How Harold was depicted before the Bayeux Tapestry (and what it tells us) | Curator's Corner Ep101 [14:22]

YouTube ^ | October 8, 2026 | The British Museum

[SunkenCiv]

You may know King Harold II for one thing: losing the Battle of Hastings in 1066. But is this Harold's whole story? 

In 2023 a remarkable coin hoard was discovered in Yorkshire, England, that shows Harold in a different light. 

This is the first recorded hoard of coins which can definitely be dated to the year 1066. Containing only coins struck during Harold’s brief reign of 282 days, the hoard reveals a king whose authority was recognised across England, and whose government could produce new coins with great speed. 

Join Elina Screen, Curator of Medieval and Modern Coin Collections at the British Museum, to find out what this discovery tells us about this king and one of the most famous years in English history... 

How Harold was depicted before the Bayeux Tapestry 
(and what it tells us) | Curator's Corner Ep101 | 14:22 
The British Museum | 796K subscribers | 7,469 views | October 8, 2026

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TOPICS: History; Science; Travel
KEYWORDS: coins; epigraphyandlanguage; godsgravesglyphs; haroldgodwinson; kingharoldii; yorkshire

[SunkenCiv]

00:00 England's most famous loser?
00:33 England in 1066
01:35 Harold Godwinson's short and eventful reign
03:25 The York Area Hoard
04:28 Who owned the coins?
06:08 Mints and moneyers
08:56 The French coinage system
10:04 Harold's public image
12:10 William the Conqueror coin
13:26 Harold II: a neglected character

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YouTube transcript reformatted at textformatter.ai *may* follow.

[SunkenCiv]

[snip] The British Museum hopes to acquire the York Area hoard. We are very grateful to all the members, patrons and members of the public who have donated to our appeal. The hoard is currently on display in the central case in Gallery 68 until July 2027. [/snip]

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

I seem to remember he kept marrying different women to gain money and power.

[Red Badger]

You’ll put you eye out, Harold!.............

[Zhang Fei]

Gotta hand it to him - possibly one of the unluckiest highly-competent warrior kings ever. Could Alexander have won two major battles within weeks of each other, on the basis of part-time militia? Harold certainly failed.

[ClearCase_guy]

[Dr. Sivana]

My favorite

[Red Badger]

[SunkenCiv]

Transcript

Chapter 1: England’s Most Famous Loser?

Harold the Second’s death is perhaps the most famous of any king in English history, immortalised in the Bayeux Tapestry. He’s gone down as England’s most famous loser. But there’s another side to this ruler. It’s a story that an exciting new discovery tells us. I’m Elina Screen, Curator of Medieval and Modern Coin Collections, and welcome to my corner.

Chapter 2: England in 1066

In 2023, metal detectorists made a really exciting discovery: The York Area Hoard. You see about 30 coins from the hoard here today. This was a particularly important hoard because it is the first one which we can definitively date to 1066, a very eventful year in English history. In 1066, England was a wealthy and well-organised kingdom. The ruler was a king called Edward the Confessor, and he ruled with the help of local nobles called thegns and great lords called earls. But England and Edward had a problem. As Edward the Confessor lay dying, the question was who should succeed? Edward did not have children; he had a young great-nephew, but Edgar was only 14 at the most at the time. Duke William of Normandy thought Edward had promised him the throne. And in Norway, King Harald Hardrada thought that England would make a nice addition to his territory. But as the nobles came together, they in fact chose somebody quite different.

Chapter 3: Harold Godwinson’s Short and Eventful Reign

They chose Harold Godwinson to become Harold the Second, and Harold was crowned king on the 6th of January, 1066. So who was Harold? Harold was a member of a major noble family, the Godwinson family. He was wealthy, well-connected, and importantly, given those military threats that were likely to be looming, he was a successful military leader. But Harold did not have an easy time of his reign; it was short and eventful. Both Duke William and King Harald of Norway decided to launch invasions of England. Harold successfully defeated the King of Norway at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, but on the 14th of October 1066, Harold died fighting against Duke William of Normandy at the Battle of Hastings. William successfully took over England and is known today as William the Conqueror. Harold has gone down in English history as having a very short reign, only 282 days in all, from his succession to his death at the Battle of Hastings. And our view of his reign has tended to be dominated by the Bayeux Tapestry and by Norman sources. The Bayeux Tapestry is a bit more nuanced in how it presents Harold, but later Norman sources, the texts like William of Poitiers, very much emphasised that Harold was a usurper, that he had been disloyal and broken his oath to William, and he therefore was deservedly dead at the Battle of Hastings. But the coins help us to open up Harold’s reign and to say much more about those 282 brief days that he ruled, and about Harold’s ability to project his image.

