obvious, one is led to wonder how their editor can have committed
himself to so unfortunate an assertion. He would seem, instead of
studying the articles, to have started with a preconceived and
erroneous view of their character, and then rejected my own view
because the returns “are not specially connected with the alleged
maladministration of the fiscal officers which was the subject of the
above inquiry, but ... with the private feudal relations of the same
(_i.e._ individual barons) with their subtenants.” He cannot have
read the second article, which is specially concerned with the latter
relations, and which stands in every way on a level with the first
(concerning the fiscal officers). Moreover, by a lucky chance, there
is preserved among these documents at least one fragment of the return
to the enquiry as to the king’s officers. For we read that the men on
one manor “nil dederunt Vicecomiti neque prepositis Regis præter xvi d.
quos dederunt ad castellum firmandum de Oreford,” etc., etc. Nay more,
we can identify at least two of these returns as having been made in
reply to the _third_ article of the Inquest:
Et similiter inquirant de hominibus illis qui post terminum
illum habuerunt alias ballivas de domino rege in custodia, sive
de episcopatu, sive de abbatia, sive de baronia, sive de honore
aliquo vel eschaeta.
The returns numbered 55, 56 (p. cclxxx.) are classed by Mr. Hall among
“Baroniæ incertæ.” They relate, however, to the barony or “honour”
of William Fitz Alan, which had been for many years in the king’s
hands. It was ‘farmed’ in 1170, as it had been for ten years, by Guy
l’Estrange (“Wido Extraneus.”) Guy had a brother John,[322] who appears
in these returns as in charge of the Norfolk portion of the honour.
Since Michaelmas, 1165, a part of William Fitz Alan’s land had been
granted out to Geoffrey de Vere, and we accordingly find, at the end of
the second return, one of William Fitz Alan’s knights,[323] William de
Pagrave, making him a payment. Now all this might have been explained
by an intelligent editor. Mr. Hall has elaborated, instead, a series of
fantastic errors.
I have dwelt on the point at some length, because, apart from the
intrinsic interest of these curious returns--which have thus come
to light after more than seven centuries--they establish the fact
that this great enquiry extended to private landowners, a fact which
even Dr. Stubbs, I fear, seems to have overlooked in the analysis he
gives of the ‘Inquest.’ And further, they corroborate the articles of
enquiry, where we can apply the test, and thus confirm the authenticity
of the document in which those articles are found.
* * * * *
We must not, however, ignore Mr. Hall’s own hypothesis, for the Rolls
edition in which it is enshrined gives it an official _cachet_;
and there may be those who think that arguments of this character
require an answer.
So far as it is possible to understand it, this hypothesis would
connect these Inquests with the scutage of Ireland (p. ccx.), which was
duly accounted for (_annotatum_) in 1172, the expedition falling within
the financial year Mich., 1171–Mich., 1172.[324] In that case these
inquests, on Mr. Hall’s own showing, could not have been held earlier
than 1172, at “the conclusion of the campaign” (p. clxxxvi.). But they
must have been held in 1170, for, as he observes (pp. ccxi.), one of
the fragments speaks of “istos iiij annos” (p. cclxviii.) reckoned from
March, 1166.
But we have much stronger evidence than this. We read, at the outset,
of these documents, that “it will be evident that they are connected
with some Inquest of military service during the reign of Henry II.”
This is an extraordinary assertion from one who is himself their
editor. For we have only to turn to the second on the list to find in
it nothing but a detailed record of the sums given individually by some
forty burgesses of (Castle) Rising towards paying off the mortgages of
their lord the earl of Arundel, who was clearly in the hands of the
Jews. And the long and most curious return from the barony of Robert
de Valoines deals with a humble reeve who neglected his master’s hay;
a shepherd who had charge of his lord’s fold; Brian, who looked after
the wood; Gilbert, who kept the bees; and other dependents fined for
negligence. We may even say, most confidently, that the idea of an
Inquest of military service could never occur to any one who perused
the whole of these documents with an unbiassed mind. They are simply
the result of an enquiry into the payment of moneys, and the reasons
for such payment. But Mr. Hall has a theory to advance, and can only
see these records in its light. Briefly stated, that theory is that
these documents “answer very nearly to the description of such an
Inquest” on knight service as is referred to in the return for the
Honour of Arundel assigned to 1166. That these documents are later in
date; that they do not suggest an Inquest on knight service; that,
even if they did, they have no concern with an Inquest restricted to
a Sussex Honour--all these objections are as nothing to Mr. Hall. He
is as ready to “hazard the supposition” that conflicts with all the
evidence as he was loth to accept a solution that fits in every way
the facts of the case. May one not raise a strong protest against the
sacrifice of a dozen pages, within a strictly limited space, to the
enunciation of wildly conjectural and absolutely erroneous theories,
not in the book of a private author, but in a Government publication,
intended to form for all time the standard edition of a famous work?
