“To receive the oath William caused a parliament to be called. It is commonly said that it was at Bayeux that he had his great council assembled. He sent for all the holy bodies thither, and put so many of them together as to fill a whole chest, and then covered them with a pall; but Harold neither saw them, nor knew of their being there; for nought was shown or told him about it; and over all was a philactery, the best that he could select.... When Harold placed his hand upon it, the hand trembled and the flesh quivered; but he swore and promised upon his oath to take Ele to wife, and to deliver up England to the Duke; and thereunto to do all in his power, according to his might and wit, after the death of Edward, if he should live, so help him God and the holy relics there! Many cried ‘God grant it!’ and when Harold had kissed the saints and had risen upon his feet, the Duke led him up to the chest and made him stand near it, and took off the chest the pall that had covered it, and showed Harold upon what holy relics he had sworn; he was sorely alarmed at the sight.”[55]
In this account there is a little inconsistency. We are told of Harold’s amazement when he had seen the relics, but we were previously informed that when he first placed his hand upon the chest “the hand trembled and the flesh quivered.” If he did not know that dead men’s bones were under the pall he must have suspected it; he must have known that this was the customary mode of taking an oath.[56]
In the Tapestry, Harold stands between two objects. One of them is a reliquary of the usual form, to which two staves are attached for the purpose of carriage. This reliquary has, however, a _superaltare_ attached to it, such as is usually placed upon altars for the purpose of containing the consecrated wafer. The other object is an altar of the usual form and character. There does not seem to have been much temptation to William to practise a trick upon Harold, for he had so completely committed himself to the Duke that he could not avoid taking the oath, even though no covering had concealed the bones. But whether William did or did not practise this base artifice upon the Earl, it was natural that the Tapestry, being the work of Matilda, should endeavour to throw a veil over it. He is certainly in the Tapestry exhibited as swearing by the relics in the chest and by the host upon the altar, and he evidently touches them as if he knew they contained something very dreadful--he could not approach red-hot iron much more charily. We can readily conceive that after the ceremony William, by way of making as lively an impression as possible upon the mind of his victim, displayed the bones to him in all their sepulchral hideousness, and told them out in full tale before him. In such a case Harold might readily shrink from the exhibition, and be surprised at the number of martyrs which William’s diligence had brought together. William was too brave a man to attempt the mean artifice which historians ascribe to him. Harold never accused him of it. When reminded before the battle of Hastings, by a messenger of the Duke’s, of the oath he had taken, he sent this answer back, “Say to the Duke that I desire he will not remind me of my covenant nor of my oath; if I ever foolishly made it and promised him any thing, I did it for my liberty. I swore in order to get my freedom; whatever he asked I agreed to; and I ought not to be reproached, for I did nothing of my own free will.”[57]