PART II

HISTORICAL STUDIES

NORMANS UNDER EDWARD THE CONFESSOR

It is probable that in spite of all the efforts of that school which

found in Mr Freeman its ablest and most ardent leader, the 'fatal

habit', as he termed it at the outset of his _magnum opus_ 'of

beginning the study of English history with the Norman Conquest

itself', will continue, in practice, to prevail among those who have

a choice in the matter. It was characteristic of the late Professor

to assign the tendency he deplored to 'a confused and unhappy

nomenclature', for to him names, as I have elsewhere shown,[1] were

always of more importance than they are to the world at large. More to

the point is the explanation given by Mr Grant Allen, who attributes

to the unfamiliar look of Anglo-Saxon appellatives the lack of

interest shown in those who bore them. And yet there must be, surely,

a deeper cause than this, an instinctive feeling that in England our

consecutive political history does, in a sense, begin with the Norman

Conquest. On the one hand it gave us, suddenly, a strong, purposeful

monarchy; on the other it brought us men ready to record history, and

to give us--treason though it be to say so--something better than the

arid entries in our jejune native chronicle. We thus exchange aimless

struggles, told in an uninviting fashion, for a great issue and a

definite policy, on which we have at our disposal materials deserving

of study. From the moment of the Conqueror's landing we trace a

continuous history, and one that we can really work at in the light

of chronicles and records. I begin these studies, therefore, with the

Conquest, or rather with the coming of the Normans. For, as Mr Freeman

rightly insisted, it is with the reign of Edward the Confessor that

'the Norman Conquest really begins':[2] it was 'his accession' that

marked, in its results, 'the first stage of the Conquest itself'.[3]

As he, elsewhere, justly observed of Edward:

Normandy was ever the land of his affection.... His heart was

French. His delight was to surround himself with companions

who came from the beloved land, and who spoke the beloved

tongue, to enrich them with English estates, to invest them

with the highest offices of the English kingdom.... His real

affections were lavished on the Norman priests and gentlemen

who flocked to his court as to the land of promise. These

strangers were placed in important offices about the royal

person, and before long they were set to rule as Earls and

Bishops over the already half conquered soil of England....

These were again only the first instalment of the larger gang

who were to win for themselves a more lasting settlement four

and twenty years later. In all this the seeds of the Conquest

were sowing, or rather ... it is now that the Conquest

actually begins. The reign of Edward is a period of struggle

between natives and foreigners for dominion in England.[4]

One has, it is true, always to remember that if Edward, on his

mother's side, was a Norman, so was Harold, as his name reminds us, on

his mother's side, a Dane. Nor is it without significance that, on the

exile of his house (1051), he fled to the Scandinavian settlers on

the Irish coast, and found, no doubt, among them those who shared his

almost piratical return in 1052.[5] The late Professor's bias against

all that was 'French', together with his love for the 'kindred' lands

of Germany and Scandinavia, led him, perhaps, to obscure the fact that

England was a prey which the Dane was as eager to grasp as the Norman.

But this in no way impugns the truth of his view that 'the Norman

tendencies of Edward' paved the way for the coming of William. Nor can

we hesitate to begin the study of the Norman Conquest with the coming

of those, its true forerunners--

'Ke Ewart i aveit menéz

Et granz chastels è fieux dunez,'

and with whom may be said to have begun the story of Feudal England.

Professor Burrows is entitled to the credit of setting forth the

theory, in his little book upon the Cinque Ports,[6] that Edward the

Confessor 'had evidently intended to make the little group of Sussex

towns, the "New Burgh" [? afterwards Hastings], Winchelsea, and Rye, a

strong link of communication between England and Normandy', by placing

them under the control of Fécamp Abbey. He holds, indeed, that Godwine

and Harold had contrived to thwart this intention in the case of the

latter; but this, as I shall show in my paper on the Cinque Ports,

arises from a misapprehension. This theory I propose to develop by

adding the case of Steyning, Edward's grant of which to Fécamp is well

known, and has been discussed by Mr Freeman. It might not, possibly,

occur to any one that Steyning, like Arundel, was at that time a port.

But in a very curious record of 1103, narrating the agreement made

between the Abbot and De Braose, the Lord of Bramber, it is mentioned

that ships, in the days of the Confessor, used to come up to the

'portus S. Cuthmanni' [the patron saint of Steyning], but had been

lately impeded by a bridge that had been erected at Bramber. Here

then was another Sussex port placed in Norman hands. Yet this does not

exhaust the list. Mr Freeman seems to have strangely overlooked the

fact that the great benefice of Bosham, valued under the Confessor

at £300 a year, had been conferred by Edward on his Norman chaplain,

Osbern, afterwards (1073) Bishop of Exeter, whose brother, in the

words of the Regius Professor, was the 'Duke's earliest and dearest

friend', and who, of course, was of kin both to William and to

Edward. Now this Bosham, with Thorney Island, commanded a third Sussex

harbour, Chichester haven.[7]

But at London itself also we find the Normans favoured. The very

interesting charter of Henry II, granted by him, as Duke of the

Normans, in 1150 or 1151, to the citizens of Rouen, confirms them in

possession of their port at Dowgate, as they had held it from the days

of Edward the Confessor.[8] Here then we have evidence--which seems

to have eluded the research of our historians, both general and

local--that, even before the Conquest, the citizens of Rouen had a

haven of their own at the mouth of the Walbrook, for which they were

probably indebted to the Norman proclivities of the Confessor.

The building of 'Richard's Castle' plays a most important part in

Mr Freeman's narrative of the doings of the Normans under Edward the

Confessor. We hear of its building, according to him, in September

1051:

Just at this moment another instance of the insolence and

violence of the foreigners in another part of the kingdom

served to stir up men's minds to the highest pitch. Among the

Frenchmen who had flocked to the land of promise was one named

Richard the son of Scrob, who had received a grant of lands in

Herefordshire. He and his son Osbern had there built a castle

on a spot which, by a singularly lasting tradition, preserves

to this day the memory of himself and his building. The

fortress itself has vanished, but its site is still to be

marked, and the name of Richard's castle, still borne by the

parish in which it stood, is an abiding witness of the deep

impression which its erection made on the minds of the men of

those times.... Here then was another wrong, a wrong perhaps

hardly second to the wrong which had been done at Dover. Alike

in Kent and Herefordshire, men had felt the sort of treatment

which they were to expect if the King's foreign favourites

were to be any longer tolerated.[9]

Accordingly, Godwine, Mr Freeman wrote, demanded (September 8,

1051) 'the surrender of Eustace and his men and of the Frenchmen of

Richard's Castle'. In a footnote to this statement, he explained that

'"the castle" [of the Chronicle] undoubtedly means Richard's

Castle, as it must mean in the entry of the next year in the same

Chronicle'.[10] Of the entry in question (1052) he wrote: '"The

castle" is doubtless Richard's Castle.... Here again the expressions

witness to the deep feeling awakened by the building of this

castle.'[11] So, too, in a special appendix we read:

A speaking witness to the impression which had been made

on men's minds by the building of this particular Richard's

Castle, probably the first of its class in England, is given

by its being spoken of distinctively as 'the castle' even

by the Worcester chronicler (1052; see p. 309), who had not

spoken of its building in his earlier narrative.[12]

We have, thus far, a consistent narrative. There was in Herefordshire

one castle, built by Richard and named after him. It had been the

cause of oppression and ravage, and its surrender, as such, had been

demanded by Godwine in 1051. A year later (September 1052) Godwine

triumphs; 'it was needful to punish the authors of all the evils that

had happened' (p. 333); and 'all the Frenchmen' who had caused them

were at last outlawed. But now comes the difficulty, as Mr Freeman

pointed out:

The sentence did not extend to all the men of Norman birth or

of French speech who were settled in the country. It was meant

to strike none but actual offenders. By an exception capable

of indefinite and dangerous extension, those were excepted

'whom the King liked, and who were true to him and all his

folk' (ii. 334).... We have a list of those who were thus

excepted, which contains some names which we are surprised to

find there. The exception was to apply to those only who had

been true to the king and his people. Yet among the Normans

who remained we find Richard, the son of Scrob, and among

those who returned we find his son Osbern. These two men were

among the chief authors of all evil (ii. 344).

That is to say, the Lord of Richard's castle, on whose surrender and

punishment Godwine had specially insisted, was specially exempted, as

guiltless, when Godwine returned to power.[13]

In me, at least, this discrepancy aroused grave suspicion, and I

turned to see what foundation there was for identifying the offending

garrison of 1051 with that of Richard's castle. I at once discovered

there was none whatever.

We have here, in short, one of those cases, characteristic, as I

think, of the late Professor's work, in which he first formed an idea,

and then, under its spell, fitted the facts to it without question.

The view, for instance, of the unique position of Richard's castle as

'_the_ castle' at the time is at once rendered untenable by the fact

that, on the return of Godwine, Normans fled 'some west to Pentecostes

castle, some north to Robert's castle', in the words of the

Chronicle.[14] Moreover, the former belonged to Osbern, 'whose

surname was Pentecost' (_cognomento Pentecost_), who, as we learn from

Florence, was forced to surrender it and leave the country, as was

also the fate of another castellan, his comrade Hugh.[15]

It is important to observe the clear distinction between Richard, son

of Scrob, of Richard's castle, and Osbern Pentecost, of Pentecost's

castle, of whom the former was allowed to remain, while the latter was

exiled. But it is another peculiarity of Mr Freeman's work that he

was apt to confuse different individuals bearing the same name.[16]

In this instance, he boldly assumed that 'Pentecost, as we gather

from Florence [?] ... is the same as Osbern, the son of Richard of

Richard's castle, of whom we have already heard so much' (ii. 329),

although the latter, a well-known man, is always distinguished as a

son of his father, and never as Pentecost. And he further assumes that

'Pentecost's castle' was identical with Richard's castle, 'the first

cause of so much evil' (_ibid._). These identifications led him into

further difficulty, because Osbern, the son of Richard, is found

afterwards holding 'both lands and offices in Herefordshire' (ii.

345). To account for this, he further assumes as 'certain that Osbern

afterwards returned' (_ibid._). This assumption led him on to suggest

that others also returned from exile, and that 'their restoration was

owing to special entreaties of the King after the death of Godwine'

(ii. 346). The whole of this history is sheer assumption, based on

confusion alone.

Now let us clear our minds of this confusion, and keep the two

castellans and their respective castles apart. On the one hand,

we have Richard, the son of Scrob, who was left undisturbed at his

castle, and was succeeded there by his son Osbern;[17] on the other

hand, we have Osbern, 'whose surname was Pentecost', and who had to

surrender his castle, to which the guilty Normans had fled, and to go

into exile. Can we identify that castle? I would venture to suggest

that it was no other than that of Ewyas Harold in the south-west

corner of Herefordshire, of which Domesday tells us that Earl William

had _re_-fortified it ('hoc castellum refirmaverat'), implying that it

had existed, and been dismantled before the Conquest. It heads, in the

great survey, the possessions of Alfred of Marlborough, and although

its holder T.R.E. is not mentioned, we read of the two Manors which

follow it: 'Hæc duo maneria tenuit Osbernus avunculus Alveredi T.R.E.

quando Goduinus et Heraldus erant exulati' (i. 186). Mr Freeman, of

course, assumed that this Osbern was identical with Osbern, the son

of Richard, the Domesday tenant-in-chief. This assumption is not only

baseless, but also most improbable: for Alfred was old enough to be

father-in-law to Thurstan (Mortimer), a Domesday tenant, and would

scarcely therefore be young enough to be nephew to another Domesday

tenant-in-chief. I would suggest that his uncle was that Osbern

'Pentecost' who had to surrender his castle and flee on the return

of Godwine and Harold. This would exactly fit in with the Domesday

statement, as also with the dismantling of Ewyas Castle.[18]

Ewyas Harold fits in also with the chronicle's mention of the Normans

fleeing 'west' to Pentecost's castle.

We have now seen that Richard's castle did not stand alone, and that

there is nothing to identify it with that Herefordshire castle ('ænne

castel') of which the garrison had committed outrages in 1051, and

which is far more likely, so far as our evidence goes, to have been

'Pentecost's Castle'. Mr Freeman rightly called attention to 'the firm

root which the Normans had taken in Herefordshire before 1051, which

looks very much as if they had been specially favoured in these parts'

(ii. 562); and he argued from this that Earl Ralf had probably

ruled the shire between 1046 and 1050. The Earl would naturally

have introduced the foreign system of castles, as he did the foreign

fashion of fighting on horseback. Indeed, speaking of the capture of

Hereford in 1055, Mr Freeman wrote:

It is an obvious conjecture that the fortress destroyed by

Gruffyd was a Norman castle raised by Ralph. A chief who

was so anxious to make his people conform to Norman ways of

fighting would hardly lag behind his neighbour at Richard's

castle. He would be among the first at once to provide himself

with a dwelling-place and his capital with a defence according

to the latest continental patterns (ii. 391).

But if this is so, he would have built it while he ruled the shire (as

Mr Freeman believed he probably did) from 1046 to 1050, and would,

in any case, have done so on taking up its government in 1051.[19]

Consequently he would have had a castle and garrison at Hereford in

1052. But Mr Freeman, describing Gruffyd's raid in that year into

Herefordshire, and finding a castle mentioned, assumed that it could

only be Richard's castle,[20] although, a few lines before, he had

admitted the existence of other castles in the shire.[21] Even in 1067

he would have liked to hold that Richard's castle was the only one

in Herefordshire, but the words of the chronicle were too clear for

him.[22]

I have endeavoured to make clear my meaning, namely, that Mr Freeman's

view that 'Richard's castle' stood alone as '_the_ castle', and that

Richard and his garrison were the special offenders under Edward the

Confessor, is not only destitute of all foundations, but at variance

with the facts of the case. When we read of Herefordshire (1067) that

The Norman colony, planted in that region by Eadward and

so strangely tolerated by Harold, was still doing its work.