Let us now turn to the Pipe Roll of 1172 (18 Hen. II.), which plays an
important part in Mr. Hall’s arguments. He tells us that
an entry occurs in several different counties which has proved
a source of difficulty to several generations of historical
students. The entry in question is headed “De hiis qui cartas
non miserunt,” certain assessments being appended in each case
for the Scutage of Ireland (p. ccii.).
We refer, as invited, to the roll itself, only to find that, on
the contrary, it first records the “assessments for the scutage of
Ireland,” and then heads the lists which follow: “De his qui cartas
non miserunt.”[325] It is this very sequence that is responsible for
the error of Madox, who held, as Mr. Hall observes, “that the charters
in question must have been returned for the purpose of the Scutage of
Ireland in 1171.”[326] Swereford, on the other hand, wrote of the 1172
roll:
Quo quidem rotulo supplentur nomina illorum qui cartas non
miserunt anno xiij^o, prout superius tactum est (p. 8).
He is wrong, of course, in stating that the charters were returned
in the “13th year” (an error which his editor carefully ignores),
but perfectly right in his explanation, if we substitute “12th” for
his “13th” year. Yet, having thus rightly shown that Swereford’s
explanation is the true one, his editor closes the paragraph thus:
The simple solution of the difficulty is that the tenants who
were in debt for the aid of 1168 were so entered on the occasion
of the next assessment (1171) in a conspicuous form (p. cciii.).
Really, this wanton confusion is enough to make Swereford turn in his
grave. The entry which has caused the difficulty refers, not to “the
tenants who were in debt for the aid” of 1168, but to those who had
made no returns (“cartas non miserunt”) in 1166.
Mr. Hall assigns Madox’s error to his finding no “corresponding
entries,” under Sussex, in 1168 (14 Hen. II.) for those in 1172 (18
Hen. II.). And yet all three entries, in the latter year, of the
earl of Arundel’s tenants[327] have their corresponding entries in
1168.[328] The real cause of Madox’s error has been explained above.
It is, we read, “significant” that in 1168 the earl’s “assessment
actually does not correspond with that recorded in the existing charter
of 1166” (p. cciv.); for it only “gives 84½ fees for the Earl’s Sussex
barony,” while the Inquest referred to in his charter had the result
that “13 more were acknowledged by the Earl as chargeable upon his
demesne, raising the total to 97½.” Therefore, “we are almost tempted
to suspect that the Earl’s charter was not returned in 1166 at all, but
only after an interval of several years.” On which, of course, a theory
is built.
Ingenious enough, is it not? Yet, as usual, a house of cards. For we
find the “barony” charged only with 84½ fees in 1194,[329] in 1196, and
in 1211 (13 John),[330] precisely as in 1168. The total had not been
raised at all; and the house of cards topples over.
The same unhappy paragraph closes with these words:
It is quite clear ... that the dispute was practically settled,
in the 18th year, only two refractory tenants remaining to be
dealt with, and that the Earl paid the whole of his assessment
in the 21st year.
We turn to the rolls, and find, as usual, that not two, but three,
tenants (_ut supra_) were recalcitrant in the 18th year, and that the
Earl, in the 21st (1175), did not pay a penny of his assessment (84½
fees), but was forgiven the whole of it.[331]
Not content with his own confusion, Mr. Hall proceeds to assign to
others errors which they neither have made, nor would dream of making.
