Leofwine Godwinson
Leofwine Godwinson died beside his brother the king at Hastings and is on the Bayeux Tapestry with his name over him. He was a younger son of Earl Godwin of Wessex, the most powerful family in England, and was made earl of a territory around Kent and Middlesex in 1057. The family's fortunes turned on 1051, when Godwin quarrelled with Edward the Confessor and the whole household was exiled; he and his brother Harold went to Ireland and came back the next year with ships. His brother Tostig was the difficulty. Northumbria rose against Tostig's government in 1065 and Harold accepted his removal rather than fight the north, which sent Tostig to Norway and brought Harald Hardrada's invasion down on England three weeks before William landed. He fought at Hastings on 14 October 1066 with Harold and their brother Gyrth, holding the ridge through a day of assaults. The tapestry shows him and Gyrth cut down together, captioned with both names, in the panel before the arrow. All three brothers died on the field, which is the reason there was no English leadership left to organise a second army. Harold's body was so mutilated that Edith Swanneck was brought to identify it by marks only she knew. England had a Norman ruling class within a generation, and the Godwin lands were distributed among William's followers. His earldom included London, which surrendered to William that December without a second battle. He is one of only a handful of Englishmen the tapestry names at all - the Normans who commissioned it had no reason to record the brothers individually, and did.
- Lived: 1035 CE – 1066 CE
- Nationality: English
- Roles: noble
