape of the English shield wall, the type and location of English defensive fortifications, new features of the local geography, the stage of the battle at which Harold died, the direction in which the English fled, and the location of the 'Malfosse'. There is no consensus on any one of these variables, let alone a combination of them. In the next section, we will run through the most reputable documented Battle of Hastings scenarios, noting how they differ from what went before.

Familiarity with the local goegraphy might help - see heat relief map above. If the battle was fought at the orthodox Battle Abbey location and the Normans did head northwest along the Hastings Ridge from modern Hastings, the only place where a 6000-man open shield wall could be placed on defensible rising ground is 'Battle Ridge' (referred to by others as 'Senlac Hill' and 'Senlac Ridge'). It is not actually a ridge but a 500m section of the main Hastings Ridge that has been eroded to the north and south to give the appearance of a 2km long cross-ridge that faces south-southeast . Battle Ridge is the WSW-ENE area shaded orange and yellow, either side of Battle Abbey which is labelled 'x'. The terrace just south of the 'x' is a man made feature that was not there at the time.

Notable Battle of Hastings analyses

Edward Shepherd Creasy

One of Thierry's disciples, according to a footnote, was E S Creasy who published 'Fifteen Decisive Battles' in 1851. One of them was the Battle of Hastings. His innovations were to survey the ground, to associate local geographic features with places described in the contemporay accounts, to create the first map of the orthodox theatre of war, and to devise possible initial troop dispositions. Creasy's map (below) has many geographical inaccuracies - and, indeed, it is less accurate than Yeakell & Gardner surveyed 60 years earlier - but it was a huge step forward.

Creasy claimed: "There are few battles, the localities of which can be more completely traced". It turned out that he only traced two localities, both from Roman de Rou's passage describing the Norman advance from Harold's perspective: "The Normans appeared, advancing over the ridge of a rising ground; and the first division of their troops moved onwards along the hill and across a valley". Creasy proposes that Wace's 'ridge of a rising ground' referred to the slight rise in the Hastings Ridge crest at Starr's Green: "It is along that hill that Harold and his brothers saw approach in succession the three divisions of the Norman army". He proposes that Wace's valley is the dip in the Hastings Ridge crest where the railway line runs through: "The Normans came down that slope, and then formed in the valley, so as to assault the whole front of the English position".

So, Creasy proposed that the Normans advanced along the Hastings Ridge crest from Telham before fanning out into three divisions in the dip between Battle and Starr's Green. He depicts William, leading the middle division, on the Hastings Ridge crest, attacking from the south-southeast. His flanks would have been visible to him and close enough to receive voice or hand gesture commands, as described by Wace. Creasy depicts them attacking from the south-southwest and the southeast.

The Norman deployment, as we note above, led Creasy to devise one the best known tenets (13) in the orthodox Battle of Hastings canon: that the English shield wall was open and straight or straightish, as depicted on his diagram above. The only alternative, that the shield wall was enclosed, as Thierry implies, would lead the Normans to attack on the shallow slopes to the east, west and north which were not in the same direction and not significantly uphill, thereby contradicting tenets 7 and 8. Creasy would have excused Thierry for thinking the shield wall was enclosed because Thierry never visited the theatre of war and was nearly blind when he was writing 'The Norman Conquest'.

Creasy depicts the English shield wall as straight and 800m long, with an asymetric deployment favouring the western side of the battlefield, although this might be because he has mistakenly truncated Battle Ridge's eastern limb.

Creasy's evidence is weak. The two geographic features he identifies are very general. They would apply to almost any hill in the region, and the Hastings Ridge is a relatively poor match. Medieval ridgeways were usually lined by trees or hedgerows to prevent erosion, so Starr's Green is unlikely to have been visible from Battle Ridge, and the dip in the Hasting Ridge crest between Battle and Starr's Green is an an undulation rather than a valley. Wace's description of the Norman advance goes on to say that the Normans crossed a stream then wheeled into position at the bottom of the battlefield hill. They would have done neither if they had advanced from Telham.

Mark Antony Lower

Lower was a Sussex antiquarian, founder of the Sussex Archaeological Society, and the first translator of the Chronicle of Battle Abbey. He proposed a subtly different engagement scenario in his 1853 paper 'On the Battle of Hastings' for the Sussex Archaeological Society Journal. Where Creasy says that the Normans attacked along the Hastings Ridge crest from the southeast, Lower proposes that they attacked from the south. His theory is rooted in the Chronicle of Battle Abbey which says that the Normans dressed for battle at 'Hechelande'. It goes on to say that Hechelande was a hill near Telham, which Lower interprets to mean Telham Hill, south of Battle Abbey. If the Norman battle camp was at Telham Hill, as he says, the Normans would have advanced from the south.

Some geographic evidence from the contemporary accounts supports Lower's theory. Most of them say or imply that the Normans advanced up a steep hill. The slope south of Battle Abbey could hardly be described as steep, at less than 3%, but it is more than twice as steep as the approach along the Hastings Ridge crest from the railway crossing to the orthodox shield wall. Carmen says that the battlefield was untilled because of its roughness. This might apply to the hill south of Battle Abbey but would clearly not apply to the Hastings Ridge crest. Wace says that the Normans cross a valley and a stream during their advance from the battle camp to the battlefield. The land south of Battle Abbey is a sort of valley between Loose Farm ridge and Battle Ridge, and it is drained by a stream, namely Asten Brook. There are no streams or valleys on the Hastings Ridge crest.

