Harold's Escape

This is the well-known tale, which told that Harold did not die in the great battle. He escaped, it was said, and lived for a longer or a shorter time, according to different accounts, devoting his latter days, according to the most celebrated version, to a life of penance. The King, so the story runs, was found half dead by some of the women who came to tend the wounded. He was then carried to Winchester by two men of middling rank, Thegns of the lowest class or churls of the highest. There he was nursed for two years, not by his royal sister, but by a Saracen woman skilled in surgery. He then went into the kindred lands of Saxony and Denmark, to ask help for England from her brethren on the mainland. No such help however was forthcoming, and, after a long series of adventures, Harold forsook the world and became a recluse in a cell attached to Saint John's minster at Chester, the minster which had once witnessed the homage done to Eadgar the Peaceful by all the Under-kings of Britain. There he died at a great age, having only in his last moments revealed to those around him that the lowly anchorite was no other than the native King of conquered England. --Freeman