See the Norman Conquest Unfold in the Bayeux Tapestry, Scene by Scene

For centuries, the Bayeux Tapestry has preserved the glory of the Norman Conquest and the drama between Harold Godwinson of Wessex and William of Normandy. National Geographic went to France in the 1960s to photograph the 225-foot-long masterpiece, publishing the famous tapestry in its entirety for the first time in color.

History · From The Vault · By Kenneth M. Setton · Photographs by Milton A. Ford, Victor R. Boswell, Jr., George F. Mobley · Published September 15, 2026 · 45 min read

Topics: Textiles, Royalty, War, Castles, Ruins, Museums, From The Vault, History & Culture

This story originally published in the August 1966 issue of National Geographic magazine. This feature is presented as originally created and may contain stereotypes or negative depictions. See more digitized stories from our archives here. “Look at me I am well! I am still alive and by the grace of God I shall yet prove victor!" His harsh voice rising above the din of battle, William pushes back his helmet and bares his face to retreating troops who thought him slain. "Inflamed by his ardour," exults the warrior's chronicler, William of Poitiers, "the Normans then surrounded ... their pursuers and rapidly cut them down so that not one escaped." This episode marked the turning point of a blood-splashed October day just 900 years ago—a day which so changed the course of events that it is impossible to reckon our history without those few furious hours. For when darkness fell on Senlac Hill, near the seaside town of Hastings on the southeast coast of England, William, Duke of Normandy, had earned the lasting sobriquet of "Conqueror." And a flow of concepts began that would influence men's lives for centuries to come. William the Conqueror. Resolute and resourceful, avaricious, rarely humorous, always unsentimental, he found life a serious business. He expressed practical ideas in a grinding tone of voice. In the blood-and-iron era of the 11th century, he lived his greatest—and his worst—moments on the battlefield. His victory at the Battle of Hastings made England once more a part of Europe, as it had not been since the better days of the Roman Empire. After the Conquest, the Scandinavian influence on England began to give way to the political and cultural ideas of the Latin world.

Besides feudalism and a new aristocracy, the Normans implanted in England much of their language, law, architecture, and social customs. The island kingdom was thus brought into the mainstream of medieval civilization. Englishmen participated in the Crusades, the reform of church and monastery, and other movements of the time. After William's day the universities of Oxford and Cambridge were founded, following the establishment of the first European universities at Bologna and Paris, for he had made it possible for England to share in the intellectual revival of the 12th century. Ultimately the effects of his conquest would be felt in the New World. Such terms as "justice," "liberty," and "sovereign" crossed the Channel with William. Indeed, the Norman Conquest has left its mark forever on the language you are now reading.

My wife Jay and I waded through meadows that once were part of the battlefield of 1066 and looked up toward the peaceful town of Battle. Maps in hand, we had to struggle against the pastoral calm of the summer morning and the laughter of children to look into the past and envision the momentous carnage that took place here. Like Battle, nearby Hastings showed us a pretty face. She was busy with colorful preparations for the summer-long celebration of the 900th anniversary of the event that made her famous. The only armies we could imagine were those that would be assaulting a new domed exhibition hall complete with battlefield—a 288-square-foot model of the original. To relive the events of 1066, however, and to sense the thrust of their gore and glory, we had gone first to France—to Bayeux. Jay and I visited that city three times in the unforgettable weeks we followed the footsteps of William the Conqueror. We went there, of course, because the Normans immortalized their conquest in an incomparable work of 11th-century art—the famed Bayeux Tapestry. Stitched shortly after William's victory at Hastings, the Tapestry hangs now in the former Bishop's Palace across from the historic Cathedral of Bayeux. On its 77 yards of embroidered linen, the drama of the Conquest, and of its immortal figures, comes alive. The history of the Tapestry excites as much interest as the events it depicts. Miraculously, it survived two 12th-century burnings of the Cathedral of Bayeux, where it was almost certainly kept, as well as the vicissitudes of the Hundred Years' War and the 16th-century Wars of Religion. (Inside the secret operation to move the world’s most famous tapestry.)