Lower's proposed advance from the south is therefore a better geographic matchfor some of the contemporary account battlefield descriptions, albeit still weak. Creasy's implied advance along the Hastings Ridge crest makes more military sense. Why would William choose to fight an uphill battle on gloopy fields to the south of Battle Abbey rather than on the firm dry and relatively level Hastings Ridge crest to the Abbey's southeast? Time Team pondered this exact question at the end of their Battle of Hastings Special, concluding that Creasy is more likely to be right, even though his theory is not supported by an iota of geographical evidence.

Lower was the first to propose a location for the Malfosse, into which many Norman knights fell to their death according to the Chronicle of Battle Abbey. He thought the Malfosse referred to Oakwood Ghyll, a mile or so north of the orthodox Battle Abbey battlefield. Enough historians agree with him for it to be considered the orthodox Malfosse location. They are almost certainly wrong. Most of the English would have fled downhill towards the Rochester Roman road at Sedlescombe. Lower could not have known because the route of the Rochester Roman road was only rediscovered in the 1950s. However, Lower should probably have realised that the English are unlikely to have fled uphill, that Oakwood Ghyll is a fluvial valley whereas CBA says that the Malfosse was a precipitous sided pit, and that it is too soft to have caused a significant number of fatalities.

Augustus Freeman

Freeman was the most eminent Norman Conquest scholar of his generation. He wrote its standard reference book, 'The History of the Norman Conquest, Its Causes and Its Results', published in 1869. Freeman employed Edward Renouard James (more below) to survey the theatre of war. His results (see diagram below) are far more accurate than Creasy's, most pertinently in that it gives a more realistic depiction of Battle Ridge. 

Freeman's proposed shield wall (depicted above) is 1800m long, stretching along Battle Ridge from Saxon Wood in the west to Battle Sewage Works in the east (50.912, 0.477 to 50.917, 0.504). His main innovation was to propose troop deployment that would dissuade the Normans from riding around the open ends of the English line to attack Harold from behind and above. His idea was to extend the English shield wall to the tips of Battle Ridge, where he says that the western flank would be protected by a ravine, the eastern flank by a boggy stream confluence, the rear by the edge of the Andredsweald, and following Thierry, the front by a palisade. His scenario is made possible by proposing enormous armies of 25000 or more men. 

Freeman's towering reputation suppressed opposition until his death in 1892. Tolerance of his critics did not improve much thereafter because he left Thomas Archer as a Huxley-esque champion to swat detractors in his stead. It is unfortunate then that many aspects of Freeman's proposed battle scenario are faulty.  His initial troop deployments contradict John of Worcester who says that the English were "drawn up in a narrow place", and Wace who says that William ordered his flanks to stay within voice and hand gesture command distance. An analysis of Domesday shows that the Andredsweald, which Freeman claims to have protected the English rear, was no closer than three miles from Battle. He seems to have invented the ravine and marsh that protected the English flanks. And an 1800m palisade could not have been constructed in the two hours that the English were at the battlefield ... or in two months for that matter.

Freeman's nemesis was J Horace Round who he had tried to bully into renaming the 'Battle of Hastings' as the 'Battle of Senlac'. Round retaliated by publicly highlighting some of Freeman's errors and failings in his 1895 book 'Feudal England' and other correspondence. Round's biggest gripe was Freeman's palisade. Practical considerations aside, as Round said, there would have been no point in having a shield wall behind a palisade. Among many professional failings, Round noted that Freeman: passed off speculation as fact; supported his theories with falsified translations; hid weak reasoning behind Homeric rhetoric; used biased interpretations of some contemporary account statements; and retrospectively hid retractions of false claims in footnotes.

Freeman indirectly makes the first estimate of the size of the armies, despite saying that: "I fear that the exact number, or even any approach to the exact number, either of the Norman invaders or the English defenders, is one of the things that historians must, however unwillingly, leave uncertain." He was clearly hedging because an 1800m shield wall would need 3600 men per rank and it was many ranks deep. How many? Freeman points out that some contemporary accounts describe the English spears as looking like a forest, so perhaps 8 to 10 ranks deep. Oman reckoned 10 to 12. Using the same model, in the first edition of his book (much refined in later editions), Oman estimated that Harold had 25000 men, so Freeman was presumably thinking much the same. That estimate seems implausibly high by modern standards - see Spatz below - but he was not to know.

Freeman proposed that the Malfosse referred to the stream valley adjacent to Battle Cemetery, immediately north of the left flank of his proposed shield wall. That would match CBA's description of it being "where the fighting was going on", but it is too soft and too shallow to have been harmful, and it would contradict CBA's description of the Malfosse being non-fluvial, precipitous sided and deep enough to kill those that fell in.

Hereford B George

George thought of himself as an expert in mapping historic military conflicts to geography. He applied this technique to many battlefields, one of which was the Battle of Hastings, in his 1895 book 'Battlefields of English History'.

George struggled with the Battle of Hastings, failing to match events to the geography at the orthodox Battle Abbey battlefield. His excuse was that: "the appearance of it [the landscape] has been so much changed, that reconstruction of its condition at the date of the battle must again be imperfect". He was further hampered by apparent conflicts in the contemporary account battlefield descriptions: "Beyond this one can only conjecture, as one statement seems more probable than another".

George's compromises resulted in an engagement scenario similar to Freeman's. His shield wall (depiction above) is 30% longer than Freeman's at 2.5km, and therefore 30% more men or 30% thinner or some combination of the two. He does not depict the Norman troop dispositions, but his text agrees with Creasy that they advanced along the Hastings Ridge crest from Telham. He does not say what might have prevented William flanking the English line, but he depicts a stream at one end of the line and the Malfosse ditch at the other. Neither were there at the time, and they would not have prevented the Normans outflanking the English line anyway.