Osbern had been sheriff under Edward, even when Harold was

Earl of the shire, and his father Richard, the old offender,

still lived (iv. 64)--

we must remember that the conduct of Harold was only strange if

Richard, as Mr Freeman maintained, was 'the old offender'. If,

as Florence distinctly tells us, he was, on the contrary, void of

offence, Harold's conduct was in no way strange.[23]

Let us now turn from the Herefordshire colony, planted, I think, not

so much by King Edward as by his Earl Ralph, just as Earl William

(Fitz Osbern) planted a fresh one after the Conquest.

Among the Normans allowed to remain, on the triumph of Godwine's

party in 1052, Florence mentions 'Ælfredum regis stratorem'. On him Mr

Freeman thus comments:

Several Ælfreds occur in Domesday as great landowners, Ælfred

of Marlborough (Osbern's nephew) and Ælfred of Spain, but it

is not easy to identify their possessions with any holder of

the name in Edward's time. The names Ælfred and Edward and the

female name Eadgyth seem to have been the only English names

adopted by the Normans. The two former would naturally be

given to godsons or dependants of the two Althelings while in

Normandy [_i.e._ after 1013].[24]

An appendix, in the first volume, devoted to Ælfred the giant--who

appears in Normandy, _circ._ 1030--claims that Ælfred is a name so

purely English that the presumption in favour of the English birth of

any one bearing it 'in this generation is extremely strong',[25]

and that it was only adopted by 'a later generation of Normans'. Mr

Freeman seems to have been unaware that in Britanny the name of

Alfred enjoyed peculiar favour. I find it there as early as the

ninth century,[26] while I have noted in a single cartulary seventeen

examples between 1000 and 1150. Among these are 'Alfridus frater

Jutheli' (_ante_ 1008) and Juthel, son of Alfred (1037). Now, at the

Conquest, 'Judhael, who from his chief seat took the name of Judhael

of Totnes, became the owner', in Mr Freeman's words, 'of a vast estate

in Devonshire, and extended his possessions into the proper Cornwall

also'. But we know from charters that this Judhael was the son of an

Alfred, and was succeeded by another Alfred, who joined Baldwin of

Redvers at Exeter in 1136.[27] In the same county, as Mr Freeman

reminds us, we have another Breton tenant-in-chief, 'Alvredus Brito'.

In all this I am working up to the suggestion that the well-known

Alfred of Lincoln was not, as Mr Freeman holds, an Englishman,[28] but

a Breton. We have not only the overwhelming presumption against any

considerable tenant-in-chief being of English origin, but the fact

that his lands were new grants. When we add to this fact that his

heir (whether son or brother) bore the distinctively Breton name of

Alan,[29] we may safely conclude that Alfred was not only a foreigner

but a Breton. But the strange thing is that we do not stop there;

we have a Jool (or Johol) of Lincoln, who died in 1051[30] after

bestowing on Ramsey Abbey its Lincolnshire fief.[31] Thus we have an

Alfred and a Juhel 'of Lincoln', as we have an Alfred and a Juhel

'of Totnes'; and in Juhel of Lincoln we must have a Breton settled in

England under the Confessor.

The name of 'Lincoln' leads me to another interesting discovery. 'Both

Alfred of Lincoln and the sheriff Thorold,' Mr Freeman wrote, 'were

doubtless Englishmen.'[32] And speaking of Abbot Turold's accession

in 1070, he observed that Turold was 'a form of the Danish Thorold, a

name still [1070] familiar in that part of England, one which had been

borne by an English sheriff'.[33]

Now this Thorold (_Turoldus_) has been the subject of much speculation

by Mr Stapleton, Mr Freeman,[34] etc., in connection with William

Malet and the mysterious Countess Lucy, but the facts about him are

of the scantiest, nor, I believe, has any one succeeded in finding him

actually mentioned in the Conqueror's reign, though he is referred to

in Domesday. This, however, I have now done, lighting upon him in a

passage of considerable interest _per se_. In the 'De miraculis sancti

Eadmundi' of Herman we read that when Herfast, Bishop of Thetford,

visited Baldwin, Abbot of St Edmund's, to be cured of an injury to his

eye, the Abbot induced him to renounce his claim to jurisdiction over

the Abbey:

In sacri monasterii vestiario, præsentibus ejusdem loci

majoris ætatis fratribus, sed etiam accitis illuc ab abbate

quibusdam regis primoribus, qui dictante justitia in

eadem villa regia tenebant placita. Quorum nomina, quamvis

auditoribus tædio, tamen sunt veræ rationis testimonio;

videlicet Hugo de Mundford, et Rogerius cognomento Bigot,

Richardus Gisleberti comitis filius, ac cum eis

_Lincoliensis Turoldus_ et Hispaniensis Alveredus, cum aliis

compluribus.[35]

The date of this incident can be fixed with certainty as 1076-79; and

it is of great interest for its mention both of the eyre itself and

of those 'barons' who took part in it; there can be no question that

'Turoldus' was the mysterious Thorold, sheriff of Lincolnshire, taking

his name from Lincoln.[36] He was, therefore, not 'an English sheriff'

of days before the Conquest, but a Norman--as were his fellows--who

died before Domesday.[37]

The name of William Malet, connected with that of Thorold, reminds

me of a suggestion I once made,[38] that he held Aulkborough in

Lincolnshire, T.R.E., 'and was, to that extent, as M. le Prêvost held,

"established in England previously to the Conquest"'.

Stapleton, whose name in such matters rightly carries great weight,

maintained that because the Manor was held in 1086 by Ivo Tailbois,

and is stated in Domesday 'to have previously belonged to William

Malet', it must have been alienated by William by a gift in frank

marriage with a daughter, who must, he held, have married Ivo. But

I pointed out, firstly, that 'it is not the practice of Domesday to

enter Manors held _in maritagio_ thus', and gave an instance (i. 197)

'where we find Picot holding lands from Robert Gernon, which lands

are entered in the Gernon fief with the note: "Has terras tenet Picot

Vicecomes de Roberto Gernon in maritagio feminæ suæ."' I can now, by

the kindness of Dr Liebermann, add the instance of the Mandeville fief

in Surrey, where we read of 'Aultone': 'De his hidis tenet Wesman

vi. hidas de Goisfrido filio comitis Eustachii; hanc terram dedit ei

Goisfridus de Mannevil cum filia sua' (i. 36).[39] In addition to this

argument I urged that 'in default of any statement to the contrary, we

must always infer that the two holders named in the survey are (_A_)

the holder T.R.E., (_B_) the holder in 1086'. This would make William

Malet the holder T.R.E.

Another 'Norman' on whom I would touch is 'Robert fitz Wimarc', so

often mentioned by Mr Freeman. I claim him too as a Breton, on his

mother's side at least, if Wimarc, as seems to be the case, was his

mother, for that is a distinctively Breton name. Mr Freeman queried

the Biographer's description of him as 'regis consanguineus', when

at Edward's death-bed;[40] but he is clearly the 'Robertus regis

consanguineus' of the Waltham charter.[41] He was also of kin to

William.[42]

The last on my list is Regenbald 'the Norman chancellor of Edward',

as Mr Freeman termed him throughout. He must have had, I presume, some

authority for doing so: but I cannot discover that authority; and,

in its absence, the name, from its form, does not suggest a Norman

origin.[43] Of Regenbald, however, I shall have to speak in another

paper.

[Footnote 1: _Quarterly Review_, June 1892, pp. 9, 10.]

[Footnote 2: _Norm. Conq._, i. 525, 526.]

[Footnote 3: _Ibid._]

[Footnote 4: _Norm. Conq._, ii, 29, 30.]

[Footnote 5: Mr Freeman admits that his crews 'probably

consisted mainly of adventurers from the Danish Saxons of

Ireland, ready for any enterprise which promised excitement

and plunder' (_N.C._, ii. 313).]

[Footnote 6: _Historic Towns: Cinque Ports_, pp. 26-9.]

[Footnote 7: See for Osbern, Mr A. S. Ellis's _Domesday

Tenants in Gloucestershire_, p. 18. May not Peter, William's

chaplain, Bishop of Lichfield, 1075, have similarly been the

Peter who was a chaplain of Edward?]

[Footnote 8: Chèruel's _Histoire de Rouen pendant l'époque

communale_, i. 245.]

[Footnote 9: _Norm. Conq._, ii. 136-8.]

[Footnote 10: _Ibid._, p. 140.]

[Footnote 11: _Ibid._, p. 309.]

[Footnote 12: _Ibid._, p. 607.]

[Footnote 13: 'Norman Richard still held his castle in

Herefordshire' (Hunt's _Norman Britain_, p. 69).]

[Footnote 14: Mr Clark refers to this passage, adding: 'So

that these places, probably like Richard's castle, were in

Norman hands' (_M.M.A._, i. 37).]

[Footnote 15: 'Osbernus vero, cognomento Pentecost, et socius

ejus Hugo sua reddiderunt castella.']

[Footnote 16: I have noted several cases in point, that of

Walter Giffard being the most striking. But we also read in

_William Rufus_ (ii. 551) that 'Henry, son of Swegen,

who comes so often under Henry the Second, is the unlucky

descendant of Robert, son of Wymarc', that is to say, Henry

'of Essex', who was a son of Robert, not of Swegen, and who

belonged to a wholly different family and district.]

[Footnote 17: 'Worse than all, the original sinners of the

Herefordshire border, Richard and his son Osbern, were still

lords of English soil, and holders of English offices' (iv.

53).]

[Footnote 18: Named, as Mr Freeman pointed out, after Harold,

son of Earl Ralph, not after Harold, son of Godwine.]

[Footnote 19: 'That Ralph succeeded Swegen on his final

banishment in 1051, I have no doubt at all' (ii. 562).]

[Footnote 20: '"The castle" is doubtless Richard's castle....

Here again the expressions witness to the deep feeling

awakened by the building of this castle' (ii. 309).]

[Footnote 21: 'The Norman lords whom Eadward had settled

in Herefordshire proved but poor defenders of their adopted

country. The last continental improvements in the art of

fortification proved vain to secure the land' (_ibid._).]

[Footnote 22: Florence (1067) speaks of the 'Herefordenses

castellani et Richardus filius Scrob' as the opponents

of Eadric. I could almost have fancied that the words

'Herefordenses castellani' referred to 'the castle' in

Herefordshire (see vol. ii. p. 139); but the words of the

Worcester chronicler 'þa castelmenn on Hereforda' seem to fix

the meaning to the city itself' (iv. 64).]

[Footnote 23: I have no hesitation in offering these

criticisms, because Mr Freeman's views have been embraced

throughout by Mr Hunt, who has followed closely in his

footsteps. For instance:

'A private fortress ... would 'It was the first fortress which

seem even stranger to us now was raised in England for the

than it seemed to our indulgence of private insolence

forefathers when Richard the and greed, and not for the

son of Scrob raised the first protection of Englishmen; it was

castle on English ground' to be the first of many, and the

(_Norm. Conq._, v. 640). evil deeds which Richard's men

wrought were a foretaste of the

evil times when fortresses such

as his were common in the land'

(_Norman Britain_, p. 64).

Mr Hunt, therefore, survives to defend the position.]

[Footnote 24: Vol. ii., p. 345.]

[Footnote 25: Vol. i., p. 747.]

[Footnote 26: About 849; Alfret Machtiern, 868; Alfritus

tyrannus, 871; Alfrit presbyter, 872; filius Alurit, 879.]

[Footnote 27: Gesta Stephani.]

[Footnote 28: iii. (2nd ed.) 780; iv. 214.]

[Footnote 29: See the Lindsey Survey.]

[Footnote 30: _Ramsey Cartulary_, iii. 167.]

[Footnote 31: _Ramsey Cartulary_, i. 208, ii. 74. _Domesday_,

i. 346_b_.]

[Footnote 32: iii. (2nd ed.) 780.]

[Footnote 33: iv. (1st ed.) 457.]

[Footnote 34: _Ibid._, 778-80. Mr Freeman spoke of him as 'a

kind of centre' for the inquiry, and stated that in Domesday

346_b_ we have 'Turoldus vicecomes' as a benefactor of

Spalding priory. This is an error, for the words there are

'dedit S. Gutlaco' (_i.e._ Crowland). He also urged that 'we

must not forget the Crowland tradition' about him 'preserved

by the false Ingulf'. But the fact is that 'Ingulf' made

him into _two_ (1) 'Thuroldus Vicecomes Lincoln', whose

benefaction to Crowland (D.B., i. 346_b_) was confirmed in 806

(!) and subsequently (pp. 6, 9, 15, 19), (2) 'quidam vicecomes

Lincolniæ, dictus Thoroldus ... de genere et cognatione illius

vicedomini Thoroldi qui quondam', etc. (p. 65). It is the

one living in '1051', to whom the Spalding foundation was

assigned.]

[Footnote 35: _Memorials of St Edmund's Abbey_, i. 63-4.

Herman wrote from personal knowledge.]

[Footnote 36: There are plenty of instances of this practice,

as at Exeter, Salisbury, Gloucester, Leicester, etc.]

