The making and meaning of the Bayeux Tapestry revisited

This paper revives the suggestion, previously made by O. K. Werckmeister and Shirley Ann Brown, that the Bayeux Tapestry was intended to act as part of a petition to free Bishop Odo of Bayeux from imprisonment at the hands of his half-brother, William the Conqueror, and that it was commissioned by the three knights named in it, Turold, Wadard, and Vitalis, perhaps with the support of Abbot Scolland of St Augustine’s abbey, Canterbury. It argues that the role played by these three knights has been too quickly dismissed, and in so doing asks wider questions including about how political petitions were made and whether any attempt to deny Harold Godwinson a royal title and a reign had been successfully communicated to the population at large.