George proposes a new Malfosse, at the Battle Sewage Works feeder stream below Little Park Farm road. It is a poor match to the contemporary account descriptions, 500m from where the fighting was going on, fluvial and in a shallow-sided 3m deep valley that would not cause a significant inconvenience, let alone scores of fatalities.

Wilhelm Spatz

Spatz, a German logistics expert, noticed a connundrum: The larger the armies, the easier it is to devise a defendable position at Battle, but the worse the match to the contemporary account battlefield descriptions and the more fanciful the logistics of getting men and horses across the Channel to disembark on a single tide. 

In 1896, he published 'Die Schlacht von Hastings', where he calculates that neither army could have had more than 8000 fighting men. Every subsequent engagement analysis, bar Foord and Lawson, assumes that both armies had less than 10000 fighting men, most assume 6000 to 8000. If these are even close to being right, Harold did not have enough men to defend the entire Battle Ridge, so every subsequent analysis - bar Foord and Lawton - presumes that they just defended the middle section of the Ridge, either side of where Battle Abbey now stands.

Sir James Ramsay

Sir James Ramsay was the first to analyse the battle with a realistic army of 8000 men. His conclusions appears in 'The Foundations of England', publish in 1898. It contains several innovations, including a proposed location for the English camp, a different formation for the Norman divisions, a novel size and shape of the English shield wall, and a new location for the Malfosse.

Ramsay was the first to think about the location of the English camp. He noticed that while some contemporary accounts say that the English chose to defend their camp, others reckon that they were on the move when they encountered the enemy. He proposed, for the first time as far as we know, that the English camped at Caldbec Hill. English Heritage are fans: There is an English Heritage information plaque at the Calbec Hill park entrance explaining his theory.

Ramsay suggests that the English army was heading southeast along the Hastings Ridge from Caldbec Hill intending a surprise attack on the Norman camp when they encountered the Normans coming the other way. He thinks they immediately occupied the nearest hill - as Carmen states - which happened to be at the place where Battle Abbey was later built. This part of his theory has a wide following, most notably English Heritage and Kelly DeVries on behalf of the Royal Armouries.

Ramsay devised new initial troop dispositions (depicted above), based on his engagement scenario. He depicts the English shield wall as "three sides of a square" on the southwestern side of the Hastings Ridge. On the plus side, it is all on rising ground. On the downside, the Norman right flank could march up the Hastings Ridge crest and lop off Harold's undefended head while the English shield wall was facing in the wrong direction.

Ramsay proposes that the three Norman divisions had huge gaps, 500m and a wood on one side, 250m and the Hastings Ridge to the other. He does not explain how he reached this conclusion and it looks unlikely. It not only contradicts Wace's statement that William ordered his flanks to stay close enough to receive commands by voice and hand signals, but it leaves both flanks out of William's view, so he would not have known what was going on. 

Ramsay proposed that the Malfosse referred to the stream valley running along Western Avenue. It seems unlikely, being fluvial, shallow-sided and only 3m deep.

Louis Salzman

Salzman produced a Battle of Hastings analysis for Volume 1 of Sussex edition of the ever popular Victoria County Histories, first published in 1905. Salzman's innovations are to add contours to the theatre of war diagram and to propose a different shape for the English shield wall.

Salzman depicts the Normans attacking along the Hastings Ridge crest from Telham. He proposes that the shield wall was dogleg shaped. His idea is that it better follows the contours, keeping more men on rising ground. It is a good idea, but not as good as he thinks because his contours are wrong. Morillo's diagram (below) has a similar English troop deployment and accurate contours (we have relabelled Morillo's 270' contour as 82m). Morillo shows that Salzman's shield wall has both flanks on level ground, but it is an advance on his predecessors, bar Ramsay, that have both flanks on falling ground.

Major E. Renouard James

James was a logistics and cartography expert in the British Army. He surveyed the theatre of war for Augustus Freeman's 1869 book mentioned above. It sounds like he was ashamed of his involvement. Forty years later he said:  "As to my share in it, I can only vouch for the comparative topographical accuracy (the Ordnance 6-inch map did not then exist), but disclaim all responsibility for the way in which the position of Harold and the details of the battle are shown." James commissioned F H Baring to make a new topographic survey - extract below - and wrote a military study of the battle for the 1909 Royal Engineer's Journal.

James' innovation was to explain the battle from a soldier's perspective. His engagement scenario seems coherrent as far as it goes and his diagrams are geographically accurate. R Allen Brown, founder of the annual Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman studies, said in his 1982 book 'The Battle of Hastings' that James's engagement scenario was still the most accurate.

James proposes the English had 8000 to 10000 men deployed in a gentle curve with refused flanks, another attempt to get more men on rising ground and shmake it more difficult to outflank the English line. His shield wall is 750m long, about the post-Spatz average. The Norman troop deployment makes less sense. He depicts the middle Norman division facing the entire English line, while the Norman flanks are unopposed. The Norman right flank is on the far side of the Hastings Ridge, 1km away from William, out of sight and unable to receive commands. It is also so far north that they could just walk up behind the English line to attack Harold direct.

James' engagement diagram depicts streamheads preventing the Norman cavalry from flanking the English line. They are barely 30m across and 2cm deep. James clearly realised they would provide no significant barrier. He says that Harold's troop deployment indicates that he knew the Normans would not try to flank his line, so something must have been there to discourage them, but he knows not what.