Eyes scanning every inch of the panoramic work, we walked its length oblivious to the clamor of touring school children. Perhaps it appeared to them as an oversized cartoon strip—which, in fact, it was to the simple folk of the 11th century. We saw it as a masterwork of medieval artistry, an epic poem on linen, captivating, ingenuous, concisely edited. All through our journey in Normandy and England, its embroidered figures would flash across our minds again and again. Jay and I picked up William's trail at his birthplace, Falaise. To get there, we began by spanning the Atlantic in less time, and obviously with less peril, than he spent crossing the English Channel in 1066. But then, he was engaged in the dangerous business of making history; we were merely writing it. There are times when you know you are enjoying life, and we knew it as we drove in spring sunshine through the green fields and pink orchards of Normandy. We knew it when we drove into the sun-searched square of Falaise and William's heroic bronze figure on a spirited horse greeted us. Jay was delighted by his sudden appearance. Around the square—the Place Guillaume le Conquérant—almost every building had been flattened or damaged by the intense bombing of 1944. In August of that year, Falaise was the northern hinge of the pincer movement in which much of the German Seventh Army was trapped between Allied forces. William's statue, thrusting a bannered lance in defiance, came through the storm of bombs unscathed. Rearing in the center of the square, it guards the approach to the ducal castle, which served as an important stronghold from the 10th to the late 16th century. Then time and artillery forced its abandonment. Now the castle is a tourist site. But tourism has done history many a good turn, and because people want to see the castle, some of it has been restored. Actually the oldest parts now visible seem to date from the 12th and 13th centuries—after William's time.

In the castle of Falaise, however, history is borne on the wings of legend. The guide showed us the window from which the young Duke of Normandy, Robert I "the Magnificent," supposedly first saw the fair Herleve, also known as Arlette, the daughter of a tanner. She was washing clothes in a stream by the castle where visitors still idle. Another version of the story relates that Robert met her while returning from the hunt. But there can be no doubt what happened next. A stone chamber in the castle is pointed out as the place where the girl spent her first night with Robert. William was the child of their union. After William's birth, Herleve-Arlette was married off to a petty viscount, to whom she bore two famous sons—Bishop Odo of Bayeux, who fought beside his half brother in the Norman Conquest, and Count Robert of Mortain, who became one of the richest landholders in England.

Sometimes we suspect that Clio, the Muse of history, tries her hand at roulette. We can hardly do otherwise when we reflect that the illegitimate son of a tanner's daughter left an impress on England, and much of Europe, that has lasted to this day. An anonymous monk of Caen described William in adulthood as "... great in body and strong, tall in stature but not ungainly. He was also temperate in eating and drinking.... After his meal he rarely drank more than thrice. In speech he was fluent and persuasive, being skilled at all times in making clear his will. If his voice was harsh, what he said was always suited to the occasion..." William began his reign in 1035, at about the age of 7, when his father Robert I died in Asia Minor while returning from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Before his departure, Robert had prudently secured William's succession to the ducal throne. But in that turbulent age it was one thing to be recognized, another to rule; even in peaceful times a boy was subject to vagaries of guardianship. In William's day the church, not the state, wielded the most powerful sanctions, and a wise ruler got along well with the church. Invading Vikings, the Normans' own ancestors, had destroyed the monasteries in the ninth and early tenth centuries. Now the Dukes of Normandy were restoring them. William, constantly surrounded by monks, emerged as a champion of the church. In return, ecclesiastics helped him, after the Conquest, to organize his new kingdom of England. A number of important abbeys or nunneries stood in Normandy when William became duke, three of them in the capital city of Rouen, others at Jumièges, Fécamp, Montivilliers, Bernay, Cerisy la Forêt, St. Wandrille, and Mont St. Michel. We visited every site, but time destroys the past as history seeks to preserve it. Today William would recognize few besides the churches at Bernay and Cerisy la Forêt.

William's grandmother, Judith of Brittany, began the abbey church at Bernay. He knew it well. It is all that is left of the old Norman establishment. The other abbey buildings, rebuilt much later, now house the town hall. I parked our rented Renault in the square before the church at Bernay just as workmen were going inside. The foreman began to close the door as we approached. "May we see the church?" I asked. "It is closed. We are restoring it." "But we have come a long way." "Are you English?" "Americans." "Ah, then you have come a long way!" He let us in and we spent an exciting hour exploring. Many 11th-century columns with their capitals still survive, as well as bits of bright floor tiling, pieces of delicate stone tracery, and the like. Numerous skeletons have been exhumed from the floor of the nave, but there is no way of identifying them. The most important personages were buried closest to the altar. The foreman kept the remains in a locked box. He held fragments of sculpture with loving care as he showed them to us, and handled with equal care the bones of the long dead. They deserve our respect, he said—both the stones and the bones. At Cerisy la Forêt we found the magnificent abbey church, one of Europe's finest examples of Norman Romanesque architecture. William's father, Duke Robert, began the church about 1030; its hemicycle of three-storied windows forms an apse that combines beauty and solidity with breath-taking perfection. William himself finished the church. Workmen are now doing a thorough job of restoration. Unfortunately, in 1811 the west facade and four bays of the nave were demolished to sell the stones and thus pay for the repair of the central tower, which had been struck by lightning. I do not know who proposed this extraordinary way to raise money, but when idiocy reaches the sublime it must—like the church itself—command an incredulous awe.

