Found an interesting postscript to today's Battle of Hastings:

The Vita Haroldi manuscript was kept by the Abbey of Waltham in honour of their royal patron, King Harold, who survived a terrible sickness under their care during the reign of Edward the Confessor. Harold’s personal religious conversion occurred during his convalescence there. Harold’s father, Earl Godwine of Wessex, was the power behind the throne during Edward's reign. The patronage of Earl Harold kept the Abbey at Waltham going. Interestingly, for centuries after Harold’s death, Waltham Abbey made its income from the patronage of AngloSaxons who came there to visit the tomb of the last AngloSaxon King. But, if their manuscript Vita Haroldi tells a true story, Harold was not buried at Waltham Abbey in 1066, as the English people have always supposed.

According the Vita Haroldi, King Harold secretly survived the Battle of Hastings, although terribly wounded. What is interesting here, is the fact that in the official Norman version of this history, Harold's corpse was reportedly dismembered, and the Duke caused it to be "gathered together, and wrapped what he had gathered" in royal purple. Who hacked the corpse into pieces? Was it possible that the Saxon's own royal housecarls hastily improvised the faked remains of a not-quite dead Harold? Was the injured King actually whisked from the battlefield incognito by his personal bodyguard?

If the King had not been mortally wounded in the field, there is absolutely no doubt that his loyal troops would have concealed that fact, if it was within their power to do so, to preserve him from assassination. According to the Vita Haroldi, when Lady Gytha, the dowager Baroness of Wessex, demanded her son's body for burial, the Conqueror would not, or could not, consent. The alleged body had been disposed of somehow. If indeed King Harold yet survived, it was no longer as King, but as refugee.

King Harold was nursed back to health by a Saracen woman skilled in the medical trade, the Arabs at that time excelling all other peoples both in surgery and in the use of pharmaceuticals. 

Having finally recovered, he secretly went overseas in 1068, to Germany to rally support for a counter-revolution. In this, he failed completely. He found no support forthcoming, either from the Saxons or from the Danes, whose Royal House the Godwine family had once served so well. This retirement overseas in 1068 coincides the sudden departure of his mother. According to the AngloSaxon Chronicle entry for 1068, Lady Gytha also retired overseas that same year, to St. Omer. It is possible that she would have gotten word of his safe arrival, and gone to meet him there.

For years afterwards, having no choice but to remain in Europe, a furtive exile, Harold Godwinesson kept up a constant pilgrimage from shrine to shrine, eventually reaching Rome itself. Through this exile, he was forced to reinvent his own character from that of the proud AngloSaxon nobleman to that of the humble supplicant of the universal Church.

Eventually, he resigned himself to the life of a penitent, and resolved then to return secretly to England and live quietly there as a religious hermit.  This he did.  Harold landed back home in England near Dover, and hid in a cave there.  He decided to head north to the Welsh marcher lands.  They were far enough away from William’s court, and Harold knew the lay of the land well, having ravaged Wales as the Commander of Edward’s invading army of occupation years before. He did not find a kind reception inside Wales, and retreated to a hideout near Chester, where he spent the rest of his life as a hermit.

When he went out in public, he wore a veil over his face, as the most extreme religious hermits would do. His motive in imitating that particular habit may have been to protect his identity from accidental discovery. The role of the hermit provided a perfect cover for the fugitive King. Apparently, a few, who got to know the old hermit well, began to suspect who he really was.

He cagily never admitted anything to his friends there. But, he never outright denied his identity, and let them know that he had been at Hastings himself when Harold fell, and that he had been bound to King Harold more than to anything else in this life.

It was on his deathbed, then, and only to his confessor, that the old hermit finally answered the question directly.  He made the priest swear to keep it a secret if he should yet live, and never to tell until he had died. Then he admitted to his confessor that he had once been, and still was in fact, Earl Godwinesson of Wessex, Harold II, the King of England.