James proposed that the Malfosse referred to Manser's Shaw, the most northerly of the Powder Mill stream tributaries, adjacent to the Battle Recreation Ground tennis courts. While this would be popular - it being the park where 'Somewhere Only We Know' and 'Snowed Under' are set - it looks unlikely to us, fluvial, shallow-sided, soft bottomed, less than 5m deep and more than 800m from his battlefield.

Francis Henry Baring

James's cartographer F H Baring wrote his own Battle of Hastings analysis as an Appendix to his Domesday Tables, first published in 1909. His engagement scenario is similar to that of his erstwhile employer, but he elaborates that the slope north of the English line was steep enough to discourage the Normans from outflanking the English line. Baring does not give a reason why they would not simply ride 200m past that slope onto the ridge crest from where they could attack Harold from behind and above. It has not stopped successors from jumping on his bandwagon, claiming that the steep slope north of the church prevented the Normans outflanking the defence. Not only would it have been trivial to circumvent, but it is not that steep anyway. It is crossed by two public footpaths that even geriatric old crocks like ourselves can climb with relative ease. Virile Norman treasure hunters would barely have noticed the slope was there, unless it was defended.

Baring agreed with James that the Malfosse referred to Manser's Shaw. He suggests that there is a clear etymological link from Malfosset [sic] to Manfsey to Manser. It is unlikely but possible.

Edward Foord

Foord, a military historian, expounds his Battle of Hastings theory in his 1913 book 'England Invaded'.

Foord's major innovation was to consider the route that the English army took from London to the theatre of war, concluding that they arrived on the route of the A21 (depicted above). It is implausible. The route of the A21 was only cleared for the construction of the 'Hastings - Flimwell - Tonbridge - Southwark' turnpike in the 18th century. It would have taken weeks, or more likely many months, to drive hundreds of ox-drawn carts through more than twenty miles of the Andredsweald forest. It was virtually uninhabited and inhospitable with no food or ale for men, and no fodder for oxen. Provisions would need to have been supplied daily by ox-drawn carts travelling the same rutted tracks, compounding the logistical challenge. 

Foord's mistake is understandable. The only viable alternative route, to march along Watling Street to Rochester then head south, was ten miles longer. Even though the Rochester route only had to cross ten miles of the Andredsweald - Sissinghurst to Cripps Corner - if Foord did not consider the logistics of feeding the men and oxen, he would have calculated that the ten mile shortcut along the route of the A21 would still have given a net time saving. 

It might seem unlikely that Foord would have overlooked the English wagon train or the logistics of feeding the English army after they entered the Andredsweald but, astonishingly, as far as we know, no one considered it before us in 2016. Not one of the hundreds of books and articles written about the Battle of Hastings before 2016 even mentions the English wagon train or logistics. We will give our explanation in the conclusion below.

Ivan Margary rediscovered the route of the Rochester Roman road, and published it his 1950s book about Britain's Roman roads. As he says, it went directly to the theatre of war. In our opinion, the Rochester Roman road is the only route the English wagion train could have taken to arrive at the theatre of war in time to fight at Hastings. Indeed, if they had tried to cross the Andredsweald on the route of the A21, they would have struggled to arrive before the end of the year. 

Foord explains that he surveyed the orthodox battlefield with co-author Edward Home and Sir Augustus Webster, then the owner of Battle Abbey: "The result of their investigations has been to convince them that the line of the Norman advance lay considerably to the east of where it is generally placed, and that the great bulk of Harold's army was massed about the site of the
abbey itself. His right wing, being almost unassailable owing to the protection given to it by the marshy ground in its front, was probably very weakly held. Relying on the contemporary evidence of the Bayeux tapestry, and considering the circumstances of Harold's march, the authors are inclined to discount any effective entrenchments or palisading."

Foord's engagement scenario harks back to Creasy's. His depiction of Battle Ridge is missing most of its eastern arm. It has steep ends backing onto streams that are supposed to prevent the Normans riding around the open ends of the English line. His Norman advance is along the Hastings Ridge crest. His troop numbers are back up to around 15000 per side. His shield wall is roughly 1km long, and deep at the contact zone because he proposes that William failed to engage Harold's right flank. 

It is all rather implausible. It would mean that the Normans only attacked on the most adverse terrain where the English line was deepest, and where Harold's professional huscarl soldiers were concentrated. Foord says that the English right flank was 'almost unassailable' because it was protected by boggy ground either side of Asten Brook, but that was 400m from and 20m below the contact zone. If, for some inexplicable reason, William chose not to outflank the English line, the Normans would have simply left the Hastings Ridge at the petrol station and marched between Asten Brook and the English line to attack the weakest thinnest part of the line. Foord has rigged the topography anyway by truncating the eastern arm of Battle Ridge to make it easier to defend, and by depicted steep ends on Battle Ridge that were not there. On the contrary, both ends of the Battle Ridge are on almost level ground.

Sir Charles Oman

Sir Charles Oman was a military historian who wrote widely about military conflicts. His first book was 'A History of the Art of War in the Middle Ages' was published in 1885 when he was just 25. It is rather naive, so he updated it in 1924. His thoughts about the Battle of Hastings had changed fundamentally, perhaps because of Spatz's work on the size of the armies.

In the first edition of his book, Oman parotted Augustus Freeman, the acknowledged authority at the time. For example, he describes the English shield wall as "a mile long and 150 yards broad". In the 1924 edition, his shield wall had been reduced in length by a half and in depth by two-thirds, making it much the same as most post-Spatz analyses. 