In Rouen we found little that William knew. He rebuilt its cathedral, but that has long since disappeared. The present Cathedral of Notre Dame, one of the glories of Gothic architecture, dates largely from the 13th to the 16th centuries.

The first decade of young William's rule in Normandy was tumultuous. In 1046, as he approached his majority, his cousin Guy of Burgundy, who aspired to become Duke of Normandy, led a large-scale revolt against the ducal authority. In desperate plight, William appealed to his overlord, King Henry I of France—little more than the region around Paris at that time—who came to his young vassal's aid early the following year. In the hard-fought battle at Val ès Dunes, to the southeast of Caen, William first proved himself one of the century's greatest warriors. "Hurling himself upon his enemies," noted William of Poitiers, "he terrified them with slaughter..." So many of the rebels were pushed into the River Orne that "the mills at Borbillon were stopped with corpses." We set out to find the battlefield, a study of the map sending us along the road from Bellengreville to Garcelles-Secqueville. It was a superb day in June. The sun sparkled in a cloudless sky. But while the battle sites of World War II are unhappily easy to find in Normandy, you need luck as well as maps to locate an 11th-century battlefield. "William must have sent the rebels spinning somewhere around here," I observed to Jay, "but how can we find the place?" "You just drove by a marker that says 'Bataille...' of something or other," she replied. "We were going too fast for me to see it." "Just a memento of the last war." "Well," she said, "I'd like to be sure." So I turned the car around, and a few minutes later we reached the spot. Jay had seen a marker all right. A white stone insert on a triangular concrete pillar bore in eloquent capitals the simple words: "Bataille du Val ès Dunes, 1047." We got out of the car and stood by the roadside. A great plain sloped gently to the south, green with risen oats swaying in a cooling breeze. Jay picked a single oat-laden stem; it lies before me on the desk as I write.

We left the field of Val ès Dunes almost as triumphantly as William himself. He had left it more than ever the Duke of Normandy. The days of his minority had ended, but his future was to be filled with unremitting struggle.

For more than a dozen years following the victory of Val ès Dunes, William fought with Count Geoffrey Martel of Anjou. Early in the contest William seized the city of Alençon in a murderous night attack and, through the winter of 1051-52, laid siege to the towering fortress of Domfront. Today Alençon has little to interest anyone pursuing William, so we took the road westward to Domfront. The ruins of the fortress perch on a high rocky ridge. Extensive reaches of medieval wall still stand, and one huge corner of the Norman keep, or donjon, also remains. The walls and outworks are enclosed in a tree-shaded park. From the castle heights, we commanded lovely vistas of the green countryside dotted with pear orchards. Below the castle, in the valley of the River Varenne, the 11th-century Church of Notre Dame sur lEau—Our Lady on the Water—stands by a little bridge. William heard Mass in the church during the siege of Domfront. In 1836 road builders laid siege to the building itself, ruthlessly stripping away the side aisles and shortening the nave. Now, however, the fine Romanesque tower over the transept crossing has been restored as William knew it. After Domfront, William found himself embroiled with King Henry, who saw in the growth of the ducal power a threat to French suzerainty over Normandy. Now began a century and a half of warfare between the Dukes of Normandy (who were also, after 1066, the Kings of England) and the Capetian Kings of France. In February, 1054, Normans defeated a pillaging, undisciplined French army of invasion near the castle of Mortemer in northeastern Normandy, snatching William from disaster. For almost thirty years I had wondered what Mortemer might be like, and at six o'clock one rainy dawn we set out from Rouen and headed northeast for Neufchâtel en Bray. Mortemer lies only a few miles farther. A foreboding fog enveloped the area. Cows stood motionless in meadows bordered with trees.