[Footnote 37: It may be well here to allude to a still more

remarkable commission, some twenty years later, namely in

1096, when William Rufus sent 'in quadragesima optimates

suos in Devenesiram et in Cornubiam et Exoniam, Walcalinum,

videlicet, Wyntonensem episcopum, Randulphum regalem

capellanum, Willelmum Capram, Hardinum Belnothi filium (_i.e._

Elnoth or Eadnoth; _see_ Greenfield's _De Meriet pedigree_,

p. 6) ad investiganda regalia placita. Quibus in placitis

calumpniati sunt cuidam [_sic_] mansioni abbacie Taviensis,'

etc. (Tavistock cartulary in _Mon. Ang._, ii. 497). This

eyre cannot be generally known, for Mr T. A. Archer, in his

elaborate biography of Ranulf Flambard, does not mention it.

The association of Bishop Walkelin with Ranulf is specially

interesting because they are stated to have been left by the

king next year (1097) as joint regents of the realm. The name,

I may add, of 'Willelmus filius Baldwini' among those to whom

the consequent charter is addressed (_Mon. Ang._, ii. 497), is

of considerable importance, because it is clearly that of

the sheriff of Devon, and is proof therefore that Baldwin

the sheriff (Baldwin, son of Count Gilbert) had left a son

William, who had succeeded to his shrievalty by 1096, and who

was in turn succeeded by his brother, Richard fitz Baldwin,

sheriff under Henry I.]

[Footnote 38: _Genealogist_, viii. 4.]

[Footnote 39: Dr Liebermann asks whether Geoffrey's daughter

was not thus 'the first wife, else unknown, of the future King

of Jerusalem'.]

[Footnote 40: _Norm. Conq._, iii. 576.]

[Footnote 41: _Ibid._, ii. 673.]

[Footnote 42: _Ibid._, iii. 416.]

[Footnote 43: Mr A. S. Ellis has suggested that 'Elward filius

Reinbaldi' (D.B., i. 170_b_) King's thegn in Glo'stershire

'was evidently a son' of the chancellor. This suggestion

is highly probable, and in any case, the thegn bearing this

English name, it may fairly be presumed that his father

Reinbald was not of Norman birth.]

MR FREEMAN AND THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS

[Greek: Hotan ho ischyros kathôplismenos phylassê tên heautou aulên,

en eirênê estin ta hyparchonta autou. epan de ischyroteros autou

epelthôn nikêsê auton, tên panoplian autou airei eph' hê epepoithei.]

It might well be thought the height of rashness to attempt criticism,

even in detail, of Mr Freeman's narrative of the Battle of Hastings.

For its story, as his champion has well observed, is 'the centre and

the very heart of Mr Freeman's work; if he could blunder here in

the most carefully elaborated passage of his whole history he could

blunder anywhere; his reputation for accuracy would be gone almost

beyond hope of retrieving it'.[1] And indeed, it may fairly be

described as Mr Freeman's greatest achievement, the point where he is

strongest of all. He himself described the scene as the 'battle which

is the centre of my whole history', and reminded us that

on its historic importance I need not dwell; it is the very

subject of my history.... Looking also at the fight simply

as a battle, it is one of the most memorable in all military

history.

That is the first point. The second is that in his battle pieces

our author was always at his best. Essentially a concrete historian,

objective as Macaulay in his treatment, he loved incident and action;

loved them, indeed, so well, that he could scarcely bring himself to

omit the smallest details of a skirmish:

E ripenso le mobili

Tende, e i percossi valli,

E 'l campo dei manipoli,

E l'onda dei cavalli.

Precentor Venables has well described

that wonderful discourse, one of his greatest triumphs--in

which, with flashing eye and thrilling voice, he made the

great fight of Senlac--as he loved to call it, discarding the

later name--which changed the fortunes of England and made her

what she is, live and move before his hearers.

My third point is that his knowledge of the subject was unrivalled.

He had visited the battlefield, he tells us, no less than five times,

accompanied by the best experts, civil and military, he could find; he

had studied every authority, and read all that had been written, till

he was absolutely master of every source of information. He had

further executed for him, by officers of the Royal Engineers, an

elaborate plan of the battle based on his unwearied studies. Never was

historian more splendidly equipped.

Thus was prepared that 'very lucid and quite original account of

the battle', as Mr G. T. Clark describes it, which we are about to

examine; that 'detailed account of the battle' that Mr Hunt, in his

_Norman Britain_, describes as written 'with a rare combination of

critical exactness and epic grandeur'.

THE NAME OF 'SENLAC'

Before we approach the great battle, it is necessary to speak plainly

of the name which Mr Freeman gave it, the excruciating name of

'Senlac'. It is necessary, because we have here a perfect type of

those changes in nomenclature on which Mr Freeman insisted, and which

always remind one of Macaulay's words:

Mr Mitford piques himself on spelling better than any of

his neighbours; and this not only in ancient names, which he

mangles in defiance both of custom and of reason.... In such

cases established usage is considered as law by all writers

except Mr Mitford ... but he proceeds on no principle but that

of being unlike the rest of the world. Every child has heard

of Linnæus; therefore Mr Mitford calls him Linné. Rousseau is

known all over Europe as Jean Jacques; therefore Mr Mitford

bestows on him the strange appellation of John James.

None of Mr Freeman's peculiar 'notes' is more familiar than this

tendency, and none has given rise to bitterer controversy or more

popular amusement. 'Pedantry' was the charge brought against him, and

to this charge he was as keenly sensitive as was Browning to that of

'obscurity'. Of both writers it may fairly be said that they evaded

rather than met the charge brought against them. The Regius Professor

invariably maintained that accuracy, not 'pedantry', was his true

offence. Writing, in the _Fortnightly Review_, on 'The Study of

History', he set forth his standing defence in these words:

I would say, as the first precept, Dare to be accurate. You

will be called a pedant for doing so, but dare to be accurate

all the same.

He who shall venture to distinguish between two English

boroughs, between two Hadriatic islands when the authorized

caterer for the public information thinks good to confound

them, must be content to bear the terrible name of pedant,

even if no worse fate still is in store for him.

Was, then, our author a mere pedant, or was this the name that

ignorance bestowed on knowledge? For an answer to this question,

'Senlac' is a test-case. 'Every child', in Macaulay's words, had heard

of the Battle of Hastings; it was known by that name 'all over Europe'

from time immemorial. Unless, therefore, that name was wrong, it was

wanton and mischievous to change it; and, even if changed, it was

indefensible to substitute the name of Senlac, unless there is proof

that the battle was so styled when it was fought.

As to the first of these points, the old name was in no sense wrong.

Precisely as the battle of Poitiers was fought some miles from

Poitiers, so was it with that of Hastings. Yet we all speak of

the Battle of Poitiers, although we might substitute the name of

Maupertuis more legitimately than that of Senlac. The only plea that

Mr Freeman could advance was that people were led by the old name to

imagine that the battle was fought at Hastings itself! Of those who

argue in this spirit, it was finely said by the late Mr Kerslake that

instead of lifting ignorance to competence by teaching what

ought to be known, they cut down what ought to be known to the

capacity of those who are deficient of that knowledge. Instead

of making them understand the meaning of the ancient and

established word 'Anglo-Saxon', they disturb the whole world

of learning with an almost violent attempt to turn out of use

the established word, which has been thoroughly understood for

ages.

The simple answer to Mr Freeman's contention is, that it is needless

to make the change in histories, because those who read them learn

that the fight was at Battle; while as to those who do not read

histories, it is obvious that such a name as 'Senlac' will in no way

lighten their darkness.

The change, therefore, was uncalled for. But it was not merely

uncalled for; it was also absolutely wrong. 'To the battle itself,' Mr

Freeman wrote, 'I restore its true ancient name of Senlac.' In so

doing the writer acted in the spirit of those who 'restore' our

churches and who gave that word so evil a sound in the ears of all

archæologists, Mr Freeman himself included. I am reminded of the

protest of the Society of Antiquaries on hearing 'with much regret

that a fifteenth-century pinnacle' at Rochester Cathedral 'is in

danger of destruction in order that a modern pinnacle, professing to

represent that which stood in the place in the twelfth century, may be

set up in its stead'. Precisely such a 'restoration' is Mr Freeman's

'Senlac'. Professing to represent the ancient name of the battle, it

is substituted for that name which the battle has borne from the days

of the Conqueror to our own. In William of Malmesbury as in Domesday

Book we read of 'the Battle of Hastings' (_Bellum Hastingense_), and

all Mr Freeman's efforts failed admittedly to discover any record or

any writer who spoke of the Battle of Senlac (_Bellum Senlacium_)

save Orderic alone. Now Orderic wrote two generations after the battle

was fought; the name he strove to give it fell from his pen stillborn;

and the fact that this name was a fad of his own is shown by what Mr

Freeman suppressed, namely, that Orderic, in the same breath, tells

us that Battle Abbey was founded as 'c[oe]nobium Sanctæ Trinitatis

Senlac', whereas we learn from Mr Freeman himself that

the usual title is 'ecclesia Sancti Martini de Bello',

'ecclesia de Bello', or, as we have seen, in English 'þæt

mynster æt þære Bataille'. The fuller form, 'Abbas Sancti

Martini de loco Belli', appears in Domesday, 11_b_: but it is

commonly called in the Survey 'ecclesia de Labatailge'.

So much for Orderic's authority.

So violent an innovation as this of our author's could not

pass unchallenged. Mr Frederic Harrison threw down the gauntlet

(_Contemporary Review_, January 1886), attacking, in a brilliant and

incisive article, Mr Freeman's 'pedantry' along the whole line. But he

chiefly complained of

a far more serious change of name that the 'Old English'

school have introduced; which, if it were indefinitely

extended, would wantonly confuse historical literature. I mean

the attempt to alter names which are the accepted landmarks of

history. It is now thought scholarly to write of 'the Battle

of _Senlac_' instead of 'the Battle of _Hastings_'. As every

one knows, the fight took place on the site of Battle Abbey,

seven miles from Hastings; as so many great battles, those of

Tours, Blenheim, Cannæ, Chalons, and the like, have been named

from places not the actual spot of the combat.

But since for 800 years the historians of Europe have spoken

of 'the Battle of Hastings', it does seem a little pedantic

to rename it.... The sole authority for 'Battle of Senlac' is

Orderic, a monk who lived and wrote in Normandy in the next

century. Yet, on the strength of this secondary authority, the

'Old English' school choose to erase from English literature

one of our most familiar names.

Mr Freeman's rejoinder must be noticed, because singularly

characteristic. Treating Mr Harrison 'de haut en bas', he expressed

surprise that his friends should expect him to reply to an article

which had merely amused him, and--unable, of course, to adduce any

fresh authority for 'Senlac'--denounced his critic for a 'reckless

raid into regions where he does not know the road'. For this charge

there was no foundation in the matter of which we treat. Mr Freeman

persisted that he had given the battle 'the only name that I found for

it anywhere' (which we have seen was not the case), and sarcastically

observed that 'so to do is certainly "pedantic", for it conduces to

accuracy'.

The truth is simply that the site of the battle had no name at all. As

the professor himself wrote:

The spot was then quite unoccupied and untilled; nothing in

any of the narratives implies the existence of any village or

settlement; our own Chronicle only describes the site as

by 'the hoar apple-tree' ('He com him togenes æt þære haran

apuldran').

Consequently, when men wished to speak of the great conflict, they

were driven, as in similar cases, to term it the Battle of Hastings,

or, if they wished to be more exact, they had to describe it, by

periphrasis, as fought on 'the site which is now called Battle'.

Henry of Huntingdon, our author tells us, is guilty, though otherwise

well informed, of 'a statement so grotesquely inaccurate as

that Harold "aciem suam construxit in _planis Hastinges_"'. Why

'grotesque'? It would be strictly accurate to describe a battle, even

seven miles from Salisbury, as fought on Salisbury Plain; while, as

to the word 'plain', his horror of field-sports may have caused Mr

Freeman's ignorance of the fact that another such stretch of Sussex

Down is known as 'Plumpton Plain'.[2] But the fact is that the whole

difficulty arose from that singular narrowness that cramped our

author's mind, and that lies at the root, when rightly understood,

of his most distinctive tenets. For he was a pedant, after all.

And, observe, this 'pedantry' did, in practice, conduce not to true

accuracy, but to the very reverse. Paradoxical though this may sound,

it is literally true. Let us take a striking instance. In his account

of the attack on Dover in 1067, Mr Freeman argued, 'from the distinct

mention of _oppidum_ and _oppidani_ in Orderic', that it was not the

castle, as supposed, but the town that was attacked. And so convinced

was he of this, that he forced his authorities into harmony with his

view against their plain meaning. This was because he was not aware

that Orderic--'my dear old friend Orderic', as in one place he terms

him--was in the habit of using _oppidum_ for castle. He must

have afterwards discovered this; for his theory was tacitly and

significantly dropped, and the old version substituted, in a

subsequent edition. Again, an article on 'City and Borough', which he

contributed to _Macmillan's Magazine_, was based on the fundamental

assumption that _civitas_, in the Norman period, must have had a

specialized denotation. The fact that, on the contrary, the same town

is spoken of as a _civitas_ and as a _burgus_, cuts the ground

from under this assumption, and, with it, destroys the whole of its

elaborate superstructure. Our author's method, in short, placed him in

standing conflict with every authority for his period. Never was 'the

sacredness of words' treated as of less account; never, indeed, were

words more wantonly changed. What would Mr Freeman have said had he

known that the compilers of that sacrosanct record, Domesday Book

itself, revelled in altering the wording of the sworn original

returns? Such was the spirit of the men whose language he strove to

limit by a terminology as precise as that of modern philosophy.

