Editing Harold Godwinson (section)

== Death ==
The widely held belief that Harold died by an arrow to the eye is a subject of much scholarly debate. A Norman account of the battle, ''[[Carmen de Hastingae Proelio]]'' ("Song of the Battle of Hastings"), said to have been written shortly after the battle by [[Guy (Bishop of Amiens)|Guy]], Bishop of Amiens, says that Harold was lanced and his body dismembered by four knights, probably including Duke William. Twelfth-century Anglo-Norman histories, such as [[William of Malmesbury]]'s ''Gesta Regum Anglorum'' and [[Henry of Huntingdon]]'s ''Historia Anglorum'', recount that Harold died by an arrow wound to his head. An earlier source, [[Amatus of Montecassino]]'s ''L'Ystoire de li Normant'' ("History of the Normans"), written only twenty years after the battle of Hastings, contains a report of Harold being shot in the eye with an arrow, but this may be an early fourteenth-century addition.{{Sfn|Foys|2010|pp=161–163}} The sources for how Harold met his death are contradictory, thus modern historians have not been able to produce a definitive story without finding something that will compromise any hypothesis.{{Sfn|Morris|2012|pages=183–187}}

[[File:Bayeux Tapestry scene57 Harold death.jpg|thumb|upright=1.0|Harold's death depicted in the [[Bayeux Tapestry]], reflecting the tradition that Harold was killed by an arrow in the eye. The [[Bayeux Tapestry tituli|annotation]] above states ''[Hic] Harold Rex interfectus est'', "[Here] King Harold is killed".]]

In the panel of the Bayeux Tapestry with the inscription "Hic Harold Rex Interfectus Est" ("Here King Harold is killed") a figure standing below the inscription is currently depicted gripping an arrow that has struck his eye. This, however, may have been a late 18th or early 19th century modification to the Tapestry.{{Sfn|Foys|2016}} Some historians have questioned whether this man is intended to be Harold or if the panel shows two instances of Harold in sequence of his death:{{Sfn|Livingston|2022}} the figure standing to the left of the central figure commonly thought to be Harold, and then lying to the right, almost supine, being mutilated beneath a horse's hooves. Etchings made of the Tapestry in the 1730s show the standing figure with differing objects. Benoît's 1729 sketch shows only a dotted line indicating stitch marks which is longer than the currently shown arrow and without any indication of fletching, whereas all other arrows in the Tapestry are fletched. [[Bernard de Montfaucon]]'s 1730 engraving has a solid line resembling a spear being held overhand matching the manner of the standing figure currently depicted with an arrow to the eye; while stitch marks for where such a spear may have been removed can be seen in the Tapestry.{{Sfn|Livingston|2022}} In 1816, [[Charles Stothard]] was commissioned by the [[Society of Antiquaries of London]] to make a copy of the Bayeux Tapestry. He included in his reproduction previously damaged or missing parts of the work with his own hypothesised depictions. This is when the  arrow first appears.{{Efn|Stothard's is the first record of the Bayeux Tapestry after it was damaged during the French Revolution and before repairs were carried out in the 19th century.<ref>{{Cite web |author=[[Society of Antiquaries of London]]  |title=Bayeux Tapestry  |publisher=College of Antiquaries  |location=London  |url=https://www.sal.org.uk/collections/explore-our-collections/collections-highlights/bayeux-tapestry  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221024084955/https://www.sal.org.uk/collections/explore-our-collections/collections-highlights/bayeux-tapestry  |access-date=4 May 2023 |archive-date=24 October 2022  |date=2020}}</ref>}}{{Sfn|Livingston|2022}} It has been proposed that the supine figure once had an arrow added by over-enthusiastic nineteenth-century restorers that was later unstitched.{{Sfn|Bernstein|1986|pages=148–152}} Many believe the figure with an arrow in his eye to be Harold as the name "Harold" is above him. This has been disputed by examining other examples from the Tapestry where the visual centre of a scene, not the location of the inscription, identifies named figures.{{Sfn|Foys|2010|pp=171–175}} A further suggestion is that both accounts are accurate, and that Harold suffered first the eye wound, then the mutilation, and the Tapestry is depicting both in sequence.{{sfn|Brooks|Walker|1997|pp=63-92}}