Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 - Queen Mary ...

made, not at the time depicted. Since the events of the Tapestry depict the time of the Conquest
that was probably, he argued, when it was made. As well as being a logical deduction based on
comparison, Stothard’s remark was a tacit acknowledgement of the changing attitude to the past
that his own age was experiencing, that fitful dawning of the sense of anachronism. Medieval
architecture, since the debate that began at Salisbury, was now more often treated on its own
terms, seen in its historic context. A similar shift in approaches to historic literature, painting and
drama was also taking place and will be discussed later. The medieval understanding of the past,
which treated it as an undifferentiated continuum, had survived in late Georgian Britain, which
imposed modern dress on Shakespeare and sash windows on Gothic churches. Only as that ethos
began itself to pass into history did it become visible and so available as a tool for argument.
Most of Stothard’s paper, however, was given over to explaining his own method in
documenting the Tapestry and ‘what licences’ he had taken. 74 Where the stitching was missing,
as it was in many places, the condition of the embroidery having deteriorated markedly since
Montfaucon’s time, Stothard relied on the needle holes. ‘On attentively examining the traces thus
left, I found that in many places minute particles of the different coloured threads were still
retained; a circumstance which suggested to me the possibility of making extensive
restorations… I have succeeded in restoring nearly all of what was defaced.’ 75 One scene that he
‘restored’ in his drawings has become the most famous in the whole Tapestry and one of the
most instantly recognised images of history, King Harold fatally wounded with an arrow in the
eye.
74 Archaeologia 19, (1821), p.184.
75 Archaeologia 19, (1821), p.184.
Figure 27 The Death of Harold in the Bayeux Tapestry
123