I may have wandered somewhat from 'Senlac', but my object was to show

that Mr Freeman misunderstood twelfth-century writers by assigning to

them his own peculiarities. It did not in any way follow from their

speaking of a 'Battle of Hastings' that they 'grotesquely' supposed it

to have been fought at the town itself: they allowed themselves an

elasticity, both in word and phrase, which was so alien to himself

that he could not realize its existence, and therefore accused them of

ignorance because their language was different from his. In the same

spirit he would never admit that the 'Castellum Warham' of Domesday

Book was no other than Corfe Castle, although, as Mr Eyton and Mr Bond

have shown, the fact is certain.

But the _crux_ is yet to come. To any one acquainted with 'Old

English' it must instantly occur that 'Senlac' is not an English name.

Mr Freeman glided over this by simply ignoring the difficulty, but was

he aware that the name in question, as 'Senlecque' (or 'Senlecques'),

is actually found--in France? One is reminded of his own criticism on

the name 'Duncombe Park':

When the lands of Helmsley were made to take the name of

Duncombe, a real wrong was done to geography.... How came a

_combe_ in Yorkshire? The thing is a fraud on nomenclature as

great as any of the frauds which the first Duncombe, 'born to

carry parcels and to sweep down a counting-house', contrived

to commit on the treasury of the nation.

How came a French 'Senlac' in 'Old English' Sussex? The name is as

obviously foreign as 'Senlis' itself, and the occurrence, in later

days of 'Santlachæ' as a local field-name, cannot avail against this

fact, or prove that this open down, in days before the Conquest, could

have borne such a title. Therefore, when Mr Freeman wrote that the

English king 'pitched his camp upon the ever memorable heights of

Senlac', he was guilty, not only of anachronism, but of a 'real wrong

to geography', and, in the name of accuracy, he introduced error.[3]

I have gone thus carefully into this matter because the name has been

meekly adopted by historians, and even by journalists, thereby proving

the power of that tendency to fashion and imitation on which, in his

_Physics and Politics_, Mr Bagehot loved to insist. For my part I make

an earnest appeal to all who may write or teach history to adhere

to the 'true ancient name' of the Battle of Hastings, and to reject

henceforward an innovation which was uncalled for, misleading, and

wrong.[4]

THE PALISADE

The distinctive peculiarity of the English tactics, we learn from Mr

Freeman at the outset, is found in an entirely novel device introduced

on this occasion by Harold. Instead of merely forming his troops in

the immemorial array known as the shield-wall, he turned 'the battle

as far as possible into the likeness of a siege',[5] by building

around them a 'palisade' of solid timber. How large a part this

'palisade' plays in Mr Freeman's story may be gathered from the fact

that it is mentioned at least a score of times in his account of the

great battle. This 'fortress of timber', with its 'wooden walls', had

'a triple gate of entrance', and was composed of 'firm barricades of

ash and other timber, wattled in so close together that not a crevice

could be seen'.

It would be easier for me to deal with this 'palisade' if one could

form a clear idea of what it represented to Mr Freeman's mind.

Judging from the passages quoted above, and from his praising Henry

of Huntingdon for his 'admirable comparison of Harold's camp to a

castle';[6] I was led to believe that he imagined precisely such a

timber wall as crowned in those days a castle mound. Such a defence

is well shown in the Bayeux Tapestry, crowning the castle mound which

William threw up at Hastings. Now, this very parallel is suggested

by Mr Freeman himself. Describing Harold's position as 'not without

reason called a fortress' [where?] he suggested that 'its defences

might be nearly equal to those of William's own camp at Hastings' (p.

447). Following up this parallel, we find Mr Freeman writing of this

latter:

A portion of English ground was already entrenched and

_palisaded_, and changed into a Norman fortress (p. 418)....

He saw the carpenters come out with their axes; he saw the

fosse dug, and the _palisade_ thrown up (p. 419). They had

already built a fort and had fenced it in with a _palisade_

(p. 420).

Without binding Mr Freeman down to a defence precisely of this

character--and, indeed, in this as in other matters, he may not even

himself have formed a clear idea of what he meant--it gives us, I

think we may fairly say, a general idea of his 'palisade'. It

was certainly no mere row of stakes,[7] no heap of cottage window

frames,[8] no fantastic array of shields tied to sticks,[9] no

'_abattis_ of some sort'[10] that Mr Freeman had in view, whatever

his champions may pretend. As for the defenders of the 'palisade',

they cannot even agree among themselves as to what it really was.

Mr Archer produces a new explanation, only to throw it over almost

as soon as it is produced.[11] One seeks to know for certain what

one is expected to deal with; but, so far as it is possible to learn,

nobody can tell one. There is only a succession of dissolving views,

and one is left to deal with a nebulous hypothesis.[12]

Mr Freeman wrote of his 'palisade' as a mere 'development of the usual

tactics of the shield-wall'; but this is an obvious misconception.

It might, indeed, be used as a substitute for the 'shield-wall', and

would enable the troops behind it to adopt a looser formation; but to

suppose that they were ranged 'closely together in the thick array of

the shield-wall', with this second wall in front of them, is surely

absurd. Till the 'wooden walls' were broken the 'shield-wall' was

needless. To retain the disadvantages of its close order, when that

order had been rendered needless, would have been simply insane. Yet

this insanity, in our author's eyes, was 'the master-skill of Harold'.

Was there time, moreover, to construct such a fortress, if 'the battle

followed almost immediately', as we learn, 'on the arrival of Harold'?

Lastly, would there be material on the spot for a palisade (see ground

plan) about a mile in length?[13] These awkward points may not have

occurred to Mr Freeman; but to others they will, I think, cause some

uneasiness. Let us then examine Mr Freeman's authorities for the

existence of this palisade.

MR FREEMAN'S AUTHORITIES FOR IT

In his note on 'The Details of the Battle of Senlac' (iii. 756),

Mr Freeman explained that he had given the authorities on which his

statements rested, adding:

Each reader can therefore judge for himself how far my

narrative is borne out by my authorities.

Loyally keeping to this principle, I propose to test his statements

by the authorities he gives for them himself. I therefore address

myself to the passages in Henry of Huntingdon and in Wace.

(1) _Henry of Huntingdon_

The passage relied on by the historian is this:

Quum ergo Haroldus totam gentem suam in una acie strictissime

locasset _et quasi castellum inde construxisset_[14]

impenetrabiles erant Normannis (iii. 444, note).

Mr Freeman thus paraphrased Henry's words:

He occupied and fortified, as thoroughly as the time and the

means at his command would allow, a post of great natural

strength, which he made into what is distinctly spoken of as a

castle (_ibid._).[15]

Although the writer made it his complaint against one of the editors

in the Rolls series that he could not 'construe his Latin', we see

that the same failing led him here himself into error. _Inde_ refers,

and can only refer, to Harold's troops themselves. A fortress Harold

wrought; but he wrought it of flesh and blood: it was behind no

ramparts that the soldiers of England awaited the onset of the

chivalry of France.

The metaphor, of course, is a common one. Henry of Huntingdon himself

recurs to it, when describing that 'acies', at the Battle of Lincoln,

which Stephen 'circa se ... strictissime collocavit' (p. 271), as

Harold, he wrote, 'gentem suam in una acie strictissime locasset'

(p. 203). For he shows us Stephen's 'acies' assailed 'sicut

castellum'.[16] In the same spirit an Irish bard tells us how his

countrymen, on the battlefield of Dysert O'Dea (May 10, 1318), closed

in their ranks, 'like a strong fortress', as their enemies surged

around them. It was felicitous, indeed, to describe as 'quasi

castellum' that immovable mass of warriors girt by their

shield-wall,[17] that 'fortress of shields', as Mr Freeman termed

it, at Hastings itself (iii. 492), at Stamford Bridge (iii. 372), at

Maldon (i. 272), and even in earlier days (i. 151).

It was Mr Freeman's initial error in thus materializing a metaphor

(through misconstruing his Latin) that first led me to doubt the

existence of the 'palisade'. His champion, Mr Archer, in his first

article,[18] was ominously silent as to this error: in the second, he

had to confess of this passage, the first of Mr Freeman's proofs, that

he himself 'should never think of using it to prove a palisade'.[19]

_Exit_, therefore, Henry of Huntingdon.

(2) _Wace_

Two passages, and two alone, are in question--

(A) ll. 6991-4, which Mr Freeman has paraphrased thus:

WACE MR FREEMAN

Heraut a le lieu esgarde, He occupied the hill; he

Closre le fist de boen fosse, surrounded it on all its

De treis parz laissa treis entrees accessible sides by a palisade,

Qu'il a garder a commandees. with a triple gate of entrance,

and defended it to the south by

an artificial ditch (iii. 447).

My criticism on this has been from the first that Wace here speaks

_only_ of a ditch, and that Mr Freeman has not only introduced here

the alleged palisade, from which Wace's 'fosse' was quite distinct,

but has also transferred to that palisade the 'treis entrees' of the

fosse. That Mr Freeman did treat the 'palisade' and the 'fosse' as

distinct and considerably apart is proved by this passage:

The Normans had crossed the [_sic_] English fosse, and were

now at the foot of the hill with the palisades and the axes

right before them (iii. 476).

The 'fosse' is that 'artificial ditch' of which Mr Freeman speaks in

the above passage, the only one of which he does speak. Therefore,

that 'artificial ditch' was, in his view, down in the valley to the

south, and had nothing to do with that 'palisade' which he placed on

the hill. There is thus no possible doubt as to Mr Freeman's view. On

his own showing, the above lines make no mention of a palisade on the

hill.[20]

(B) ll. 7815-26: The passage in question runs thus:

Fet orent devant els _escuz_

De fenestres è d'altres fuz,

Devant els les orent levez,

Come cleies joinz è serrez;

Fait en orent devant closture,

N'i laissierent nule jointure,

Par onc Normant entr'els venist

Qui desconfire les volsist.

D'escuz e d'ais s'avironoent,

Issi deffendre se quidoent

Et s'il se fussent bien tenu,

Ia ne fussent le ior vencu.

In his first edition, writing, I believe, under the influence of

Taylor's version, Mr Freeman gave these lines in a footnote to his

narrative of the battle, and appears to have then looked on them as

describing his palisade.[21] But in his 'second edition, revised', in

preparing which he went 'minutely through every line, and corrected or

improved whatever seemed to need correction or improvement' (p. v), he

transferred these lines to his appendix on the battle, where he wrote

concerning them as follows:

[(At Maldon) the English stood, _as at Senlac_, in the array

common to them and their enemies--a strong line, or rather

wedge, of infantry, forming a wall with their shields (i.

271).][22]

Of the array of the shield-wall we have often heard already,

as at Maldon (see vol. i. p. 271), but it is at Senlac that we

get the fullest descriptions of it [_sic_] all the better for

coming in the mouths of enemies. Wace gives his description,

12941:

'Fet orent devant els escuz

De fenestres è d'altres fuz;

Devant els les orent levez.

. . . . .

Et s'il se fussent bien tenu

Ja ne fussent li jor vencu.'

So William of Malmesbury, 241. 'Pedites omnes cum bipennibus,

conserta ante se scutorum testudine, impenetrabilem cuneum

faciunt; quod profecto illis eâ die saluti fuisset,

nisi Normanni simulatâ fugâ more suo confertos manipulos

laxassent.' So at the battle of the Standard, according to

Æthelred of Rievaux (343), 'scutis scuta junguntur, lateribus

latera conseruntur' (iii. 763-4).

The unquestionable meaning of Mr Freeman's words is that Wace's lines

(like the other passages) describe the time-honoured shield-wall,

'the fortress of shields, so often sung of alike in English and in

Scandinavian minstrelsy' (iii. 372).

Appealing to this, his own verdict, in my original article,[23] I

spoke of these lines as referring to the 'shield-wall', and maintained

that 'escuz' meant shields, not 'barricades'. This also, it will be

seen, must have been Mr Freeman's view, when he pronounced these lines

to be a description of the shield-wall. I therefore declared that

the only evidence he adduced for his palisade had been demonstrably

obtained by misconstruing his Latin, and (on his own showing) by

mistranslating his French.

This has been my case from the first: it remains my case now.

Unlike our forefathers on the hill of battle, I will not be decoyed

into breaking 'the line of the shield-wall'.[24]

MY ARGUMENT AGAINST IT

In order to show clearly that I adhere to my original position, I need

only reprint my argument as it appeared in the _Quarterly Review_.

It is clear that if he (Mr Freeman) found it needful, in his

story of the great battle, to mention this barricade about

a score of times, it must have occupied a prominent place in

every contemporary narrative. And yet we assert without fear

of contradiction that (dismissing the 'Roman de Rou') in no

chronicle or poem, among all Mr Freeman's authorities, could

he find any ground for this singular delusion; while the

Bayeux Tapestry itself, which he rightly places at their

head, will be searched in vain for a palisade, or for

anything faintly resembling it, from beginning to end of the

battle.[25]

On this passage we take our stand: it is the very essence of

our case. We made our statement 'without fear of contradiction';

and it is not contradicted. Moreover, we can now further

strengthen it by appealing to Baudri's poem,[26] an authority of

the first rank, in which, as in the others, there is no allusion

to the existence of any 'palisade'.

It will be observed that, in this passage, we expressly excluded

Wace's poem. We did so because--although, as we have seen, Mr

Freeman failed to produce from it any proof of a palisade--we

preferred to leave it an open question whether Wace did or did

not believe the English to have fought behind a palisade. In

rebutting Mr Freeman's evidence, that question did not arise.