We stopped at the town's single roadside cafe for a cup of coffee and chatted with the proprietress. She had never heard of the Battle of Mortemer. Beyond the town the road rose to a fair height which gave us a long view, even in the fog, of rolling green farmland. In the sunshine it would have been a pretty scene, but a grim cold lay over the landscape. Here was indeed a fitting place for battle. Maybe there is a marker at Mortemer. We did not look for one. A discouraging rain renewed its steady patter on the windshield. We headed southeast toward Gerberoy. There in 1079 William besieged a group of young rebels led by his disloyal son Robert Curthose (short-hose), who troubled William for years. To break the siege, the rebels issued in force from the castle of Gerberoy and carried the field against William, who was wounded and almost killed in the fray. That was one of the blacker days in William's life. It was not our day either. The rain continued. We got lost. We met no one on the roads who might give us directions. We stopped at a farmhouse here and a little store there to ask the way. We wondered how William had ever found the place. But he had—and so, eventually, did we. Little seems to have happened at Gerberoy since William's siege of Robert Curthose. A charming little town where huge roses climb over brick and timbered houses, it has now become an artists' colony. We lunched before the raised fireplace in the Hostellerie du Vieux Logis. The fire felt good on this surprisingly cold day in early June. On our table a vase of flowers was inscribed with the encouraging sentiment, "On voit plus de vieux ivrognes que de vieux médecins"—"One sees more old drunks than old physicians." We had a steak and drank to William's memory in a robust red wine. Then and there we decided to leave the battlefields and, like William himself on many an occasion, to seek the peace of monasteries.

What is left of the abbey church of Jumièges lies 17 miles by road west of Rouen. William knew the place well. It underwent much rebuilding in the 10th and 11th centuries, and during William's lifetime handsome structures rose in the Romanesque style. As we walked under shade trees amid the ruins of Jumièges, we seemed to step back into the quiet past of medieval monasticism. Two vast Romanesque towers flank the entrance to the majestic nave. Gothic arches lie beyond, framing what were chapels long centuries ago. Our glance fell upon the remains of stone tracery, broken by the destructive forces of man and now being withered by those of nature. Here the famous abbots and monks of Jumièges led their lives in affluent detachment from the outer world. But time itself envied their tranquility, and princes envied their wealth. From the 15th century the abbey began to decline. Today, no monks walk in its shaded cloister or raise their voices in evensong. Only history dwells there now.

By 1066, twenty or more new monastic houses had been established in Normandy, most of them by the vigorous new aristocracy which was to aid William in the invasion of England and give the English church some twenty-two abbots and five bishops. Norman monasticism, solid and well organized, helped to unify the duchy and set the tone of its social life. The abbots and bishops often proved to be great builders and excellent administrators. About 1051 William of Normandy married Matilda of Flanders. To remove the ecclesiastical ban which fell upon their marriage, possibly because they were distant cousins, William and Matilda built in Caen the Abbaye aux Hommes, dedicated to St. Étienne, and the Abbaye aux Dames, dedicated to La Trinité. In later years they embellished the abbey churches with some of the spoils of the Conquest. Caen, William's favorite residence, owes its first importance entirely to him. For he made it, as it has always remained, the capital of lower Normandy. In 1944 bombing destroyed three-fourths of the city, and more than 1,500 persons took shelter in the great abbey church of St. Étienne. A marble slab set in the pavement before its high altar records in Latin, "Here the invincible William the Conqueror is buried, Duke of Normandy and King of England, founder of this church, who died in the year 1087.” But William is not there. His body lay undisturbed until 1522, when his tomb was opened and resealed, but 40 years later, during the uprisings of the Reformation, Huguenots destroyed the tomb and scattered William's remains, except for one thigh bone. That, too, may have gone when another tomb built for him was destroyed by French revolutionaries in 1793. The same violent social upheavals disturbed Matilda's slumber. But her bones were saved and today lie beneath the pavement in the choir of Caen's La Trinité.