He even asserts that Mr. Eyton and I “maintain that the honour of
Arundel was granted to William de Albini by Henry I.” (p. ccvii.), an
assertion for which there is not the faintest shadow of foundation.
Such a view would imply an absolute ignorance of all the facts of the
case; and it was as foreign to Mr. Eyton[332] as it is to myself.[333]
One cannot be expected to waste time over his theory that the baronies
mentioned in these fragments were specially involved in debt, which is
a mere phantasy; but we may note, as the date is of importance, that
“Avelina de Ria” was “compelled to atone” for her offence, in making
her son a knight, by a heavy fine, not “in the 15th year,” but in the
14th.[334] In the same paragraph (p. ccx.) we are told that “this
barony, like the honour of Arundel, was still unable to contribute
towards the next Scutage, of 1171.”[335] As a matter of fact, it paid
at once £30, out of £35, the total for which it was liable,[336] a very
creditable proportion; while the honour of Arundel was not even charged
with any payment for this Scutage, which was only assessed on those
“qui nec abierunt in Hybernia,” etc.
But enough of this error and confusion. If the reader is tempted to
grow weary, what must be the feelings of the writer, who has thus to
remove, brick by brick, this vast edifice of error, so perversely
and wantonly erected, before the simple facts can be brought to the
light of day. It is weary, it is thankless work; and yet it has to be
accomplished. I am tempted to quote these apposite remarks from the
critical articles by Mr. Thomas Bond on a no less misleading work:
Numberless difficulties are suggested where none really exist,
and possibilities and probabilities unaccompanied by proofs
are offered for their solution.... The narrative is so diluted
and confused that it is difficult to follow it shortly and
comprehensively. I can, therefore, only select some of the most
remarkable errors and notice them _seriatim_, quoting the
author’s own words in order to avoid the risk of unintentional
misrepresentation.... It may be asked, Where is the difficulty
which requires these strange, far-fetched ‘probabilities’ for
its solution?... All this is fanciful and mere imagination....
In reply to all these supposed ‘possibilities,’ let us turn to
certainties.... I have thus laid before the reader some of the
numerous inaccuracies into which the author of this work has
fallen, and have stated some of the singular theories he has
advanced.[337]
We have, in the Red Book Preface, the very same features. It is,
perhaps, in his treatment of these interesting fragments (1170) that
we detect most vividly Mr. Hall’s strange capacity of inventing
difficulties that do not exist, and of dismissing those that do. In
the teeth of the clearest possible facts, we are given such vague
probabilities, or possibilities, as these:
This will perhaps be ... it is probable that ... it can only be
surmised that ... we are almost tempted to suspect that ... we
may perhaps hazard the supposition that ... would probably have
been ... it might be held that ... we might perhaps identify,
etc., etc. (pp. ccii.-ccvi.).
The fact is that, as I have said, this preface is really the fruit
of a habit of mind, a mental twist, which distorts the writer’s
vision, and seems to impel him, irresistibly, to arrive at the wrong
conclusion.[338] We trace this singular tendency throughout, but its
effect has nowhere proved more disastrous than in his treatment of
these returns to the great “Inquest of Sheriffs.” That these records
should have been so treated in the first work that gives them to the
world is a really lamentable matter.
VII
The Conquest of Ireland[339]
A brilliant but paradoxical writer--I refer to Mr. Standish
O’Grady--has, with unerring hand, sketched for us the state of
Ireland when as yet the Norman adventurer had not set foot upon her
shores.[340] To those who dream of a golden age, of a land in the
enjoyment of peace and happiness till invaded by the ruthless stranger,
the scene his pen reveals should prove a rude awakening. That Mr.
O’Grady writes with unrivalled knowledge of his subject, is neither
his only nor his chief claim to the confidence of those we speak of:
they are more likely to be influenced by the fact that his sympathies
are all with the Irish, that he cannot conceal his admiration for
government by ‘battle-axe,’ and that he strives to justify what to
English eyes could be nothing but a glorified Donnybrook Fair. He is
wrathful with Mr. Freeman for picturing Ireland as only “the scene of
waste tribal confusions, aimless flockings and fightings, a wilderness
tenanted by wolves and wolfish men,” and claims that her history, in
each generation, was at this time “that of some half-dozen strong men
striving for the mastery ... a most salutary warfare, inevitable,
indispensable, enjoined by nature herself.”