Oman's innovation was to give the English line deeply refused flanks. Presumably he was thinking that the refused flanks cross boundary streams to make the English line more difficult to outflank. However, those streams are barely 30cm wide and 2cm deep. They would not dissuade a two-year-old from crossing, let alone hundreds of treasure hunting Norman knights. The refused ends just extend the line by 30%, thinning it commensurately for no benefit.

Never the less, Oman's 1924 intial troop disposition seems to have been adopted by the U.S. Military Academy as a teaching aid. Their reworking (above) is the one published on Wikipedia.

Frank Stenton

Stenton was president of the Royal Historical Society and a towering figure among Anglo-Saxon historians. He published 'Anglo-Saxon England' in 1943. It has been described as: "the most complete study of Anglo-Saxon history that has ever appeared". His reputation has ensured that it has been used by many subsequent historians as a source of supposedly authoritative information about the Battle of Hastings. Unfortunately, it is inaccurate where it counts.

For example, Stenton proposes that the Normans advanced from Telham Hill, which he describes as: "the highest point on the nine miles of road between Hastings and the modern town of Battle". But Telham Hill is not on that road. Perhaps he was referring to Telham, which is on the road, but it is 30% lower than the five mile stretch of road between Ore and Blackhorse Hill, and the road distance between modern Hastings and Telham is less than six miles. It is all very confusing.

Stenton's engagement scenario assumes that the Normans were heading northwest along the Hastings Ridge ridgeway from Starr's Green Lane, and kept going to form their three divisions to the south of Horselodge Plantation. He proposes a straight shield wall that stretched from 450m west of the ridgeway to 250m east. He reckons that Baring's topography maps (reproduced by James above) show that the "ground falls away steeply enough to protect the flanks". But Baring's topographical maps show no such thing, and even if they did, they would not prevent the Norman cavalry riding around the open ends of the English line on level ground.

Lieutenant-Colonel Alfred Higgins Burne

Burne was a solider and military historian, best known for his work 'The Battlefields of England', first published in 1950. He says in the introduction that he wrote it because the only references to England's battlefields were old and, generally, militarily inaccurate, especially those written by academics. while this is generally true, the analyses written by soldiers are not much better.

Burne is famous for having invented the concept of  'Inherent Military Probability'. It is based on the concept that military commanders tend to think alike, even though the tools at their disposal varied enormously over the centuries. It means that when there is some uncertainty or ambiguity in the contemporary accounts, the commanders probably did what a modern commander would have done in his shoes. Burne was a modern commander, so he put himself in Wiliam and Harold's shoes to work out what most likely happened during the battle. We have no military experience, other than through wargames, but we use a version of IMP in our lost battlefield quests by asking ourselves 'What would someone sensible and moderately smart  - i.e. ourselves - do in this situation?'.

Burne's innovatiomn was to compare all the Battle of Hastings engagement scenarios that had been produced up to 1950. He unhelpfully concluded that there is a "disparity of views", "How are we to judge between such eminent authorities? When the doctors disagree, who shall decide?" He tried to be Surgeon General, going back to basics to recalculate the most likely events usiong his IMP technique described above. Alas, it just begat another different engagement scenario (above), with a straighty and relatively short 800m shield wall. He thinks that the Normans advanced along the Hastings Ridge crest from Telham before forming into three divisions to attack from the south. He agrees with Major James - just to prove that soldiers think alike - that the Malfosse referred to Merser's Shaw.

Another Burne innovations is to locate a hillock, labelled 'H' on diagram above, where he thinks that a company of English troops made a stand after being drawn out of the shield wall. He proposes that this is the location being depicted on Tapestry Panels 53 and 54, where the Normans are depicted attacking a hill with the English fighting back-to-back. He does not explain why it is not there now. 

Burne's other innovation concerns Battle Abbey and the Hastings Ridge crest. It is natural to assume that the modern road follows the ridge crest. The original Battle Abbey is 50m or so west of the road. This is sometimes interpreted to mean that the original Abbey is on the western slope of the ridge. It is an argument used to defend the orthodox Battle Abbey battlefield location - by English Heritage, for instance - that there is no credible reason why William would have commissioned his Abbey on the side of a hill, other than that it was where Harold died. Burne shows that the original Battle Abbey is on the ridge crest by highlighting the crest as a dotted line, thereby invalidating this argument. Presumably, the road was diverted around the original Abbey. It is true that Major James had published an engagement scenario on a contour map forty years previously, but it was published in a niche specialist journal that hardly anyone would have read. 

Major General John 'Boney' Fuller

Major General John 'Boney' Fuller is famous as the inventor of the 'blitzkrieg' tactics used so successfully by Germany at the start of WWII. It was one success to be measured against a succession of failures. In normal military life he was a cantankerous and inept soldier. After leaving the Army under a cloud, he reinvented himself as a Nazi sympathising military analyst and author, and became the WWII correspondent for Newsweek. One of his books was 'A military history of the Western World', published in 1953, which covers the Battle of Hastings. 

Fuller proposes a fairly orthodox engagement scenario with the English shield wall deployed as a 750m long gentle curve across the summit of Battle Ridge. His map has some unfortunate errors - labelling 'Marley Lane' as 'Sedlescombe Road', and labelling the A2100 south as 'To Telham Hill' instead of 'Telham' - but it is not the worst. He proposes in his text that the Normans advanced from Telham Hill, although he depicts them advancing northwest, which suggests that he meant they came from Telham on the Ridge, consistent with the labelling error on his map. He subscribes to Baring's theory that the Malfosse referred to Merser's Shaw.

