The next pictures represent the election and coronation of Harold. William of Malmesbury says, “While the grief for the King’s death was yet fresh, Harold, on the very day of the Epiphany, seized the diadem, and extorted from the nobles their consent; though the English say, that it was granted him by the King.”
In many respects the Tapestry is more candid than the Chroniclers. It here says, HIC DEDERUNT HAROLDO CORONAM REGIS--Here they gave the crown of the King to Harold; and the next legend is, HIC RESIDET HAROLD REX ANGLORUM--Here is seated Harold, King of the English. One contemporary writer denies that Harold was anointed at all, or had any claim but his own usurpation. In the Doomsday Survey, Harold is mentioned as seldom as possible, and when his name does occur it is not as King Harold, but Harold the Earl. The Norman chroniclers, writing subsequently to the time when William had established his conquest, seldom write his name without appending some derogatory epithet to it, such as “the perfidious and perjured King Harold.” All this seems to favour the idea that the Tapestry was designed during the first visit of William to Normandy. He had not then broken faith with the Saxon nobles who thronged his court; he was not yet independent of their good will, so that in stating his own claims to the crown, he found it necessary not entirely to ignore their views. After he was firmly established, he cared not what women stitched or clerks wrote.
The artist has managed the election-scene very adroitly. One nobleman, in the name of the people, offers Harold the crown, which, as he intimates by the finger directed towards the death-scene of Edward, he has just taken from the head of that monarch. Harold looks most wistfully at it. He seems to say--I should like very much to have it, but I know it does not belong to me. For a moment he forbears to extend his hand to grasp it. His right elbow is towards it, but his hand remains upon his belt. On a line with the crown is an axe, held by another nobleman, somewhat significantly turned towards Harold. Harold has his own
axe in his left hand, and it too, though apparently by accident, is turned towards himself. The Norman artist, in thus managing the subject, manifestly serves the cause of William better than if he had altogether disowned the fact of Harold’s election.