The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records multiple solar eclipses, viewing sudden daytime darkness and visible stars as powerful divine omens. Chroniclers frequently linked these rare celestial events to impending political turmoil, Viking raids, or the deaths of kings.
September 22nd 1066: An annular solar eclipse occurring just weeks before the historic Norman Conquest and the Battle of Hastings. This was also the year of Halley’s Comet.
March 20 1140: the chronicler William of Malmesbury reported an eclipse that took place in the middle of a civil war " there was an eclipse throughout England, and the darkness was so great that people at first thought the world was ending. Afterwards they realised that it was an eclipse, went out and could see the stars in the sky. It was thought and said by many, not untruly, that the king would soon lose his power."
June 20 540: the Anglo Saxon Chronicle states "this year the sun was eclipsed on the twelfth day before the kalends of July; and the stars showed themselves full nigh half and hour over nine".
The 1133 eclipse chronicled that King Henry I crossed the sea at Lammas, and the following year "the sky was darkened universally, and the sun became as if it were a moon three nights old, with the stars shining round it at mid-day". It then says that people were greatly astonished and frightened and "said that some great event should follow thereafter". The Chronicle explains that this happened, as King Henry died the following year. "After Henry's death this land fell into trouble".
There are more than 10 references to eclipses in the Chronicle and almost all of them portend catastrophe and political disorder.