Fuller's innovation was to propose that there were ravines to the east and west of Battle Ridge - they are the features that look like hedges to the west of 'H' and north of 'Present' - that prevented the Norman cavalry from flanking the English line. Perhaps they did not cover geomorphology at Sandhurst. There are no ravines east or west of Battle Ridge today, and such features get deeper over time. Still, at least he thought about why the Normans did not flank the English line, which can not be said of most of the analyses.

Colonel Charles Lemmon

Lemmon was a founder member of the Battle & District Historical Society, and served as its president from 1963 until his death in 1973. Lemmon's engagement diagram from his 1956 booklet 'The Field of Hastings' (below) is the one shown to us on our school visit for the 900th anniversary. The diagram has an odd orientation because that booklet was very small.

A clearer version of the same diagram (below) appears in 'The Norman Conquest' published to celebrate the 900th anniversary of the battle in 1966, the military section of which was written by Lemmon.

Lemmon depicts the shield wall as a gently curving 750m line. He subscribes to Ramsay's theory that the English camped at Caldbec Hill. His Norman right flank is on the eastern side of the Hastings Ridge, out of William's sight and too far away to receive voice or hand gesture commands which contradicts Poitiers and Wace. He has addressed this issue in his diagram by removing some contours. He endorses Lower's Oakwood Ghyll location for the Malfosse, even though it contradicts the contemporary account Malfosse description. He offers no explanation for why the Norman cavalry would not ride around the open ends of the English line to attack Harold direct, which is disppointing for an ex-soldier.

Lemmon is the source of the oft-quoted myth that the Rochester Roman road crossed the Brede at Sedlescombe by ferry: "The Roman road from Hastings to Rochester and London crossed, at Sedlescombe, the River Brede, which derives its name from its former breadth, and is known to have remained very broad and tidal at that point as lace as the six­teenth century. There, in 1066, the crossing must have been made by ferry, just as travellers on Indian trunk roads have to cross rivers today. This would have rendered that portion impracticable for an army". It is difficult to imagine what Lemmon was thinking. Exactly as he says, the Brede was tidal to Sedlescombe. That means it was fluvial upstream of Sedlescombe. The fluvial Brede would have been almost exactly as wide as it is today, between 50cm and 2m. The Roman road would clearly have crossed the fluvial Brede on a bridge, albeit the original Roman bridge would probably have been replaced by a plank in the 11th century.

Brigadier Cyril Nelson Barclay

After retiring from the Army, Barclay became a well respected author and editor, being responsible for several Army journals. He says in his introduction that he became frustrated by poorly researched analyses of the Battle of Hastings, explaining that historians had misconstrued the contemporary account engagement descriptions because they are not soldiers. Major James, Lieutenant-Colonel Burne and Colonel Lemmon are obvious exceptions, but it seems that Barclay was unimpressed by their work too. He decided to set the record straight for the 900th anniversary of the battle in his 1966 book 'Battle 1066'. 

Barclay came up with a feature not mentioned before or since by anyone other than us: a location - labelled W.R. on diagram above - where be believes that William might have reconnoitred the orthodox English shiled wall before the Norman advance. His label is 1750m west of the Telham Lane junction with the A2100, and is therefore where the railway cutting passes between Loose Farm and Battle Abbey Farm. The photo below was taken from Battle Abbey terrace looking towards Telham Hill. The rightmost of the four exploded boxes looks though the railway cutting to see nearly all of the electricity pylon beyond the spur crest. In principle then, if the railway cutting was there in 1066, William could have seen the orthodox English shield wall from the W.R. label, but it wasn't. The top part of the Abbey ruins can be seen from 50.8989, 0.5046 on Telham Hill, but that view would have been 10m over the heads of the orthodox English shield wall.

The remainder of Barclay's contribution is unhelpful. He depicts the Normans attacking from the south. His shield wall is straight but implausibly long (1250m). His geography is distorted with 'Senlac Hill' and the English shield wall and Asten Brook (which he labels 'Sandlake Stream') inexplicably shifted 250m northwest. He says in his text that the English line is "admirably protected by sloping ground", but depicts the English left flank on level ground. He explains that the Norman cavalry was prevented from outflanking the English line by "precipitous ground" beyond the ends of the shield wall - perhaps taking his lead from Stenton - but it is not shown on his diagram and is not there on the ground.

David Armine Howarth

Howarth was a Naval officer and SOE participant during the WWII. After the war, he wrote books about naval and military history. His Norman invasion analysis is in his book '1066: The Year of Conquest', published in 1978.

Howarth depicts a fairly standard orthodox engagement. His has the shield wall straight and a lengthy 1100m. He has the Normans attacking from the south and along the Hastings Ridge crest to the southeast. His scenario has the same weaknesses as many others, with a 200m gap between both ends and the nearest stream, and those streams were only 30cm across, providing no protection at all. He offers no reasons and excuses for why William failed to outflank the English line. 

David Kenneth Smurthwaite

Smurthwaite was head of the library at the National Army Museum. He has been a prolific writer about military history. His 1984 book 'The Battlefields of England' includes a short section on the Battle of Hastings. It includes the watercolour engagement scenario below. Pretty though it is, this painting does not accurately depict the topography and it is inconsistent with Smurthwaite's engagement description, so we will ignore it.

Smurthwaite's engagement scenario is fairly standard stuff. He says that the armies each had roughly 7500 men. The Normans approached from Telham Hill to the south. Harold arranged his men in a "deep phalanx 700m long on the crest of the ridge". 

Perhaps the most interesting part of Smurthwaite's scenario is where he says: "While the slope in front of the ridge was relatively gentle, the sides of the spur running out to the ridge were steep and virtually ruled out the prospect of flanking attacks". This is not the same as Barclay, Burne and others above. They are saying that the ends of Battle Ridge fall away steeply, which is inaccurate, and also irrelevent because their shield walls do not reach within 200m of the end of Battle Ridge. 