There is another argument that we refrained from bringing

forward because we thought it superfluous. The Normans, of

course, as Mr Freeman reminds us, magnified the odds against

them: 'Nothing but the special favour of God could have given

his servants a victory over their enemies, which was truly

miraculous' (p. 440). William of Poitiers, he adds (p. 479),

sets forth their difficulties in detail:--

'Angli nimium adjuvantur superioris loci opportunitate, quem

sine procursu tenent, et maxime conferti; atque ingenti quoque

numerositate suâ atque validissimâ corpulentiâ; præterea

pugnæ instrumentis, quæ facile per scuta vel alia tegmina viam

inveniunt.'

Now William who was not only a contemporary writer, but, says

Mr Freeman (p. 757), 'understood' the site, had, obviously,

every inducement to include, among the difficulties of the

Normans, that special 'development', which according to

Mr Freeman (pp. 444, 468), 'the foresight of Harold' had

introduced on this occasion, and which, he assures us,

involved 'a frightful slaughter' of the Normans. And yet this

writer is absolutely silent, both here and throughout the

battle, as to the existence of a barricade of any sort or

kind.[27]

Here I would briefly refer to certain misrepresentations. Mr Archer

claimed, in his original article (_Cont. Rev._, 344) to 'mainly

rely' upon Wace, on the ground that I did so myself. I was obliged

to describe this statement at once as 'the exact converse of the

truth'.[28] For it will be seen, I expressly excluded Wace from the

authorities on whom I relied, and specially rested my case, from

the first, on the evidence of the Bayeux Tapestry. It is much to be

regretted that Mr Archer has deliberately repeated his statement,[29]

though even his ally reluctantly admits that it was 'not very happily

worded'.[30]

Mr Archer might well seek to avoid the Bayeux Tapestry, for its

evidence is dead against him, and he cannot explain it away. His

first attempt was a brief allusion, accepting its authority without

question, but suggesting that it might represent that part of the

line where the barricade was absent.[31] Of this suggestion I at

once disposed by showing that it is 'not only absolutely without

foundation, but is directly opposed to Mr Freeman's theory,

and, indeed, to his express statements'.[32] Forced to drop this

explanation, my opponent, in his next article, fell back on the

desperate device of repudiating the authority of the Tapestry,[33]

'the most authentic record' of the battle according to the late

Professor, who was never weary of insisting on its 'paramount

importance'. On my showing, beyond the possibility of question,

that this amounted to rejecting everything that Mr Freeman had

written on the subject,[34] Mr Archer once more shifts his tactics,

and now writes thus:

If any fact in Hastings is more certain than another, it

is that at the beginning of the battle the main body of

the English was posted _on a hill_. Now 'the priceless

record'--the Bayeux Tapestry--represents them _on a plain_. If

the Tapestry could leave out this central feature--the hill of

Senlac--from its picture of the _opening_ battle, still more

easily could it leave out the intricate barriers upon the

hill.[35]

This _ad captandum_ argument is disposed of as easily as the others.

The Tapestry does not concern itself with landscape, and shows us

neither a hill nor a plain. It could not, on a narrow strip, show us

'the hill of Senlac', but it could--and would--show us the alleged

palisade. For not only does it strive under every difficulty to

represent such objects as churches, castles and houses, but it

faithfully shows us the 'palisade'[36] raised by William at Hastings

itself. And if it be urged that it could not depict men fighting

behind such a defence, let us turn to the scene at Dinan. If we

compare it with the opening scene of the great battle itself, we see

precisely similar horsemen advancing to the attack, similar infantry

resisting that attack, and similar spears flying between them. But at

Dinan the defenders have a palisade, and on the hill of battle they

have not.[37]

But although the evidence of the Bayeux Tapestry, Mr Freeman's

own supreme authority, remains absolutely unshaken, it must not

be supposed that I rely on that evidence alone. I attach as much

importance as ever--and so will, I think, all prejudiced persons--to

the other portion of my argument, that if there had been a barricade

playing so important a part in the battle that Mr Freeman found it

needful to mention it at least a score of times, it is practically

inconceivable that all the authorities I enumerate should have

absolutely ignored its existence. Judging from Mr Freeman's own

experience, it would be simply impossible to describe the battle

without mentioning the 'palisade'.

It is very significant that when we turn to a real feature of the

English line, namely its close array, we find the above authorities as

unanimous in mentioning the fact as they are in ignoring that 'curious

defence',[38] those 'intricate barriers', as Mr Archer terms them,

'upon the hill'.[39]

The fight has raged so fiercely around this 'palisade' that I have

been obliged to discuss it at somewhat disproportionate length. But to

sum up, we have now seen, firstly, that the alleged palisade was a

new 'development', and needs, as such, special proof of its existence;

secondly, that of Mr Freeman's proofs, one at least must admittedly be

abandoned, while he himself has impugned the other;[40] thirdly, that

the evidence, both positive and presumptive, is altogether opposed to

the existence of a palisade. In the narrative of the battle we shall

find Mr Freeman interpolating the alleged defence solely from his own

imagination, such references proving, on inquiry, to be imaginary and

imaginary alone.[41]

THE SHIELD-WALL

It is a pleasure to find myself here in complete agreement with Mr

Freeman. In his very latest study of the battle Mr Freeman wrote as

follows:

The English clave to the old Teutonic tactics. They fought on

foot in the close array of the shield-wall.[42]

Mr Archer says they cannot have done so.[43] There was also, according

to Mr Freeman, a barricade, in front of--and distinct from--the

shield-wall, being a special development which, he tells us, 'the

foresight of Harold' had introduced on this occasion (pp. 444, 468).

The barricade is denied by me, the shield-wall by Mr Archer. Whichever

of us is right, Mr Freeman's accuracy is, in either case, equally

impugned.

It is essential to remember that Mr Freeman, throughout, treated the

palisade and the shield-wall as _separate and distinct_. Thus he wrote

so late as 1880:

Besides the palisade the front ranks made a kind of inner

defence with their shields, called the shield-wall. The Norman

writers were specially struck with the close array of the

English.[44]

So in his great work we read of 'the shield-wall _and the_ triple

palisade still unbroken' (iii. 467). Later still 'the shield-wall

still stood _behind the_ palisade' (p. 487). Even when 'the English

palisade was gone _the English shield-wall_ was still a formidable

hindrance in the way of the assailants (p. 491). The array of the

shield-wall was still kept, though now without the help of the

barricades' (p. 491). Here we have the very phrase of note NN, 'the

array of the shield-wall',[45] and it is shown beyond question that

Mr Freeman's shield-wall, whatever Mr Archer may pretend, was quite

distinct from the palisade, and was a shield-wall 'pure and simple'.

Let it also be clearly understood what Mr Freeman meant by that 'array

of the shield-wall', of which the disputed passage in Wace was, he

held, a description. He shows us the whole English army 'ranged so

closely together in the thick array of the shield-wall, that

while they only kept their ground the success of an assailant was

hopeless'.[46] He describes them as, 'a strong line, or rather wedge,

of infantry, forming a wall with their shields',[47] and he ascribes

their defeat to their 'breaking the line of the shield-wall'.[48]

Of this shield-wall my opponent rashly wrote:

The Reviewer's [_sic_] theory of an extended shield-wall

vanishes like smoke. If Wace is any authority ... the question

is settled once and for all. There was no extended shield-wall

at Hastings.[49]

Of course, 'the Reviewer's theory' here is no other than Mr Freeman's

own.

If, in spite of the above evidence, it should still be pretended by

anyone that the plain meaning of Mr Freeman's words is not their

meaning, I will refer them not to my own interpretation, but to that

of Mr Freeman's friend and colleague, the Rev W. Hunt, who wrote in

the historian's lifetime, 'at his request' and by his 'invitation',

and whose proofs were revised by Mr Freeman himself.[50] This is Mr

Hunt's version:

Set in close array behind a palisade forming a kind of

fortification, _shoulder to shoulder and shield to shield_,

the army of Harold presented a steady and immovable front to

the Norman attack ... Fatal was the national formation of the

English battle, when _men stood in the closest order, forming

a wall with their shields_. While no mode of array could be

stronger so long as the line remained unbroken it made it hard

to form the line again.[51]

So, again, in his life of Harold:

All the heavy-armed force fought in close order, _shield

touching shield_, so as to present a complete wall to the

enemy.[52]

Here we have no tortuous imaginings, but, in plain and straightforward

words, 'what historians in general evidently mean' when they speak of

a 'shield-wall', what it meant to Mr Freeman, what it means to Mr Hunt,

and it is admitted, to myself.[53] Such was the English shield-wall,

according to Mr Freeman, at 'Senlac'; it was what Mr Archer definitely

declares it cannot possibly have been.

Lastly, as to the ground on which Mr Archer pronounces impossible a

continuous shield-wall[54]--namely, that the English could not have

fought in such close order,[55] and that the axe-men being 'shieldless

... could not have formed the shield-wall'; one need only confront him

with Mr Freeman's words.

MR FREEMAN MR ARCHER

Referring to the mode of fighting It is enough for me that common

of an English army in that age, sense, the tapestry, Wace,[58]

and to 'the usual tactics of the our Italian chronicler, and his

shield-wall', Mr Freeman wrote of later Old French translator all

'the close array of the show that the English axe-men

battle-axe men' (p. 444). He had could not or did not form the

already written of 'the English shield-wall (_English

house carls with their ... huge Historical Review_, ix. p. 14).

battle-axes', accustomed to Possibly they [the house carls]

fight in 'the close array to the may have formed a genuine

shield-wall.'[56] shield-wall; but while forming

it they cannot have been _using_

'They still formed their the 'bipennis', or the two-handed

shield-wall and fought with axe (_Ibid._, p. 20, note).

their great axes.'[57]

I am compelled to repeat what I said in the _Quarterly Review_.

We almost hesitate to waste our own and our readers' time on

a writer who, professing to vindicate Mr Freeman's view as

against us, devotes his energies to proving that view to be

utterly absurd.[59]

Nor will Mr Archer derive comfort from 'our only English "specialist"

on mediaeval warfare';[60] who holds, as I had pointed out, that 'the

English axemen' did fight 'arranged in a compact mass'.[61]

It is significant that the fact Mr Archer so confidently rejects is

precisely that on which I am at one with Mr Freeman, Mr Hunt, and Mr

Oman, and to which the original authorities bear witness with peculiar

unanimity. Thus William of Poitiers, an authority of the first rank,

describes the English as 'maxime conferti', speaks of their 'nimia

densitas', and proceeds to dwell on the terrible effect of their

weapon, the famous battle-axe. William of Malmesbury tells us that the

axemen 'impenetrabilem cuneum faciunt'. Even Mr Archer's authority,

Wace, writes of these warriors:

A pie furent _serrement_.

Baudri describes the English as 'consertos',[62] and the _Brevis

Relatio_ as 'spissum agmen'. Bishop Guy writes of the 'spissum

nemus Angligenarum', and styles them 'densissima turba'; Henry of

Huntingdon, we saw, tells us that they were arranged 'in una acie

strictissime', and were thus 'impenetrabiles Normannis'.

No feature of the great battle is more absolutely beyond dispute. It

was the denseness of the English ranks that most vividly struck

their foes. 'Shield to shield, and shoulder to shoulder', as Æthelred

describes them at the Battle of the Standard, they wedged themselves

together so tightly that the wounded could not move, nor even the

corpses drop. And so they stood together, the living and the dead.[63]

And we must remember that this mass of men was 'ranged so closely

together in the thick array _of the shield-wall_, that while they only

kept their ground the success of an assailant was hopeless'.[64] The

Conqueror saw, Mr Freeman reminds us, 'that his only chance was to

tempt the English to break their shield-wall'.[65] I need not insist

on the point further: I need not even have said so much, but that some

of those who read these pages may not have realized the true

character of Mr Archer's phantasies. The 'scutorum testudo', as

William of Malmesbury describes the famous shield-wall,[66] is

depicted, with his usual painstaking care, by the designer of the

Bayeux Tapestry. We read of the 'testudo' at Ashdown fight, even

in the days of Alfred;[67] it was, again, with the shield-wall

that 'glorious Æthelstan' won the day on the hard-fought field of

Brunanburh (937);[68] we hear of it at Maldon (991), where Brihtnoth,

we read, 'bade his men work the war-hedge',--'that is, had made his

men form the shield-wall, a sort of fortress made by holding their

shields close together'.[69] And we do, in Mr Freeman's words, meet

with it 'down to the end', when the war-hedge of Maldon was wrought

anew, by Harold, on the hill of battle, and stood once more as if a

fortress--'quasi castellum'.

THE DISPOSITION OF THE ENGLISH

To render clear the problem involved, I must first sketch as briefly

as possible the nature of the ground the English held. The hill of

battle is so fully described in Mr Freeman's narrative that I here

need only explain that it was a long narrow spur of the downs, running

nearly east and west, of which the south front was defended by the

English and attacked by the Normans. The one and only point that is

certain is that 'on the very crown of the hill', the site of the high

altar in the future, was erected the standard of Harold.[70] This,

then, the centre of the hill, was the centre of the English host.

