![Scene in the Bayeux Tapestry showing Odo rallying Duke William's troops during the Battle of Hastings. Latin tituli above: HIC ODO EP[ISCOPU]S BACULU[M] TENENS CONFORTAT PUEROS
("Here Bishop Odo, holding a club, gives strength to the boys"). Duke William is also shown wielding a club during the battle in another scene. Odo bayeux tapestry.png](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/Odo_bayeux_tapestry.png/220px-Odo_bayeux_tapestry.png)
Odo of Bayeux (died 1097) was Bishop of Bayeux in Normandy, and was also made Earl of Kent in England following the Norman Conquest. He was the maternal half-brother of duke, and later king, William the Conqueror, and was, for a time, William's primary administrator in the Kingdom of England.
Odo was the son of William the Conqueror's mother Herleva and Herluin de Conteville. Count Robert of Mortain was his younger brother. There is uncertainty about his birth date. Some historians have suggested he was born around 1035. Duke William made him bishop of Bayeux in 1049. It has been suggested that his birth was as early as 1030, making him about nineteen rather than fourteen at the time.
Although Odo was an ordained Christian cleric, he is best known as a warrior and statesman, participating in the Council of Lillebonne. He funded ships for the Norman invasion of England and is one of the very few proven companions of William the Conqueror known to have fought at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. The Bayeux Tapestry, probably commissioned by him to adorn his own cathedral, appears to labour the point that he did not actually fight, that is to say shed blood, at Hastings, but rather encouraged the troops from the rear. The Latin annotation embroidered onto the Tapestry above his image reads: HIC ODO EPS BACULU TENENS CONFORTAT PUEROS ("EPS" abbreviating episcopus "bishop" and "BACULU" omitting a final m – baculum "cudgel"), in English "Here Odo the bishop holding a club strengthens the boys". It has been suggested that his clerical status forbade him from using a sword, [1] though this is doubtful: the club was a common weapon and used often by leadership [2] including by Duke William himself, as also depicted in the same part of the Tapestry. Odo was accompanied by William the carrier of his crozier and a retinue of servants and members of his household.
In 1067, Odo became Earl of Kent, and for some years he was a trusted royal minister. [3] On some occasions when William was absent (back in Normandy), he served as regent of England, [4] and at times he led the royal forces against rebellions (e.g. the Revolt of the Earls): the precise sphere of his powers is not certain. There are also other occasions when he accompanied William back to Normandy.
During this time Odo acquired vast estates in England, larger in extent than anyone except the king: he had land in twenty-three counties, primarily in the south east and in East Anglia.
In 1076, at the Trial of Penenden Heath, Odo was tried in front of a large and senior assembly over the course of three days at Penenden Heath in Kent for defrauding the Crown and the Diocese of Canterbury. At the conclusion of the trial he was forced to return a number of properties and his assets were re-apportioned. [5]
In 1082, Odo was suddenly disgraced and imprisoned for having planned a military expedition to Italy. His motives are not certain. [3] Chroniclers writing a generation later said Odo desired to make himself pope during the Investiture Controversy while Pope Gregory VII was in severe difficulty in his conflict with Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor, and the position of pope was in contention; but the contemporary evidence is ambiguous. [6] Whatever the reason, Odo spent the next five years in prison and his English estates were taken back by the king, as was his office as Earl of Kent. Odo was not deposed as Bishop of Bayeux.
On his deathbed in 1087, King William I was reluctantly persuaded by his half-brother, Robert, Count of Mortain, to release Odo. After the king's death, Odo returned to England. William's eldest son, Robert Curthose, had been made duke of Normandy, while Robert's brother William Rufus had received the throne of England. [7] : 433–436 The bishop supported Robert Curthose's claim to England. The Rebellion of 1088 failed and William Rufus permitted Odo to leave the kingdom. Afterwards, Odo remained in the service of Robert in Normandy. [7] : 450–452
Odo joined the First Crusade and started in the duke's company for Palestine, but died on the way at Palermo in January or February 1097. [3] He was buried in Palermo Cathedral. [4]
William Stearns Davis writes in Life on a Medieval Barony (1923):
Bishop Odo of Bayeux fought at Hastings (1066) before any such authorized champions of the church existed. ... That bishops shall restrain from warfare is really a pious wish not easily in this sinful world to be granted. [8]
On screen, Odo has been portrayed by John Nettleton in the two-part BBC TV play Conquest (1966), part of the series Theatre 625 , and by Denis Lill in the TV drama Blood Royal: William the Conqueror (1990).