Smurthwait is saying that the 500m long neck of the Hastings Ridge between Battle Ridge and Caldbec Hill has sides so steep that they ruled out the prospect of flanking attacks. Those slopes are 7 to 8 percent, steeper than the orthodox battlefield but nowhere near steep enough to discourage flanking attacks if they were undefended as Smuthwaite claims. It is irrelevant anyway. As we have said many times already, a straight shield wall has a 200m gap to the nearest stream, leaving a gaping hole through which the Norman cavalry could charge through unopposed to attack Harold from behind and above.

Stephen Morillo

Morillo is an American medieval military history academic, who specialised in Anglo-Norman warfare. He edited a book entitled 'The Battle of Hastings - Sources and Interpetation', published in 1996. It is a collection of papers about many aspects of the battle. Morillo's papers concern an interesting explanation of why the battle took so long, and a battlefield engagement diagrams in which he attempts to distill a synthetic engagement scenario (diagram below) from the most credible parts of everyone else's engagement scenarios. 

Morillo depicts the English shield wall straddling the ridgeway, almost equal on either side. He has the Normans attacking from Telham Hill to the south and along the Hastings Ridge crest to the southeast. The shield wall is dogleg shaped, a slightly straighter version of that depicted by Salzman. He implies that a stream protects Harold's right flank, but shows nothing protecting his left flank, and does not mention any protections in his narrative. He depicts the Norman right flank on the far side of the Hastings Ridge crest, out of Williams sight and unable to receive his commands.

Frank McLynn

Frank McLynn published '1066: The Year of the Three Battles' in 1998. It included the troop deployment diagram below.

McLynn's diagram looks like a reshaded and re-typefaced version of Fuller's, although it does not have an attribution as far as we can see. It even repeats Fuller's error in labelling the Marley Lane as 'Present Sedlescombe Road'. He switches Fuller's ravines at the ends of the shield wall for 'men on hillocks' protecting the flanks. They are shown as square dots on his diagram and as shading on Fuller's. Considering that Harold had no archers, it is difficult to imagine what he thinks these men might achieve and there are no hillocks on the ground where they are depicted or anywhere else in the vicinity.

Matthew Bennett

Matthew Bennett was a senior lecturer at Sandhurst for 30 years. He included a section on the Battle of Hastings in his 2003 book 'Campaigns of the Norman Conquest'. His troop disposition is shown above. It is really difficult to understand. Presumably the roughly east-west road is trying to depict Senlac Ridge but it is at the wrong orientation and didn't have a road. The other road purports to be on the route of the A2100 between Hastings and London, but it too is on the wrong orientation. Bennett implies that the English flanks were protected by woodland, but it is wrong.

Julian Humphrys

Julian Humphrys included a Battle of Hastings analysis in his 2006 book 'Clash of Arms: Twelve English Battles' (engagement diagram above). It should be the most important analysis of recent years, having been endorsed by the Battlefields Trust and published by English Heritage. But his shield wall is one of the shortest ever proposed, straight and barely 500m long. He explains that the English position: "... was a strong one, with the rear protected by ravines and forest, the flanks by sharply falling ground and the front by steep slopes and a marshy clay valley. If the Normans were to defeat him, it would have to be by a frontal attack." Only none of these natural protections were there. It would make no difference if they were because Humphrys shield wall is 250m shy of the western end of Battle Ridge (which he labels 'Senlac Hill'). The Normans could have ridden around the open end of the English right flank on level ground whatever might have been beyond the ends of the ridge.

Kelly DeVries

Kelly DeVries is a renowned medieval warfare expert, professor of medieval history, editor for the Journal of Medieval Military History, and Honorary Historical Consultant to the Royal Armouries. It sounds like he knows what he is talking about. He produced a pictoral engagement diagram for his 2006 book 'Battles of the Medieval world : 1000-1500 : from Hastings to Constantinople'. His attemt at a 3D landscape makes it difficult to see what is going on but it gives the impression that the English are deployed entirely west of the Hastings Ridge. The shield wall is roughly 600m long. He depicts the Normans attacking from Telham Hill and along the Hastings Ridge, to the south, southeast and east of modern Battle. He does not mention any flank protection in his narrative and depicts nothing protecting the English flanks. Uniquely, as far as we know, he depicts the Norman archers and infantry in a continuous line but does not explain why he thinks traditiomnal three division Norman troop disposition only applies to the cavalry.

DeVries updated his engagement theory for the 2017 magazine '1066 The Battle of Hastings', published by Medieval Warfare. It is anothe 3D landscape, but seems to have got the wrong end of the stick by erroneously combining the Hastings Ridge and Battle Ridge, under the single name 'Senlac Hill'. So, his diagram shows only one ridge, with an East-West orientation, like Battle Ridge, but carrying the A2100, labelled 'Hastings Road' and 'To London', like the Hastings Ridge. His engagement scenario is therefore even less coherrent than the others. It is a shame because he is the first since George to indicate the Malfosse where it should be vis-à-vis the battlefield, which is to say immediately adjacent. There is no ditch on the Battle Ridge crest now, and DeVries does not explain his thinking.

What it all means

A H Burne went through much the same analysis as above in his 1950 reference book 'Battlefields of England', producing the composite shield wall diagram above.

