Battle of Pevensy?

Prince_of_Florence

Prince_of_Florence

Could Harold Godwinson have thought William the Bastard more of a threat and decided to wait for the Normans to arrive? What would the repercussions be of a Stamford-Bridgesque march to Pevensey as the Normans are landing, due to, I don't know, intelligence, sheer dumb luck or a bit of both? I have played with this idea for a long while, but never really threw it out anywhere.

A problem that I thought of would be that Harald Hardrade would be free to kick around the Northumbrians and other lords in the north. But with William taken out, be it through death on the field or capture by Anglo-Saxon forces, would it make it easier to move north to take on the Norwegians? Or if, God forbid, Harold dies anyway, would the Normans have the support or the strength to attack the Norse/Scottish/Anglo-Saxon army of Hardrade?

Harold's brother, Gyrth urged him to support William's claim, but what if he decided to fight back with all of his strength? Could the Anglo-Saxons have had any chance of defeating the Normans and their Knights? Could a surprise attack near the shore mean the difference between a Anglo-Saxon England, or maybe even a Norse England?

What do you all think? This IS my first post here, so I wanted to make it something worth thinking about. But I'm sure someone else has discussed this before. :D
 
Cymraeg

Cymraeg

Tricky. Harold II did have sons, but as he was married 'in the Danish manner' I think that whilst they were accepted by the laity they were not acknowledged by the clergy. So, if he had beaten off both William the Bastard and Harald Hardrada, I'm not sure what the succession would have been like.
 

Lindseyman

Edgar the Atheling was actually proclaimed King after Harold's death (not that it bothered William too much!). Remember that Harold nearly pulled it off OTL. If the shield wall had held position, who knows!!

If he had waited for William and won the alt Battle of Hastings, Harold would still have had to march north to face Hardrada albeit not at the pace he marched south OTL. Presumably there would have been a battle somewhere in the Midlands (perhaps where Suetonius defeated Boudicca?). I would not like to guess who would have won but it would have been as close as Hastings NOT like OTL Stamford Bridge.

If Harold had died, I suspect that the Saxon nobility would have supported William, given that Edgar was militarily not an option.
 
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Simreeve

Cymraeg said:
Tricky. Harold II did have sons, but as he was married 'in the Danish manner' I think that whilst they were accepted by the laity they were not acknowledged by the clergy. So, if he had beaten off both William the Bastard and Harald Hardrada, I'm not sure what the succession would have been like.
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Since the birth of those sons he'd actually become married under Christian rites, in early 1066, to a sister of the earls Edwin and Morcar. She bore him a son (or possibly twin sons, because some historians disagree about which wife was actually the mother of the youngest of the "other" sons), although they weren't born until after the OTL Battle of Hastings.
 
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