But the ground to which our attention is directed, as having 'really

played the most decisive part in the great event of the place', lay

to the west of this, 'where the slope is gentlest of all, where the

access to the natural citadel is least difficult'.[71] Mr Freeman

assumes that this ground--the 'English right', as he terms it--where

the 'ascent is easiest in itself', was allotted to 'the least

trustworthy portion of the English army', to 'the sudden levies of the

southern shires'.[72] For this assumption, I hasten to add, there is

no authority whatever. He further assumes that the first English to

leave their post, in pursuit of the enemy, 'were, of course, some of

the defenders of the English right'.[73] William, he holds, at the

crisis of the battle, resolved to draw them again from their post by a

partial feigned retreat, that 'meanwhile another division might reach

the summit through the gap thus left open'. Accordingly, tempted by

this stratagem, 'the English on the right wing rushed down and

pursued', and their error proved 'fatal to England'.[74]

The Duke's great object was now gained; the main end

of Harold's skilful tactics had been frustrated by the

inconsiderate ardour of the least valuable portion of his

troops. Through the rash descent of the light-armed on the

right, the whole English army lost its vantage-ground. The

pursuing English had left the most easily accessible portion

of the hill open to the approach of the enemy.... The main

body of the Normans made their way on to the hill, no doubt by

the gentle slope at the point west of the present buildings.

The great advantage of the ground was now lost; the Normans

were at last on the hill.[75]

Such is Mr Freeman's explanation of how the battle was won,[76] for in

this episode he discovers the decisive turning-point of the day.[77]

Now, let us consider what is involved in the theory here set forth.

'Harold's skilful tactics', we find, consisted in entrusting his

weakest point, the least defensible portion of his position, to 'the

least trustworthy portion of the English army'. The natural result

of these insane tactics was that his weak point was forced, and the

English right turned.[78] And Mr Freeman, having made this clear,

complains of 'the criticisms of monks on the conduct of a consummate

general', and insists that 'nowhere is Harold's military greatness

so distinctly felt as when ... we tread the battlefield of his own

choice'. But there is worse to come. Such tactics as these would

have been mad enough, even if these raw peasants had stood behind a

barricade; but if, as I hold, that barricade is a purely imaginary

creation, we ask ourselves what would have happened to these unhappy

creatures, protected by no 'shield-wall', and armed with 'such rustic

weapons as forks and sharp stakes',[79] when, first riddled by Norman

arrows and then attacked by Norman infantry, they were finally, broken

and defenceless, charged by heavy cavalry. The first onslaught would

have scattered them to the winds, and have won, in so doing, the key

of the English position.[80] Remembering this, it is strange to learn

that 'the consummate generalship of Harold is nowhere more

conspicuously shown than in this memorable campaign', and that his was

'that true skill of the leader of armies, which would have placed both

Harold and William high among the captains of any age'. But if the

generalship of Harold was shown by entrusting to his worst troops his

weakest and most important point, while posting 'the flower of the

English army' just where his ground was strongest, what are we to say

of 'the generalship of William, his ready eye, his quick thought', if

he failed to detect and avail himself of this glaring blunder? For

instead of concentrating his attack upon Harold's weak point, he left

it to be assailed, we learn, by 'what was most likely the least

esteemed' portion of his host,[81] while he himself with his picked

troops dashed himself against an impregnable position like a mad bull

against a wall. 'We read,' says Mr Freeman, 'with equal admiration of

the consummate skill with which Harold chose his position and his

general scheme of action, and of the wonderful readiness with which

William formed and varied his plans.' For myself, I should have

thought that the tactics he describes--tactics which stirred him to a

burst of admiration for 'the two greatest of living captains'--would

have disgraced the most incompetent commander that ever took the

field.

But Harold, after all, was no fool. Are we then justified in accusing

him of this supreme folly? Mr Freeman held that 'the relative position

of the different divisions in the two armies seems beyond doubt'.

There is, however, as I said, absolutely no evidence for Mr Freeman's

assumption that the English right was entrusted to the raw levies.

Against it is the fact that in this quarter the first assault was

soonest repulsed: against it also is all analogy drawn from the

study of English tactics. Snorro's description of Stamfordbridge is

evidence, at least, that 'the fortress of shields' had a continuous

line of bucklers along its whole front: Æthelred gives us the reason

in his story of the Battle of the Standard; namely, that it was the

front line which had to meet the shock ('periculosum dicebant si primo

aggressu inermes armatis occurrerent'). It was therefore an essential

principle of tactics 'quatinus armati armatos impeterent, milites

congrederentur militibus'.[82] Therefore on Cowton Moor (1138), as (I

hold) on the hill of Battle (1066), we find the 'strenuissimi milites

in prima fronte locati'.[83]

The words 'and the lighter troops behind them', which originally

followed here, have been objected to by Miss Norgate, who had

originally made the same statement,[84] but who now wishes to withdraw

it.[85] Henry of Huntingdon, however--like Æthelred, a contemporary

authority--agrees with him in describing the dismounted knights,

men with shields and _loricæ_ like the 'housecarls' at Hastings, as

forming an 'iron wall' along the English front.[86] If then mailed

warriors formed the front line, it is difficult to see where the

'inermis plebs', as Æthelred terms it, could be but 'behind them'. The

fact is that the Battle of the Standard, for which we have excellent

authorities, is of no small value for the study of the Battle of

Hastings, as my opponents seem to be uncomfortably aware. 'The

tactics,' Mr Freeman admits, 'were English.' We find there again

the same dense array,[87] the same tactics for defence, though now

rendered less passive by the development of the bowman.[88] There can,

I think, be little question, if we combine the several accounts, that

the Standard, with the older chiefs around it, formed the kernel of

the host;[89] that the rude levies of the shire were massed round

about them;[90] and that the outer rim was formed by the mailed

knights, with the archers crouching for shelter behind their 'iron

wall'.

Harking back to Sherstone fight (1016), we encounter precisely the

same formation. 'The King,' Mr Freeman writes, 'placed his best troops

in front, and the inferior part of his army in the rear.'

And he added, 'we must remember these tactics when we come to the

great fight of Senlac'.[91] This was, unhappily, just what he failed

to do. 'William of Poitiers,' he strangely complained, 'has his head

full of Agamemnon and of Xerxes, but this obvious analogy does not

seem to have occurred to him.' Have we also the reason why our

author himself overlooked these obvious analogies in the fact that to

illustrate the Battle of Hastings he quotes some five and twenty times

from the Odyssey and the Iliad, from Herodotus and Xenophon, from

Æschylus, Plutarch, and Dio Cassius; from Livy, Tacitus, Ammianus, and

even Ælius Spartianus? In his later edition, however, he inserted in

a footnote the words: 'On placing the inferior troops in the rear, see

the tactics of Eadmund at Sherstone.'[92] 'In the _rear_?' Yes, but

that is precisely my contention. The assumption that I am assailing is

that they formed the _wings_.

But we are not even here at the end of Mr Freeman's confusion. He had

meanwhile, in another work, published about the same time as the first

edition of his third volume, written thus:

As far as I can see, King Harold put these bad troops _in the

back_ ... But his picked men he put _in front_, where the best

troops of the enemy were likely to come.[93]

This is exactly my own view; it is that 'essential principle of

tactics' on which I have insisted throughout, and on which Miss

Norgate has rashly endeavoured to pour contempt.[94] Mr Freeman,

moreover, further on, wrote of his 'light armed' as 'the troops _in

the rear_',[95] which is again my contention. What seems to have

happened is that he got into his head (I can imagine how) that the

'light-armed' formed the wings, and arranged the battle on that

assumption. Then remembering, when it was too late, that, according to

his own precedent, they ought to have been in the rear, he hesitated

to introduce a change which would affect his whole theory of the

battle, and compel him to approach it _de novo_.[96]

But indeed, even apart from this, it seems doubtful, examining Mr

Freeman's narrative, whether he had formed a clear conception of how

the English troops were arranged, and whether, if so, he kept it in

view, consistently, throughout. If we honestly seek to learn what his

conception was, a careful comparison of pp. 472, 473, 475, 490, and

505, with the ground-plan, will show that the whole right wing was

composed of 'light-armed troops, who broke their line to pursue'. And

this view seems to be accepted and defended by Miss Norgate, who,

writing as his champion, declares that to her the conclusion embodied

in his ground-plan 'seems irresistible'.[97] On the other hand, pp.

471, 480, 487, and 732 most undoubtedly convey the impression that,

as I have maintained, the heavy-armed English were extended along the

whole front,[98] and that their defeat, in Mr Freeman's words (p.

732), was 'owing to their breaking the line of the shield-wall'. I

suspect that he was led thus to contradict himself by the obvious

concentration of his interest on 'the great personal struggle which

was going on beneath the standard' (p. 487). Here, as is often the

case throughout his work, Mr Freeman's treatment of his subject was

essentially dramatic. To bring his heroes into high relief, he thrust

into the background the rest of his scene as of comparatively small

account. In this spirit, for instance, he wrote:

A new act in the awful drama of that day had now begun. The

Duke himself, at the head of his own Normans, again pressed

towards the standard.... A few moments more and the mighty

rivals might have met face to face, and the war-club of the

Bastard might have clashed against the lifted axe of the

Emperor of Britain (p. 483).

Homer, doubtless, would have made them meet; but a great dramatic

opportunity was lost: the 'mighty rivals' seem never to have got

within striking distance. Meanwhile, however, the warring hosts are

left quite in the background; their fate is that of a stage crowd

engaged in a stage battle. I do not mean, of course, that Mr Freeman

ignores them, but that he was so engrossed in the personal exploits of

his heroes as to be impatient of that careful study which the battle

as a whole required, and comparatively careless of consistency in his

allusions to the English array.

The charge, in short, that I have brought throughout against the

disposition of the English in Mr Freeman's narrative is that his view,

'with all that it involves, was based on no authority, was merely the

offspring of his own imagination, and was directly at variance with

the only precedent that he vouched for the purpose'.[99] There is

absolutely not a scrap of evidence that--as shown on the 'accurate'

ground-plan--the English army was drawn up in three divisions, the

'housecarls' forming the centre, and the 'light-armed' the two wings.

We do not even know that it formed an almost straight line.[100]

The whole arrangement is sheer guesswork, and analogy, here our only

guide, is wholly against it.

I cannot insist too strongly on the charge I have here made. It is

no 'matter of secondary importance';[101] nor is it the case that my

argument as to the 'palisade' is, as Mr Archer pretended, 'the only

definite and palpable charge' that I bring 'against Mr Freeman's

account of the great battle'.[102] For, as I wrote from the very

first, 'rejecting Mr Freeman's views on the groupings of the English

host, we reject with them _in toto_ the story he has built upon

them'.[103]

My own view is based upon the fact that, in the military tactics as in

the military architecture of the age, the defence trusted largely to

its power of passive resistance: this was the essential principle of

the ponderous Norman keep; and precisely as the walls of that keep

were formed of an ashlar face of masonry backed by masses of rubble,

so the fighting line of a force standing on the defensive was composed

of a compact facing of heavily-armed troops backed by a rabble of

half-armed peasants, or at best by what we may term the light infantry

of the day. When the foe was advancing to the attack, these rear lines

could discharge such weapons as they possessed--darts, arrows, stones,

etc.--from behind the shelter of their comrades,[104] while at the

moment of actual shock they would form a passive backing, which would

save the front ranks from being broken by the enemy's impact. As the

great object of the attack was to break through the line, a formation

which virtually gave the advantage now possessed by a solid over a

hollow square would naturally commend itself to the defence.

Now in these tactics we have the key to the true story of the battle.

But, first, we must dismiss from our minds Mr Freeman's fundamental

assumption, and understand that the English 'hoplites' were not massed

in the centre, but were extended along the whole front, precisely as

they were in battles fought both before and after. The fighting face

of Harold's host was composed of this heavy soldiery, clad in helmets

and mail. Arrayed in the closest order, they presented to an advancing

enemy the aspect of a living rampart ('quasi castellum').

How the Normans attacked that rampart it will now be my task to show.

THE NORMAN ADVANCE

From Telham Hill Duke William scanned that living rampart, and saw

clearly that 'his only chance was to tempt the English to break their

shield-wall'.[105] It is chiefly from Baudri's poem that we learn how

he set about it.[106]

There is no question that the fight began with an advance of the

Norman infantry. William of Poitiers and Bishop Guy are in complete

accordance on the fact.[107] But as my description of the infantry has

been challenged,[108] I may show that it is quite beyond dispute.[109]

To my argument, as reprinted below, it has been objected that I

fail 'to take account of the distinction between light-armed and

heavy-armed infantry'.[110] It will be seen that my argument turns,

not on the armour, but on the _weapons_ of the foot. I have challenged

my opponents to produce mention of any weapons but crossbows,[111] or

bows and arrows, and need scarcely say that they cannot.

Describing the 'armour and weapons of the Normans', Mr Freeman,

avowedly following the Tapestry, represented the infantry as all

archers,[112] and divided them into two classes: (1) those 'without

defensive harness'; (2) those who 'wore the defences common to the

horse and foot of both armies ... the close-fitting coat of mail ...

and the conical helmet'.[113] Now this division is exactly reproduced

in the words of William of Poitiers, who divides his 'pedites' into

two classes, distinguished only by the fact that in one were the

'firmiores et loricatos'. He does not say that the latter were _not_

archers, or crossbowmen, nor did Mr Freeman venture to assign them

any other weapons.[114] Bishop Guy, moreover, distinctly tells us

that they were crossbowmen (_vide infra_). The advance, therefore, in

modern language, consisted of skirmishers, represented by archers and

perhaps some crossbowmen; supports, namely, crossbowmen who, as a

somewhat superior class, would mostly have defensive armour; and,

lastly, the cavalry as reserve.[115]

Now what was the intention of this advance? Mr Freeman assumed,

without hesitation, that the foot 'were to strive to break down the

palisades ... and so to make ready the way for the charge of the

horse' (p. 467); that 'the infantry were, therefore, exposed to the

first and most terrible danger' (_ibid._); 'that the French infantry

had to toil up the hill, and to break down the palisade' (p.