Chapter 4: The York Area Hoard

So here we have part of the York Area Hoard. It is in total 179 coins, including six halfpennies. So that’s coins which have been cut in half like this little one here. So at the time, they only had one denomination, the penny. So you made more coins by cutting them in half. And the coins show King Harold. This hoard is particularly important because it is the only hoard found to date which only contains coins of Harold. So by the time that Harold was reigning, for almost a century, England’s kings had had a very well-controlled coinage system. A standardised coin type would be produced, and it would be produced at all the mints across England, and everybody had to change their coins to the most up-to-date coin type to pay their taxes and dues. And that incidentally is why we can tell this coin hoard must come from 1066. It doesn’t contain any earlier coins or any later coins.

[SunkenCiv]

Chapter 5: Who Owned the Coins?

So what else can we say about who owned it and how much it might have been worth? Each of these coins is worth perhaps £20 to £50 today. So as a very ballpark estimate, we’ve maybe got about £5,000 in modern money in this hoard. So socially, where does that put this in the social hierarchy? Who might have owned it? Well, at the top of society, an earl or the great nobility would probably have had more money. So we’re perhaps looking at one of those thegns, one of those members of the local nobility, or possibly even somebody a little bit below. It’s quite likely that the owner was on his way to fight at one of the battles that took place in the York area in this year. First of all, when Harald of Norway invaded, the local nobility came and attempted to fight him at Fulford and lost. Then Harold came up from the south of England and they defeated the King of Norway successfully at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. And then many Northumbrians and people from the York area headed south with Harold to help him at the Battle of Hastings. So it is possible that this hoard, then, is the possession of somebody who sadly died in one of the battles this year. But we can’t know. It could be another explanation completely. Sadly, hoards don’t come with a little label telling us exactly who owned them and why they decided to put them, hide them, in the ground. But hide them they did, and as a result, we have this wonderful resource which is going to help us understand so much more about Harold.

Chapter 6: Mints and Moneyers

So where have all these coins come from? Well, in the hoard, we have 24 different towns named on the coins. But we know now that Harold produced coins at a grand total of 56 places. This means that in the space of 282 days, Harold sent out his instructions, the necessary tools were made, and minting began. All Anglo-Saxon coins from the 970s onwards have on the reverse two things. They give the name of the person who made them and the town in which they were made, and this was a form of quality control. If you had a problem with a coin, you could then track it back to the person who was responsible for making it. This gives us a wonderful resource for huge numbers of names and much, much information about towns. So for example, this coin is from the town of Lincoln; you can see just here Lincol, the first part of the name of the town. The town names are in Old English. So we have on this one Exec - an abbreviation for Exanceaster or Exeter. And the one that appears most of all in the hoard is York. Eoforwic in Old English, known as Jórvík to the Vikings and which becomes our York. So most of these coins therefore will have that legend EO or Eoforwic, for York. This next one is a new mint. And the mint name is CEAI. And frankly, we do not yet know where CEAI is. We’re waiting for the specialists in place name studies to work that one out. The hoard contains a unique coin, which is what we call a mule. So a mule here is that on the one side it’s got a picture of Edward the Confessor, and on the back it’s got Harold’s design. So that gives us a flavour of how quickly minting was starting at York; they were getting underway so quickly that the money Sweartcol made a mistake. He picked up the old design of Edward the Confessor and used that instead of Harold’s new coin. So from all around the country, from south to north, from the east coast and the west coast, coins were being made in the name of Harold II. So the coinage and Harold’s ability to roll it out quickly tells us so much about the fact that he was a legitimate ruler and an accepted ruler.

Chapter 7: The French Coinage System

Now, I’ve been emphasising that this coinage shows just how good control Harold had, and I think by popping over to France for a moment, we can really highlight this. So France also was a monarchy in this period, and it had kings who ruled from the Paris area. So this is a penny of King Philip I, who was on the throne at the time of the Norman conquest. But Philip’s coins only circulated in the immediate area which he ruled. And further afield, his nobles put their names on the coins. So here, for example, is a coin of the Duke of Brittany, Conan, and the coin actually reads Conan. Now that is a complete difference to the Anglo-Saxon system. The coins in England always and only had the name of the king at the time. In France, in a way, it’s decentralised. But in the case of England, the king is in full charge and his power is recognised.

