According to Wace’s “Roman de Rou,” when Harold’s father, Earl Godwin, died, April 15, 1053, Harold wished to obtain the release of certain hostages, a brother and a cousin, whom Godwin had given to Edward the Confessor as security for his good behaviour, and whom Edward had sent to Duke William for safe-keeping.  Wace took the story from other and older sources, and its accuracy is much disputed, but the fact that Harold went to Normandy seems to be certain, and you will see at Bayeux the picture of Harold asking permission of King Edward to make the journey, and departing on horseback, with his hawk and hounds and followers, to take ship at Bosham, near Chichester and Portsmouth.  The date alone is doubtful.  Common sense seems to suggest that the earliest possible date could not be too early to explain the rash youth of the aspirant to a throne who put himself in the power of a rival in the eleventh century.  When that rival chanced to be William the Bastard, not even boyhood could excuse the folly; but Mr. Freeman, the chief authority on this delicate subject, inclined to think that Harold was forty years old when he committed his blunder, and that the year was about 1064.  Between 1054 and 1064 the historian is free to choose what year he likes, and the tourist is still freer.  To save trouble for the memory, the year 1058 will serve, since this is the date of the triumphal arches of the Abbey Church on the Mount.  Harold, in sailing from the neighbourhood of Portsmouth, must have been bound for Caen or Rouen, but the usual west winds drove him eastward till he was thrown ashore on the coast of Ponthieu, between Abbeville and Boulogne, where he fell into the hands of the Count of Ponthieu, from whom he was rescued or ransomed by Duke William of Normandy and taken to Rouen.  According to Wace and the “Roman de Rou":—­

Guillaume tint Heraut maint jour
 Si com il dut a grant enor. 
 A maint riche torneiement
 Le fist aller mult noblement. 
 Chevals e armes li dona
 Et en Bretaigne le mena
 Ne sai de veir treiz faiz ou quatre
 Quant as Bretons se dut combattre.

William kept Harold many a day,
 As was his due in great honour. 
 To many a rich tournament
 Made him go very nobly. 
 Horses and arms gave him
 And into Brittany led him
 I know not truly whether three or four times
 When he had to make war on the Bretons.

Perhaps the allusion to rich tournaments belongs to the time of Wace rather than to that of Harold a century earlier, before the first crusade, but certainly Harold did go with William on at least one raid into Brittany, and the charming tapestry of Bayeux, which tradition calls by the name of Queen Matilda, shows William’s men-at-arms crossing the sands beneath Mont-Saint-Michel, with the Latin legend:—­“Et venerunt ad Montem Michaelis.  Hic Harold dux trahebat eos de arena.  Venerunt ad flumen Cononis.”  They came to Mont-Saint-Michel, and Harold dragged them out of the quicksands.