As we mention earlier, Burne concluded, euphemistically, that there is a "disparity of views". He does not mention how big the disparities are. Armies have been proposed with as few as 5000 men and as many as 25000. The shield wall might have been as short as 500m or as long as 2000m. It might have been straight or curved or doglegged. It might have had refused flanks or might not. The Normans might have attacked along the Hastings Ridge crest or from Telham Hill or both. The English might have been attacked in a camp at Battle, or they might have been attacked while they were marching from a camp at Caldbec Hill. William might have been prevented from flanking the English line by any combination of streams, ravines, bogs, steep slopes and/or impenetrable woodland - none of which could have been there - or he might have spurned a quick and easy victory in favour of an uncertain outcome by fighting on the most adverse terrain. The Malfosse might have been adjacent to the English left flank, or 500m north of the left flank, or 500m or 800m or 1500m north of the right flank, although none of these places fits any of the contemporary account descriptions.

More than 20 different initial troops deployments are depicted above. Dozens of others are described in books and papers about the Conquest, of which there are nearly 1000. Assuming that most of them have something novel to add, there might be hundreds of different engagement scenarios. It is no wonder that R Allen Brown once lamented that the only certainty about the battle is that the Normans won.

One point to take away is that when historians claim almost universal agreement that the Battle of Hastings was fought at Battle Abbey, there is a natural assumption that they also agree on how the battle was fought, but they don't. As Burne says, it is a case of "quot homines tot sententiae", there are as many opinions as there are men, only worse because some of them have more than one opinion.

Another is that no engagement scenario at the traditional battlefield matches more than a handful of the 30 plus battlefield clues described in the contemporary accounts, and then only the most general of clues, as we explain here. Each author is saying that his engagement scenario is less implausible than the others, but the other authors disagree. They are right to disagree. 'Less implausible' should not be mistaken for 'likely' or even 'credible'. The only chance that any of them are right is if all the contemporary account battlefield descriptions are wrong, apart from one or two paragraphs in seven of them that say or imply Battle Abbey was built on the battlefield.

In practice, historians only agree that the Battle of Hastings was fought at Battle Abbey. They only think this because they believe these seven contemporary accounts which contain statements that say or imply that Battle Abbey was built on the battlefield. We explain here why we think they are duplicitous or have been misinterpreted.

Without 'Abbey on the battlefield' evidence, the traditional Battle of Hastings narrative is baseless. It only fits a handful of the most general battlefield clues from the contemporary accounts, while contradicting dozens of others. It contradicts the geography, military tactics and events described in the contemporary accounts, as we explain here. The engagement depends on the Roman road from Rochester passing along the Hastings Ridge, which Margary disproved fifty years ago. It also depends on the Normans camping at modern Hastings, which has been disproved by dozens of archaeological excavations and twenty or so other inconsistencies, as we explain here and here. The confusion about the Norman landing and sea camp is caused by a misunderstanding about the location of a place named 'Hastinges' or 'Hastingas' in the contemporary accounts. We explain here the source of this confusion. 

In our opinion, the traditional Battle of Hastings narrative is baseless, and the battle was fought elsewhere, as we describe in our Sedlescombe Battlefield blog here.

---

Extracts used from our Battle of Hastings library

Brigadier C N Barclay - Battle 1066, 1966
R A Brown - The Battle of Hastings, Anglo-Norman Studies, 1980
A H Burne - The Battlefields of England, Methuen, 1950
A Clarke - The Battle of Hastings, Dryad Press, 1988
E S Creasy - Fifteen Decisive Battles, Richard Bentley, 1851
K DeVries - Battles of the Medieval world : 1000-1500 : from Hastings to Constantinople, Barnes & Noble, 2006
K DeVries - 1066 The Battle of Hastings, 2017, Medieval Warfare
E A Freeman - The History of the Norman Conquest, Its Causes and Its Results, Clarendon, 1869
H George - Battles of English History, Methuen & Co, 1895
C Gravett - Hastings 1066: The Fall of Saxon England, Osprey, 2000
F Hamilton - 1066, Dial Press, 1964
D A Howarth - 1066 : The Year of Conquest, Viking Press, 1978
Julian Humphrys - Clash of Arms: Twelve English Battles; English Heritage, 2006
Major James - The Battle of Hastings, The Royal Engineers Journal, January 1907
Colonel Lemmon - The Field of Hastings, Budd & Gillatt, 1956
W Lace - The Battle of Hastings, Greenhaven Press , 1996
Lawson - Observations upon a Scene in the Bayeux Tapestry, the Battle of Hastings and the Military System of the Late Anglo-Saxon State, Society for Medieval Military History, 2017
M A Lower - Observations on the landing of William the Conqueror, Sussex Archaeological Collections, 1849
M A Lower - On the Battle of Hastings, Sussex Archaeological Collections, Volume VI, 1853
J Malam - The Battle of Hastings, Cherrytree, 2007
S Morillo - The Battle of Hastings. Sources and Interpretations, 1996
F McLynn - 1066 The Year of Three Battles, Pimlico , 1999
C Oman - A History of the Art of War 378  - 1515, Methuen; First Edition 1885, Second Edition 1924
Sir J Ramsay - The Foundations of England, Swan Sonnenschein, 1898
J H Round - Mr. Freeman and the Battle of Hastings, EHR, 1894
J H Round - Feudal England, Swan Sonnenstein, 1895
J H Round - The Battle of Hastings, Sussex Archæological Collections, (vol. 42) 1899
George Slocombe - William, The Conqueror; 1961; G P Putman's Sons
F Stenton - Anglo-Saxon England, Oxford University Press, 1943
R Tames - 1066: a decisive battle, Oxford : Heineman Library, 1998