No! Freedom, whose smile we shall never resign,
Go, tell our invaders, the Danes,
That ’tis sweeter to bleed for an age at thy shrine
Than to sleep but a moment in chains.
If we cannot agree with this able champion in viewing the warfare he
describes as a healthy process of evolution, we may at least gladly
admit that some knowledge of this dark period, lighted only by the
lurid torch of rapine and internecine strife, is as essential to a
right understanding of the Anglo-Norman settlement as is the study
of English history, for some generations before the Conquest, the
necessary prelude to a comprehension of the Norman Conquest itself.
It is not, however, for the Conquest only that this knowledge of the
true state of Ireland ought to be acquired. The light it throws on
the Irish people, their inherited and unchangeable tendencies, is of
value from the parallel it presents to the latest modern developments.
“Tribes and nations,” writes Mr. O’Grady, “had ceased to count”; the
struggle was one in which, “released from all control,” some half a
dozen rival kings “fiercely battled like bulls for the mastery of the
herd.” No lively imagination, surely, is required to see the spirit
of this strife renewed in the leaders of the present Irish party,
or prophesy a revival, under Home Rule, of the days when “Turlough
O’Conor and Tiernan O’Rourke were terribly at war--Ireland (the
chronicler adds) a shaking sod between them.” Although, in the true
Hibernian spirit, Mr. Standish O’Grady can speak of this as a “vast and
bloody, but not ignoble strife,” I hold that its animating spirit was
an ambition as ruthlessly personal as that which leads the Presidents
of South American Republics to wade through blood to power, and to
reduce their country to ‘a shaking sod’ for the gratification of their
rivalry. It is the absolutely personal character of this strife which
is fatal to Mr. O’Grady’s argument that a strong ‘Ardriship,’ or
central rule, was in actual process of evolution before the invaders
arrived. Where that rule was based only on personal prowess or strength
of character, it was liable, at any moment, to be broken up by death,
and once more replaced, if not by anarchy, at least by such internecine
strife as has been the fate of Mr. Parnell’s party since the removal of
his strong hand. There was, as Mr. O’Grady is never tired of reminding
us, but one way, in those halcyon days, of securing the hegemony
of Ireland: “a normal Irish king had to clear his way through the
provinces, battle-axe in hand, gathering hostages by the strength of
his arm”; he had to “move forward step by step, battle-axing territory
after territory into submission.” The only vote known was given by
“the mouth of the battle-axe”; and for the dissentient Irishmen of the
time there were “always ready battle-axes and trained troops of swift
raiders and plunderers.” Nor was it necessary for the Irish king to set
his “trained plunderers and cattle drivers” at work on every occasion.
The convenient and recognised institution of hostages provided him
with some one he could hang or blind without the least trouble, and
thus anticipate the fate which might very probably be his own.
Remember the glories of Brian the brave,
Though the days of the hero are o’er.
Even the danger of interference from without could not permanently
unite the Irish among themselves. The Scandinavian settlers had turned
this weakness to account by siding now with one and now with another of
the factions, and had finally made good their possession of the seaport
towns, where they stood towards the rest of the island much like the
Ulstermen of to-day, a hardy race of alien origin and long of hostile
faith, merchants and seamen to whom the natives left all the traffic
with other lands. One cannot but think from the small part they seem to
have played in the struggle between the Irish and the Norman invaders
that their heart was rather in trading than in war, and that the old
wiking spirit had flickered down among them, or at least found a new
vent. Not so with the Norman adventurers. That marvellous people had as
yet preserved their restless activity, their boundless ambition, and
their love of martial enterprise. Conquerors, courtiers, or crusaders,
they were always lords in the end; the glamour of lordship was ever
present above the Norman horizon. Ireland alone knew them not, and
thither they had now begun to cast eager eyes. The wave that had spread
itself over England and Wales had now gathered up its strength anew,
and the time had come for it at last to break on the Irish shore.