Chapter 8: Harold’s Public Image

Now, the other important thing the coins reveal is that we can see through them how Harold wanted to be seen. Now, coins were a very important form of mass media. It was an excellent way of getting your image as a ruler out to a wide range of people. And so coins throughout history have been very important as a means for rulers to send signals about how they want to look. And rulers will typically pick status symbols that are meaningful in their society. And what’s striking is that Harold is using both some very familiar things, but also doing something a bit different in what he picks for his coins. So the familiar: you want to show that you are a ruler, so you’re going to pick royal status symbols. So Harold is shown wearing a crown and he has a sceptre. And in choosing these, he is channeling not just Anglo-Saxon coins of previous rulers like Edward the Confessor, but also what’s going on on the continent at the time. So here we have a coin from Germany, from Dortmund, of the Emperor Conrad. And you can see that Conrad also has a very similar crown and a sceptre. Harold is tapping into this imagery of kingship, but he is also tapping into the Roman past. And we can tell that by looking more closely at Harold’s neck. So on the coin, you can see this line; this is something which he is borrowing from a coin of Claudius. Claudius was emperor from 41 A.D. to 54, and he is famous also as the ruler under whom the Romans conquered Britain. And what’s striking is that Claudius has this long neck with the muscles very visible. And so Claudius’ bust shows this line and Harold’s bust shows it too. So Harold and his image design team are very much opting into a Roman inheritance to add a layer of Roman authority to Harold’s power and his public image.

Chapter 9: William the Conqueror Coin

So now we’re moving on to look at William alongside Harold. So I’ve added the coin of William the Conqueror. William, as a conqueror, was wanting to take on and emphasize that he was Edward the Confessor’s legitimate heir. And one of the ways that he did this was to adopt the coinage system. And indeed how he is portrayed on the coins very much emphasizes William’s message that he is the continuity king.

So if you compare these two coins, you can see they both have crowns, they both have sceptres, and there are just a couple of subtle differences. So one is the drapery. So William goes back to older Anglo-Saxon styles wearing sort of the sense of a cloak around his shoulders, whereas Harold had this very rather stark, almost, neckline. But the other significant difference is if you zoom in on their chins, we have an interesting difference that Normans were clean-shaven, Anglo-Saxon rulers were bearded. So in a way, he is going back to the Anglo-Saxon past. He’s very much drawing out the Anglo-Saxon inheritance, except for the fact that he can’t have a beard.

Chapter 10: Harold II: A Neglected Character

So here with the York Area Hoard, one person’s unlucky story, the fact that they were not able to come back to recover their coins has given us this time capsule. It’s opened up that eventful year, 1066. And because coins have this quality of showing us how rulers wanted to be seen, it also casts more light on that rather neglected character, Harold II. And we’ve seen just how strong a person he was. He was projecting power effectively, and we should remember him not only as the loser of the Battle of Hastings, but also as a powerful king in full control of the country, who was projecting an effective public image through his coins.

[dfwgator]

Harold The Barrel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O8vVGBH-Bs

[SunkenCiv]

That was a little too large.

1066 - The Lost Battlefield | Time Team Classic Special (Full Episode)
** CLASSIC SPECIAL RE-RELEASE ** The Battle of Hastings is said to have taken place on the grounds of an abbey built to commemorate it, but historical and archaeological evidence tells a different story. In this episode, Time Team investigated three alternative locations to try and reveal the true site of this pivotal battle.
47:33
Time Team Official
389K subscribers
848,152 views Premiered Oct 19, 2025 7 products
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KolwDMp1HAY

Channel 4: Fact or Fiction
King Harold
Tony reveals the real story behind the last great Anglo Saxon king. Far from being just the loser at the Battle of Hastings, Harold was a charismatic leader.
https://www.channel4.com/programmes/fact-or-fiction/on-demand/30771-001

[SunkenCiv]

That one is definitely one of their weird lyrics ones.

[Red Badger]

[SunkenCiv]

Nope, he was married twice though, one common law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Godwinson#Relationships,_marriages_and_children

By contrast, William the Usurper was one of the bastard children of Robert I

Both of them therefore are the ancestors of a lot of people, including yours truly and at least one other FReeper. If memory serves, I’m also descended from France’s Robert I, who was a couple centuries earlier, but my memory isn’t what it used to be, plus, I was pretty young in the 9th c.

[SunkenCiv]

Where’s Moe Howard when I need him?

[Romulus]

I’m a descendant as well. There must be millions of us.

[SunkenCiv]

He would likely have prevailed if he'd waited for full mustering in London before heading to the landing site. But there are bound to be things we don't know, such as, William had turned some of the vassal lords to his side. Only a handful of them retained their titles and property after the regime change, most of the rest died doing their duty on the battlefield.

[Verginius Rufus]

Fake panel. PRINCEPS HAROLDUS should be PRINCIPEM HAROLDUM. Otherwise very convincing. Forger did a good job.

[SunkenCiv]

Just because of how long ago he was, probably. My “gateway ancestor” was born over 500 years ago, she wasn’t a royal, just from a posh, connected family, and yet probably has/had many thousands of descendants, most of us blissfully unaware.