477).[116] But we find, on reference, that the above writers say

nothing of any such intention, and do not even mention the existence

of a palisade.[117] Moreover, the only weapons they speak of are

crossbows and bows and arrows, which are scarcely the tools for

pioneers. But William of Poitiers puts us on the track of a very

different explanation: 'Pedites itaque Normanni propius accedentes

_provocant_ Anglos, missilibus in eos vulnera dirigunt atque necem'.

Here Baudri comes to our aid:

Nam neque Normannus consertos audet adire

Nec valet a cuneo quemlibet excipere.

Arcubus utantur dux imperat atque balistis;

Nam prius has mortes Anglia tunc didicit.

Tunc didicere mori quam non novere sagitta

Creditur a cælo mors super ingruere

Hos velut a longe comitatur militis agmen,

Palantes post se miles ut excipiat.

The Normans dared not face the serried ranks of the English: the maxim

that cavalry should not charge unbroken infantry was asserting itself

already. But the only means of breaking those ranks, of throwing the

English into confusion, was to gall them by archers and slingers till

some of them should sally forth, when their assailants would turn tail

and leave them to be caught in the open and ridden down. As Bishop Guy

expresses it:

Præmisit pedites committere bella sagittis,

Et balistantes inserit in medio,

Quatinus infigant volitantia vultibus arma,

Vulneribusque datis ora retro faciant,

Ordine post pedites sperat stabilire Quirites

These tactics, says Baudri, were crowned with success; the maddened

English, as they dashed forth to strike their tormentors to the

ground, were cut off in every direction by the horsemen waiting their

chance:

Tunc præ tristitia gens effera præque pudore

Egreditur palans, insequiturque vagos.

Normanni simulantque fugam fugiuntque fugantes,

Intercepit eos undique præpes equus.

Ilico cæduntur; sic paulatim minuuntur,

Nec minuebatur callidus ordo ducis.

This account is both intelligible and consistent, but differs wholly

from that of Mr Freeman. It had, however, been virtually anticipated

by Mr Oman, who in his _Art of War in the Middle Ages_ (p. 25), points

out, with much felicity, that

the archers, if unsupported by the knights, could easily

have been driven off the field by a general charge. United,

however, by the skilful tactics of William, the two divisions

of the invading army won the day. The Saxon mass was subjected

to exactly the same trial which befell the British squares in

the battle of Waterloo: incessant charges by a gallant cavalry

were alternated with a destructive fire of missiles. Nothing

can be more maddening than such an ordeal to the infantry

soldier, rooted to the spot by the necessities of his

formation.

Let us compare the two theories. Mr Freeman's, here again, is not even

consistent. He first tells us that for the knights to charge, with

'the triple palisade still unbroken, would have been sheer madness';

in fact it was 'altogether useless' for them to advance until the

infantry had broken down the palisade.[118] But this the infantry

failed to do,[119] whereupon--the cavalry charged 'the impenetrable

fortress of timber' (p. 479)! One is surely reminded of the immortal

Don, when 'a todo el galope de Rocinante', he charged the windmill.

My own theory involves no such inconsistencies. I hold--not as a

conjecture based on a hypothetical palisade, but on the excellent

authority of Baudri and William of Poitiers, that the infantry

were used for the definite purpose of galling the English by their

missiles, and so enticing them to leave their ranks and become a prey

to the horse. As soon as their line had thus been broken, the cavalry

were to charge.

Up to this point, the English army, as a whole, had kept its

formation; but now the strain on its patience had become too great to

be borne. Breaking its ranks, with one accord, the whole host rushed

upon its foes, and drove them before it in confusion right up to the

Duke's post:

Tandem jactura gens irritata frequenti,

Ordinibus spretis irruit unanimis.

Tunc quoque plus solito fugientum terga cecidit,

Et miles vultum fugit ad usque ducis.

This explains what had always been to me a difficulty, namely, the

panic-stricken flight of the Normans at this stage of the battle. That

they should have 'lost heart' (p. 480) at the firmness of the English

is natural enough; but that they should have 'turned and fled'

(_ibid._) from a force which did not pursue them seemed improbable.

The difficulty is solved by Baudri's mention of the wild onslaught

by the English. Moreover, Bishop Guy's description of the rout of

the assailants--which Mr Freeman assigned to this stage of the

battle--agrees well with that of Baudri:

Anglorum populus, numero superante, repellit

Hostes inque retro compulit ora dari;

Et fuga ficta prius fit tunc virtute coacta;

Normanni fugiunt, dorsa tegunt clipei.

Again, Baudri's poem suggests a novel view by its definite statement

that the Normans in their flight reached the Duke's post. Mr Freeman

imagined that the Duke himself had been fighting in the front line

(pp. 479, 480), but a careful comparison of his two authorities,

William of Poitiers and Bishop Guy (p. 482), will show that, on the

contrary, they support Baudri's statement. Each speaks of the Duke

as 'meeting' (_occurrens_--_occurrit_) the fugitives, a difficulty

which Mr Freeman evaded by writing that 'he met _or pursued_ the

fugitives'.

From this flight the Normans were rallied by the desperate efforts of

the Duke himself, who, as is usual at such moments, was believed to

have fallen. I deem this episode a fixed point, and it conveniently

divides the battle. All our four leading authorities--the Tapestry,

William of Poitiers, Bishop Guy, and Baudri--are here in complete

agreement. William describes the Duke as 'nudato insuper capite';

Guy tells us that 'iratus galea nudat et ipse caput'; Baudri writes

'subito galeam submovet a capite'; in the Tapestry, 'William (writes

Dr Bruce), when he wishes to show himself in order to contradict the

rumour that he has been killed, is obliged to lift his helmet

almost off his head' (p. 98). It is singular that so striking and

well-established an episode is wholly ignored by Wace.

THE FOSSE DISASTER

The serious character of the assailants' flight is duly recognized by

Mr Freeman.[120] We could have no more eloquent witness to the fact

than the admission even by William of Poitiers that the Duke's Normans

themselves gave way, or the description of them by Bishop Guy as 'gens

sua victa'. The only point in question here is whether what I call

'the fosse disaster' was an incident of this headlong flight or

happened at a later stage of the battle. Mr Freeman, discussing 'the

order of events',[121] faced the difficulty frankly, observing that

Guy had placed the feigned flight before what I have termed above the

dividing incident of the day, and that this view 'may be thought to be

confirmed by the Tapestry', etc., etc. We have here perhaps the most

difficult problem raised in the course of the battle, and one which

it would be easier and safer to pass over in silence. As to Guy, I

suggest, as a possible solution--it does not profess to be more--that

what he was describing was not the great feigned flight but the lesser

man[oe]uvres of the same character described by Baudri above. He

may, of course, have transferred to these the importance of the later

episode. On the real flight, at least, he is sound. Of the Tapestry

I would speak with more confidence. 'In the nature of things,' Mr

Freeman wrote, 'exact chronological order is not its strongest point'

(p. 768). But in this case there was nothing to make it depart from

that order, no reason why it should not place the incident of 'the

fosse disaster' after the central incident of the day, instead of

before, if that were its right position. Moreover, it is here, we

find, in the closest agreement with Wace; and though I claim, as did

Mr Freeman, the right of rejecting his testimony when wholly

unsupported (as still more, when opposed to probability), yet such

marked agreement as this is not to be lightly cast aside.

In any case, nothing can be more unfortunate than Mr Freeman's

treatment of what he describes as the 'great slaughter of the French

in the western ravine' (p. 489). This is a scene invented by Mr

Freeman alone, and illustrates the peculiar use he made, at times,

of his authorities. There is no question that the Norman knights

suffered, in the course of the day, at least one such disaster as the

nobles of France at Courtrai (1302) or her cuirassiers at Waterloo.

But five authorities, so far as one can see, place the incident in the

thick of the battle, while three others assign it to the pursuit of

the defeated English. It is not strange, therefore, that some writers

should have held that there was but one such incident: Mr Freeman,

however, holds that there were two; and I expressly disclaim

questioning his view, the matter being one of opinion. Assuming then,

as he does, that the episode occurred in the course of the battle,

I turn to the spirited version of Wace, as Mr Archer defies me to

'impeach Wace's authority' (p. 346). The 'old Norman poet' is here

very precise. He first tells us (ll. 7869-70, 8103-6) that the English

had made a 'fosse', which the Normans had passed unnoticed in their

advance.[122] These passages Mr Freeman accepts without question (p.

476). But then Wace proceeds to state (ll. 8107-20) that the Normans,

driven back, as we have seen, by the English, tumbled, men and horses,

into this treacherous 'fosse' and perished in great numbers. Now Wace,

far from standing alone, is here in curiously close agreement with

the Tapestry of Bayeux. Two successive scenes in that 'most authetic

record' are styled 'Hic ceciderunt simul Angli et Franci in pr[oe]lio;

hic Odo episcopus baculum tenens confortat pueros.' Wace describes

these scenes in thirty-six lines (ll. 8103-38), devoting eighteen

lines to the first and the same number to the second. Actual

comparison alone can show how close the agreement is. Henry of

Huntingdon, we may add, independently confirms the statement that

English as well as French perished in the fatal fosse.[123]

Now all this is quite opposed to Mr Freeman's 'conception of the

battle'. He had, therefore, to adapt, with no gentle hands, his

authorities to his requirements. Cinderella's stepmother, when her

daughter's foot could not be got into the golden shoe, armed herself,

we read, with axe and scissors, and trimmed it to the requisite shape.

With no less decision the late Professor set about his own task.

Wace's evidence he simply suppressed; Henry of Huntingdon's he

ignored; but that of the Bayeux Tapestry could not be so easily

disposed of. I invite particular attention to his treatment of this,

his 'highest authority'. Retaining in its natural place (pp. 481-2)

the second of the two scenes we have described, he threw forward the

one preceding it to a later stage of the battle (p. 490). Nor did his

vigorous adaptation stop even here. The scene thus wrenched from its

place depicts a single incident: mounted Normans are tumbling headlong

into a ditch at the foot of a mound, on which 'light-armed' English

stand assailing them with their weapons. The fight is hand to hand;

the bodies touch. And yet the Professor treats this scene as a

description of two quite separate events happening at a distance from

each other. These he terms (p. 489) the 'stand of the English at the

detached hill'; and the 'great slaughter of the French in the western

ravine'. But on referring to his own ground-plan, we find that this

'ravine' and the 'detached hill' were a quarter of a mile apart, with

the slopes of the main hill between them.

My criticism here is twofold. In the first place, Mr Freeman

endeavoured to conceal the liberties he had taken with his leading

authority. No one would gather from his narrative of the battle that

any such violence had been used; nor would anyone who read of the

'hill' episode that 'the scene is vividly shown in the Tapestry' (p.

489), and, subsequently, of the 'ravine' disaster, that 'this scene

is most vividly shown in the Tapestry' (p. 490), imagine that 'the

incidents of the ravine and the little hill' (p. 768) are in the

Tapestry one and the same. In the second place, the large part which

the writer's own imagination plays in his narrative of the fight is

here clearly seen. There is nothing, for instance, in any authority to

connect 'the western ravine' with 'the great slaughter of the French'.

It is placed by those who mention it in a 'fosse', 'fossatum', or

'fovea'. 'If Wace is any authority,' to quote Mr Archer's words, 'the

question is settled once and for all';[124] the slaughter took place

not in the 'ravine', but in a ditch which according to him, the

English had dug to the south of the hill, and which, according to

Henry of Huntingdon, they had cunningly concealed. Mr Freeman produces

no authority in support of his own fancy; his only argument is that

the slaughter

must have happened somewhere to the south or south-west of the

hill. The small ravine to the south-west seems exactly what is

wanted (p. 771).

The 'western ravine' however, does not fulfil these requirements

(see ground-plan, where it lies to the north-west of the hill);

while Wace's 'fosse', which--though here ignoring it--he had already

accepted, lay, as required, to the south of the hill. Wace

mentions another instance (ll. 1737-50) in which this stratagem was

adopted,[125] but whether our ditch was dug, as he states, expressly

or not, the fact of its existence does not depend on his evidence

alone.

To resume: accepting provisionally Mr Freeman's view (iii. 770) that

there were two disasters to the horse, one 'happening comparatively

early in the battle', and the other 'which William of Poitiers,

Orderic and the Battle chronicler place at the very end of the

battle', as occurring in the pursuit of the defeated English, we find

that the former is mentioned by five writers. The Tapestry and Wace

agree absolutely in making it an episode of the real flight of the

Normans before the great rally; Henry of Huntingdon assigns it to the

great feigned flight, later in the battle; William of Malmesbury

seems to make it happen during the pursuit by the Normans after their

feigned flight; the anonymous writer quoted by Andresen (ii. 713) from

Le Prevost may be left out of the question. Yet, in spite of all this

contradiction, Mr Freeman assigns this striking episode, not as a

conjecture, but as historic fact, to the pursuit of the English by

the 'Bretons'[126] after the feigned flight (p. 489). Let me make my

position clear. We expect an historian to weigh, as an expert, the

evidence before him: we look to him for guidance where that evidence

is conflicting. But we have a right to protest against the statement,

as historic fact, of hypotheses which cannot be established, and which

are quite possibly wrong. Where the evidence is flatly contradictory,

the fact that it is so should be made clear; conflicting statements

should not be evaded, nor evidence, such as that of the Tapestry,

appealed to, when it proves to be opposed to, not in favour of, the

writer's hypothesis. Dealing with the Conqueror's march on London,

after his great victory, Mr Parker has insisted with much force, on

the principle for which I am contending.

