King Harold II, the last Anglo-Saxon king of England, has long been thought to have been killed at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. But British archaeologists are to test a theory he survived on the anniversary of the famous battle this Tuesday. The battle, on Oct. 14, 1066, marked a turning point in British history as the Normans conquered medieval England.
There are different accounts of how he was killed, one of them pictured in the Bayeux Tapestry, which appears to have him gripping an arrow that had pierced his eye. Another account has Harold being killed by knights and his body dismembered. But Peter Burke, an amateur historian in southern England, has suggested Harold may have survived as a hermit for a further 40 years. Archaeologists will begin to test his theory on Tuesday by launching a scan of the grounds of Waltham Abbey Church in Essex, where Harold was supposedly buried. The scan will be carried out by Stratascan, the same geological survey company that helped locate the remains of King Richard III in 2012 beneath a parking lot.
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--- Reuters