It is at this point that the curious poem Mr. Orpen has so ably edited
comes to our aid as an historical authority of singular value and
importance. Although long known to scholars from Michel’s publication
of its text (1837), it was described by Mr. Dimock, who knew its value,
in the preface to his edition of Giraldus, as then “in great measure
useless” from the want of competent annotation. He observed with truth
that “no more valuable contribution, perhaps, to the history of the
first few years of the English invasion of Ireland could be made” than
a worthy edition of this poem. Such an edition Mr. Orpen may justly
claim to have produced. The corrupt and obscure condition of the text
demanded elucidation no less urgently than the Irish names with which
it teems required special knowledge for their correct identification.
It is not too much to say that Mr. Orpen has shown us how much can be
done by skilful editing to increase the value of an authority. Avoiding
the over-elaboration that one associates with German scholarship, he
has provided his readers with an apparatus at once sufficient and
concise. Text, translation, notes, map, chronology, and glossary, all
are admirable in their way; and the patience with which the barbarous
names, both of places and of persons, have been examined and explained
is deserving of warm praise. As to the way in which a text should be
treated scholars will generally differ in certain points of detail, but
Mr. Orpen’s method shows us, at least, the exact state of the text from
which he worked. There is still room, perhaps, for further conjectural
emendation. For instance, in the lines--
Crandone pus a un barun,
Ricard le flemmeng out anun--
where the editor is fairly baffled by ‘Crandone,’ perfect sense might
at once be made by reading--
Slan donat pus a un barun,
which would satisfy at once the conditions of metre, of locality, and
of the context. So too, in the interesting Lacy charter printed on page
310, the editor might have detected in Adam de ‘Totipon,’ the Adam de
‘Futepoi’ of Giraldus, and the Adam de ‘Feipo’ of the poem: in records
the name appears in both forms. The case of this man, one may add,
is peculiarly interesting, because I have detected him as a knightly
tenant of Hugh de Laci in England in the returns of 1166, in which he
seems to be disguised as “Putipo.” He thus came, we see, to share in
his lord’s greatness, becoming one of the leading ‘barons’ in his new
dominion of Meath.
It is necessary to explain that although this poem, in the form here
preserved to us, dates only from about 1220 to 1230, it enshrines
materials contemporary with the actual invasion and conquest. For it
is based upon a narrative which seems to have closed not later than
1176, and for which the _trouvère_ or compiler of the poem was indebted
to Maurice Regan, the interpreter, and, one might almost say, the
diplomatic agent of king Dermot, whose matrimonial adventures were the
_causa causans_ of the whole story. In giving to the poem the name of
“the Song of Dermot and the Earl,” the editor has brought out the fact
that its narrative is chiefly concerned with the doings of Dermot and
his son-in-law, ‘Strongbow,’ as the earl of Pembroke has been commonly
named.[341] It is not improbable that the original work was only
carried down to the earl’s death in 1176. Mr. Orpen lays special stress
on the fact that there are but “two allusions pointing to a much later
date,” and claims it as “a remarkable fact that, with the exception of
these two allusions ... there is nothing, so far as I have observed,
pointing to a later date than 1177.” He would seem, however, to have
overlooked an allusion to John de Curci’s subsequent troubles in Ulster
in the lines:
De curti out anun iohan,
Ki pus isuffri meint [a]han.
This, however, like the other two, would be only an addition by the
later versifier, and does not affect the main fact that we are dealing
with a metrical version of a story contemporaneous with the conquest,
and enshrining in ll. 3064–3177 “the only connected account of the
subinfeudation of Leinster and Meath ... that has come down to us, a
sort of original Domesday Book of the first Anglo-Norman settlement.”
As such, it has the advantage of date over the ‘Expugnatio’ of
Giraldus; it is also instinct with evidence of native local knowledge;
and, above all, it stands apart from any other authority in its
independent point of view. Giraldus wrote, as is well known, largely
with the object of glorifying his relatives, who made the invasion of
Ireland almost a family undertaking; in Regan, on the other hand, we
have the panegyrist of Dermot and the earl of Pembroke, who carried to
such a height the spirit of party faction as to denounce as “traitors”
all his countrymen who were opposed to Dermot and his foreign allies.