Disinterred in 1961, Matilda's remains showed her to have been only about fifty inches tall. William's thigh bone indicated his height was about five feet, ten inches. They must have been a picturesque couple as they sat side by side on state occasions; bulky William filling his throne, little Matilda's feet not even touching the floor. After he wed, William's power grew rapidly. In 1063-64 he conquered the rich county of Maine, securing his southwest border. If his prestige and security were of recent origin, so were the wealth and position of the men around him who would join in the Conquest. Most of the great families of Normandy had risen to prominence in the half century or less before 1066. Norman society was still largely unstratified, mobile, adventurous. Across the English Channel, too, events were moving, unpredictably but inexorably, toward the climax of Hastings. King Edward the Confessor, who stemmed from the royal West-Saxon line, was pro-Norman, being related through his mother to the Norman duke. Edward found himself opposed by the powerful Saxon earl, Godwin of Wessex, who with his several sons controlled most of southern England. One of these sons was Harold, whose sister (Godwin's daughter Edith) had married the Confessor. But in 1051, when Earl Godwin and his sons revolted unsuccessfully, King Edward banished them from England. At about this time, he named William of Normandy his heir, with the assent of various magnates of the realm. The following year, however, the rebels returned to England and drove many of Edward's Norman adherents into exile. Now Edward's rule became largely nominal, and after the death of Earl Godwin, in 1053, Englishmen felt the power of Harold, who began to dream of succeeding his childless brother-in-law as king. When Edward died, who would wear his crown, Harold or William? One of the most notable combats in history lay ahead. To the victor would go a kingdom.

Earl Harold Godwinson crossed the Channel, probably in 1064, from Bosham in Sussex to the Continent. Edward the Confessor, according to chroniclers, sent him to confirm the Norman duke's right of succession to the English crown. For reasons of his own, Harold thought it politic to go. A strong wind, however, carried Harold to the coast of Ponthieu, whose count cast him into prison. William demanded and easily secured Harold's release. He took him to Rouen, "and there," states William of Poitiers, "William sumptuously refreshed Harold with splendid hospitality after all the hardships of his journey." Now the earl had to swear an oath of fealty to the duke and promise to "employ all his influence and wealth to ensure that after the death of King Edward the kingdom of England should be confirmed in the possession of the duke." A scene in the Bayeux Tapestry shows Harold taking this oath, a grave impediment to his own royal aspirations. At this time William took Harold with him in a campaign against Brittany. The Bayeux Tapestry shows Harold rescuing two Norman soldiers from the treacherous sands at the mouth of the River Couesnon near the famous monastery of Mont St. Michel. (How is France moving the Bayeux Tapestry? Very carefully.)

Although Jay and I rescued no one, I did save our car from a dunking. Not allowed to park on the causeway connecting Mont St. Michel with the mainland because of the many tourist buses already there, we had to park on the beach below. Violent winds lashed an infuriated sea, but the attendants assured us that our car, together with some thirty others on the beach, would be safe. We had just started dinner at the hotel when the head waitress informed us that the sea was rising rapidly under the impact of the winds. Now it would be all right to park on the causeway! The wind blew so hard I could hardly stay on my feet. But, inspired by Harold's exploit, I reached the car, with the rising water scarcely six feet away. The gallant little Renault started, although drenched with salt spray, and I drove through almost a foot of water now covering the only approach to the road above. It was just in time. Twenty minutes later we watched four cars helplessly awash at the foot of the causeway. Edward the Confessor died on January 5, 1066. "The next day," says the chronicler known as Florence of Worcester, "he was buried in kingly style amid the bitter lamentations of all present."

There were by now three prime contenders for the English throne—Duke William of Normandy, Earl Harold of Wessex, and King Harold Hardraada of Norway, whose ambitions symbolized the close connections which had bound Normandy, England, and Scandinavia together for generations. Would the disputed kingdom be ruled by a native dynasty, leaving England to her insularity? Would she be linked to the Germanic north, detached from the main currents of European civilization? Or would she fall to the ruler of Latinized Normandy and be nourished by a cultural renascence? Momentous questions these, and men did well to ponder the celestial meaning—if they could only interpret it aright—of a "star with hair" which suddenly appeared in the skies. "On April 24 in this year [1066]," says Florence of Worcester, "a comet was seen not only in England but, it is said, all over the world, and it shone for seven days with an exceeding brightness." This was what we now know as Halley's comet—a once-in-75-years visitor due to return again in 1986. The Bayeux Tapestry portrays it with the Latin caption: "These men wonder at the star." According to the Norman chronicler William of Jumièges, "many thought that this portended a great change in some kingdom." Of course, they were right. On the very day the priests buried Edward the Confessor, Harold was crowned King of England in the new Abbey of Westminster, which had been consecrated only nine days before. His decisiveness reveals premeditation. Whether by a change of mind or under duress, Edward in the end, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, designated Harold as his heir. The quickness of Harold's act must have taken William by surprise, but the great feudal lords of Normandy soon pledged their support for an invasion of England to help their duke secure the throne. He lost no time in preparing for the tasks ahead.