William the Conqueror, sometimes called William the Bastard, was the first Norman king of England, reigning from 1066 until his death. A descendant of Rollo, he was Duke of Normandy from 1035 onward. By 1060, following a long struggle to establish his throne, his hold on Normandy was secure. In 1066, following the death of Edward the Confessor, William invaded England, leading an army of Normans to victory over the Anglo-Saxon forces of Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings, and suppressed subsequent English revolts in what has become known as the Norman Conquest. The rest of his life was marked by struggles to consolidate his hold over England and his continental lands, and by difficulties with his eldest son, Robert Curthose.
The Bayeux Tapestry is an embroidered cloth nearly 70 metres long and 50 centimetres tall that depicts the events leading up to the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, led by William, Duke of Normandy challenging Harold II, King of England, and culminating in the Battle of Hastings. It is thought to date to the 11th century, within a few years of the battle. Now widely accepted to have been made in England perhaps as a gift for William, it tells the story from the point of view of the conquering Normans and for centuries has been preserved in Normandy.
The Battle of Tinchebray took place on 28 September 1106, in Tinchebray, Normandy, between an invading force led by King Henry I of England, and the Norman army of his elder brother Robert Curthose, the Duke of Normandy. Henry's knights won a decisive victory: they captured Robert, and Henry imprisoned him in England and then in Wales until Robert's death in 1134.
Robert, Count of Mortain, first Earl of Cornwall of 2nd creation was a Norman nobleman and the half-brother of King William the Conqueror. He was one of the very few proven companions of William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings and as recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 was one of the greatest landholders in his half-brother's new Kingdom of England.
Bayeux is a commune in the Calvados department in Normandy in northwestern France.
The peerage title Earl of Kent has been created eight times in the Peerage of England and once in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. In fiction, the Earl of Kent is also known as a prominent supporting character in William Shakespeare's tragedy King Lear.
Robert de Bellême, seigneur de Bellême, seigneur de Montgomery, viscount of the Hiémois, 3rd Earl of Shrewsbury and Count of Ponthieu, was an Anglo-Norman nobleman, and one of the most prominent figures in the competition for the succession to England and Normandy between the sons of William the Conqueror. He was a member of the powerful House of Bellême.
Odo of Rennes, Count of Penthièvre, was the youngest of the three sons of Duke Geoffrey I of Brittany and Hawise of Normandy, daughter of Richard I of Normandy. Eudon married Agnes of Cornouaille, the daughter of Alan Canhiart, Count of Cornouaille and sister of Hoel II, Duke of Brittany who was married in 1066 to Eudon's niece Hawise, Duchess of Brittany.
The Rebellion of 1088 occurred after the death of William the Conqueror and concerned the division of lands in the Kingdom of England and the Duchy of Normandy between his two sons William Rufus and Robert Curthose. Hostilities lasted from 3 to 6 months starting around Easter of 1088.
William of Mortain was Count of Mortain and the second Earl of Cornwall of 2nd creation.
Herluin de Conteville (1001–1066) was the stepfather of William the Conqueror and the father of Odo of Bayeux and Robert, Count of Mortain, both of whom became prominent during William's reign. He died in 1066, the year his stepson conquered England.
William the Conqueror had men of diverse standing and origins under his command at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. With these and other men he went on in the five succeeding years to conduct the Harrying of the North and complete the Norman conquest of England.
Penenden Heath is a suburb in the town of Maidstone in Kent, England. As the name suggests it is nucleated around a former heath.
The trial of Penenden Heath occurred in the decade after the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, probably in 1076, and involved a dispute between Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, half-brother of William the Conqueror and Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury and others.
Events from the 1080s in England.
Events from the 1070s in England.
William I of England has been depicted in a number of modern works.
Eudo Dapifer ;, was a Norman aristocrat who served as a steward under William the Conqueror, William II Rufus, and Henry I.
The army of Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy, left for the Holy Land on the First Crusade. Robert was the eldest son of William the Conqueror and brother to William Rufus, king of England. He was reportedly so poor that he often had to stay in bed for lack of clothes. In order to raise money for the crusade he mortgaged his duchy to his brother William II of England. His army joined the contingent of Robert II, Count of Flanders, and Stephen, Count of Blois.
The Domesday Book of 1086 AD lists King William the Conqueror's tenants-in-chief in Snotinghscire (Nottinghamshire), following the Norman Conquest of England:
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