"It would be tedious to tell in detail," says the chronicler William of Poitiers, "how by his prudent acts ships were made, arms and troops, provisions and other equipment assembled for war, and how the enthusiasm of the whole of Normandy was directed towards this enterprise." William addressed an appeal to Rome, and the Pope sent him the "gift of a banner as a pledge of the support of St. Peter." William recruited his feudal levies from Normandy and his mercenaries from all parts of France, Flanders, and the Norman territories in southern Italy. He built a fleet. By August the ships had assembled at the mouth of the River Dives. In early September they sailed to St. Valéry at the mouth of the Somme, whence an easterly wind could carry them across the Channel to the south coast of England In St. Valéry sur Somme, as in so many European cities, the street names of today preserve the history of long-dead yesterdays. The Quai du Romerel, for example, running part way through St. Valéry, derives its name from Rome Relais, meaning "the place where pilgrims stopped on the road to Rome." It once marked the water's edge. On this street our hotel, a converted villa called the Relais Guillaume de Normandie, stands more or less where William moored his ships. From our window we watched sheep grazing on marshland that also lay under water in William's day.

On the upper façade of an old warehouse facing the bay, we found a metal plaque that reads: "From this port in 1066 William of Normandy set out at the head of a fleet of 400 sail for the conquest of England." Another plaque on a nearby casino, where we had lunch, shows three fierce, helmeted figures in the prow of a ship bound for England. Now we too were bound for England. For some three weeks we had pursued William into almost every nook and cranny of Normandy. At Le Touquet, where we were to catch our plane, we watched a violent sea churning the sands below our hotel window. Had we planned, like William, to cross the Channel by boat, we too would have had to wait. While the north winds held the anxious William at St. Valéry, and Harold Godwinson kept watch in London, the startling news came that the Norwegian King Harold Hardraada had launched an invasion of northern England. Pushing up the Humber and the Ouse, he defeated the northern earls at Fulford near York on September 20, 1066. Hardraada occupied York, where the townfolk received him almost as a deliverer. With extraordinary suddenness, Harold Godwinson marched north to meet this last Viking invasion of England. On September 25, 1066, he surprised and overwhelmed the Norwegian king, who lost his life in the Battle of Stamford Bridge on the Derwent. It was a stunning victory, incredible in its completeness. The world had known Hardraada from Palestine to Perth as one of the boldest warriors of the time. But the encounter with the Norwegians had weakened the English forces. Now came a new and greater foe. The winds over the English Channel had shifted from north to easterly. Two days after Harold's victory at Stamford Bridge, the Norman fleet set sail. "Thus with a favourable wind," says William of Poitiers, "they all reached Pevensey, and there without opposition they freely disembarked." It was September 28.

When we crossed the Channel, the winds were less favorable; our plane arrived on time at Lydd, in Kent, in a dark drizzle. But the weather's gloom was quickly dispelled by Group Captain Ralph Ward and his friend Air Marshal Sir David Lee, who met us. Ralph Ward is in charge of the Nine Hundredth Anniversary Celebrations for the County Borough of Hastings. He drove us through Rye and beautifully kept little Winchelsea to his 600-year-old home, Stonelynk Farm, in Fairlight, just outside Hastings. We spent the night with Ralph and his wife Constance. Next morning they produced a car for us, and we set out to follow William around England.

After landing at Pevensey, William constructed a fortification, doubtless within the Roman walls, which then sat much closer to the sea than they do today. The Norman Conquest begins the medieval history of Pevensey Castle, which was fortified in 1587 against the Spanish Armada and again in 1940 against the Germans. The castle has yielded more than once to siege but never to assault. Jay and I climbed around its Roman walls and Norman keep, then drove down to the bay where William's ships first anchored. It was easy to find a parking area on the shore. I paid the required fee, and without looking at the yellow ticket I received in return, I handed it to Jay. She gave it back to me with a happy smile. It read, "William the Conqueror's Car Park, Pevensey Bay, Parking 2/-." William himself did not park at Pevensey very long. He pushed quickly on to the port of Hastings and built another fort. The Bayeux Tapestry tells the story. His men dug a deep ditch and threw up a mound on the fortress hill. They planted a wooden palisade on the mound, making a castle of the motte-and-bailey" type—a mound and court. It was later rebuilt in stone.