Though, by leaving out here and there the discrepancies, the

residue may be worked up into a consecutive and consistent

series of events, such a process amounts to making history,

not writing it. Amidst a mass of contradictory evidence, it

is impossible to arrive at any sure conclusion.... It is,

however, comparatively easy to piece together such details

as will fit of the various stories, and still more easy to

discover reasons for the results which such mosaic work

produces ... [but] it cannot be reasonably regarded as real

history. The method by which the results are obtained bears

too close a resemblance to that by which ... some of the

legends described in the fifth chapter have come to be

accepted as historical narratives.[127]

That is the danger. Such a narrative as that which Mr Freeman has

given us must 'come to be accepted as historical' if allowed to pass

current without a grave warning. It will doubtless be replied that in

his appendices, he frankly admits that 'it is often hard to reconcile

the various accounts'; but the question at issue is whether one is

justified when, as here, the various accounts are not only 'hard' but

impossible to reconcile, in constructing a definite narrative at all,

instead of honestly admitting that the matter must be left in doubt.

THE GREAT FEIGNED FLIGHT

There is no feature of the famous battle more familiar or more certain

than that of the feigned retreat. It is necessary here to grasp Mr

Freeman's view, because he discovers in this man[oe]uvre and its

results the decisive turning point of the day.[128]

That there was a great feigned flight, which induced a large portion

of the English to break their formation and pursue their foes, is

beyond question.[129] But Mr Freeman, on this foundation, built up a

legend, for which, we shall find, there exists no evidence whatever.

He first assumed that it was 'most likely' the left wing of the

assailants which 'turned in seeming flight'[130] (p. 488), and that

it was, consequently, 'the English on the right wing' who 'rushed down

and pursued them'. Thus:

Through the rash descent of the light-armed on the right,

the whole English army lost its vantage ground. The pursuing

English had left the most easily accessible portion of the

hill open to the approach of the enemy (p. 490).

The result, of course, was that 'the main body of the Normans made

their way on the hill, no doubt by the gentle slope' at this point

(_ibid._).

The great advantage of the ground was now lost; the Normans

were at last on the hill. Instead of having to cut their way

up the slope, and through the palisades, they could now

charge to the east right against the defenders of the standard

(_ibid._).

These words are most important. They set forth Mr Freeman's theory

that Harold now found the Normans charging down upon his right flank

instead of attacking him in front. It was in this sense I wrote 'that

his weak point was forced, and the English right turned', as the

natural result of the 'insane' tactics attributed to him by his

champion.[131] The man[oe]uvre assigned by Mr Freeman to the Duke is,

in fact, that by which Marlborough won the battle of Ramillies, where

he got on to the hill by dislodging the French right, and then wheeled

to his own right, outflanking the French centre.

When we turn from this elaborate theory to the authorities on which it

is supposed to be based, we find, with some astonishment, that it is

all sheer imagination. William of Poitiers, on whom the writer seemed

mainly to rely for the feigned flight, states that:

Normanni sociaque turba ... terga dederunt, fugam ex industriâ

simulantes--

words which distinctly imply that this feigned flight was general.

Henry of Huntingdon merely writes: 'Docuit Dux Willelmus _genti

suæ_ fugam simulare.' No one, certainly, says or implies that it was

restricted to the left wing. As for the theory that 'the main body of

the Normans' were, by this man[oe]uvre, enabled to seize the western

portion of the hill, and thus attack Harold on his flank, it is more

imaginary, if possible, still.

The fact is that, as I explained in my original article,[132] Mr

Freeman had wholly misconceived the nature of William's man[oe]uvre.

The feigned flight was not a simple (as he supposed), but a combined

movement. The best account of that movement is found in the Battle

Chronicle:

Tandem strenuissimus Boloniæ comes Eustachius clam, callida

præmeditata arte--fugam cum exercitu duce simulante--super

Anglos sparsim agiliter insequentes cum manu valida a tergo

irruit, _sicque et duce hostes ferociter invadente ipsis

interclusis utrinque_ prosternuntur innumeri.

This precise statement, which Mr Freeman omits,[133] affords the clue

we seek, explaining the words of William of Poitiers, 'interceptos et

inclusos undique mactaverunt'. The retreat of the pursuing English

was cut off by the Count's squadrons, and, caught 'between two fires',

they were cut down and butchered. The supposition that, while this was

going on, the main body of the Normans was riding on to the hill is

baseless. The whole host, we have seen, were below, surrounding the

English who had left the hill. Had Mr Freeman kept in mind, as he had

intended to do, the employment of this old Norman device at the relief

of Arques (1053), he would have seen more clearly what really happened.

But this, precisely as with his Sherstone precedent, he failed to do.

THE RELIEF OF ARQUES

To illustrate the feigned flight by analogy, I append this passage

relating to the stratagem at Arques.

A plan was speedily devised; an ambush was laid; a smaller

party was sent forth to practise that stratagem of pretended

flight which Norman craft was to display thirteen years later

[1066] on a greater scale. The Normans turned; the French

pursued; presently the liers-in-wait were upon them, and the

noblest and bravest of the invading host were slaughtered or

taken prisoners before the eyes of their king (iii. 133).

The man[oe]uvre is elaborately described by Wace (ll. 3491-514) in a

passage which ought to be compared, in places, with that on the great

'feinte fuie' itself (ll. 8203-70).

He carefully distinguishes the two parties essential to the

stratagem:[134]

Partie pristrent des Normanz,

Des forz e des mielz cumbatanz,

. . . . .

Puis pristrent une autre partie, etc., etc.

The latter detachment turned in flight and decoyed some of the leading

Frenchmen past the spot where the ambush was laid. Then, facing round,

they caught their rash pursuers 'between two fires'. I have shown

above, from the 'precise statement' which is found in the 'Battle

Chronicle', that the great man[oe]uvre which deceived the English was

a similarly combined one. Mr Freeman, completely missing this point,

makes the Norman 'division', which did not take part in the flight

'ride up the hill' (p. 490), where its slopes were deserted, whereas,

on the contrary, they thrust themselves between the pursuers and the

hill, and then charged on their rear, riding, of course, not on to,

but away from the hill.

So close is the Arques parallel that in Wace we find the same words

occurring in both cases:

A cels kis alouent chazant Engleis les aloent gabant

E quis alouent leidissant E de paroles laidissant

Sunt enmi le vis tresturne, ....

E Franceis sunt a els mesdle (ll. Torne lor sunt enmi le vis

3501-4); ....

E as Engleis entremesler (ll.

8241-2, 8262-4);

while William of Malmesbury describes the French king as thus 'astutia

insidiis exceptus', just as he describes Harold, in turn as thus

'astutiâ Willelmi circumventus'. Mr Freeman quoted both passages, yet

failed to note the parallel.

I speak, it will be seen, of 'the relief of Arques'. As my critic so

rashly assumed that in my original article I exhausted Mr Freeman's

errors,[135] I may point out that this subject introduces us, at once,

to fresh ones. Our author, for instance, held that Arques was not

relieved. Let us see. We are first rightly told, on the authority

of William of Poitiers, that the Duke blockaded the stronghold

(_munitio_) by erecting a _castellum_ at its foot (p. 128). On the

next page we are told that the latter was 'a wooden tower'--which is

precisely what it was not--and that it 'is described as a _munitio_'

by William of Poitiers, whereas that term, as we have just seen,

denoted, on the contrary, the rebel stronghold itself. Then we

are told that the French king marched to the relief of the rebels,

bringing with him 'a good stock of provisions, of corn, and of wine'

for the purpose, but 'was far from being successful in his enterprise'

(p. 131). In fact, he 'went home, having done nothing towards the

immediate object of his journey--the relief of the besieged' (p.

137). Mr Freeman added in a note: 'So I understand the not very

clear statement of William of Poitiers that the King went away.' Now,

William's statement (which is quoted by him) is absolutely clear:

_Perveniens tamen quo ire intenderat_, Rex exacerbatissimis

animis summâ vi præsidium attentavit: Willelmum ab ærumnis uti

eriperet, pariter decrementum sui, stragem suorum vindicaret.

The King, that is, in spite of the ambush, reached his destination

(the blockaded stronghold) and then furiously attacked the _castellum_

below, with the double object of raising the blockade and of avenging

the death of his followers. Wace is, if possible, even more explicit.

After describing the affair of the ambush, he proceeds thus:

Les somiers fist apareilier,

La garisun prendre e chargier,

_À la tur d'Arches fist porter_,

Il meisme fu al mener (II. ll. 3519-22).

Arques, therefore, was duly relieved; the blockading party being only

strong enough to defend, when attacked, its own _castellum_.

We will certainly not say of Mr Freeman that he had not read his

Wace 'with common care'--to quote from his criticism on Professor

Pearson--but really, when _more suo_ he corrected _ex cathedrâ_ the

faults of others, he might at least have made sure of his facts. We

will take (from the narrative of the Battle of Hastings) the case of

the knighting of Harold on the eve of the Breton war:

WACE MR FREEMAN

E Heraut out iloc geu, Mr Planché says that Wace lays

E par la Lande fu passez, the scene at Avranches. He probably

Quant il fu duc amenez, refers to the Roman de Rou, 13723,

Qui a Aurenches donc esteit but the knighthood is not there

E en Bretaigne aler deueit, spoken of (p. 229).

_La le fist li dus chevalier_

[ll. 13720-5].

But it is only the feigned flight that connects the Battle of Hastings

with Arques and its blockade. We read, as the battle is about to

begin, of 'the aged Walter Giffard, the lord of Longueville, the hero

of Arques and Mortemer' (p. 457). As our author breaks the thread

of his narrative (pp. 128-37) to tell us in detail about those whose

names occur in it, we need not scruple in this instance to do the

same. Turning back, therefore, we read:

The chief who now commanded below the steep of Arques lived

to refuse to bear the banner of Normandy below the steep

of Senlac ... and to found, like so many others among the

baronage of Normandy, a short-lived earldom in the land which

he helped to conquer (p. 123).

In the act of that refusal he is thus described:

Even in the days of Arques [1053] and Mortimer [1054] he was

an aged man, and now [1066] he was old indeed; his hair was

white, his arm was failing (p. 465).

Yet we meet the veteran again, a generation later, as 'old Walter

Giffard, now [1090] Earl of Buckingham, in England ... the aged

warrior of Arques and Senlac' (_W.R._, i. 231). 'Nor do we wonder,' we

read, 'to find,' among the supporters of William Rufus in 1095, 'the

name of Walter Giffard, him [_sic_] who appeared as an aged man forty

years before' (_W.R._, i. 472). But even Mr Freeman admits that 'we

are somewhat surprised to find', among the opponents of Henry I in

1101, 'now at the very end of his long life, the aged Walter Giffard,

lord of Longueville, and Earl of Buckingham' (_W.R._, ii. 395).

Surprised? We are indeed; for, if he was 'an aged man' half a century

before, what must he have been when he joined the rebels in 1101?

It reminds one of a delightful passage in the quaint 'Memorie of the

Somervells', where the artless author, speaking of the action, in

1213, of his ancestor 'being then near the nyntieth and fourth year of

his age', observes:

What could have induced him ... to join himself with the

rebellious barrons at such an age, when he could not act any

in all human probabilitie, and was as unfit for counsel, is a

thing to be admired, but not understood or knowne.

One need scarcely point out that Mr Freeman has confused two

successive bearers of the name. The confusion is avoided by the

Duchess of Cleveland in her work on 'The Battle Abbey Roll', as it had

been by Planché and previous writers.

I here notice it chiefly as illustrating Mr Freeman's ready acceptance

of even glaring improbabilities.

But one of the most singular flaws in the late Professor's work was

his evident tendency to confuse two or more persons bearing the same

name. Three or four Leofstans of London were rolled by him into one;

Henry of Essex was identified with a Henry who had a different

father and who lived in Cumberland; while a whole string of erroneous

conclusions followed, we saw, from identifying Osbern 'filius Ricardi'

with Osbern 'cognomine Pentecost'.[136] It is strange that one who was

so severe on confusion of identity where places were concerned[137]

should have been, in the case of persons, guilty of that confusion.

SUMMARY

I would now briefly recapitulate the points I claim to have

established. We have seen, in the first place, that Mr Freeman's

disposition of the English forces is, with all that it involves,

nothing but a sheer guess--a guess to which he did not consistently

adhere, and to which his own precedent, moreover, is directly opposed.

Secondly, as to the 'palisade' which formed, according to him, so

prominent a feature of the battle, we have found that of the passages

he vouched for its existence only one need even be considered; and

that one, according to himself, where he last quotes and deals with

it, describes, not a palisade but the time-honoured 'array of the

shield-wall'.[138] Then, passing to the battle and taking it stage by

stage, I have shown that on its opening phase he went utterly astray

in search of an imaginary assault on a phantom palisade; we have

seen how another such guess transported to 'the western ravine'

a catastrophe which, even on his own showing, must have happened

somewhere else, and assigned it to a stage of the battle which is

quite possibly the wrong one. We have watched him missing the point

of the great feigned flight and failing to see how Norman craft caught

the English in a trap. And lastly, the critical man[oe]uvre of the

day, by which the Duke's great object was gained, and 'the

great advantage of the ground lost' to the English, proves on

inquiry--although introduced, like other assertions, as a historic

fact--to be yet another unsupported guess: for the statement that by

this man[oe]uvre 'the Normans were at last on the hill' and could thus

'charge to the east right against the defenders of the Standard' there

is absolutely no foundation.

We have now--confining ourselves to points as to which there can be no

question--examined Mr Freeman's account of the Battle of Hastings. It

is, as I showed at the outset, the very crown and flower of his work,

and it is, I venture to assert, mistaken in its essential points. Must

it, then, be cast aside as simply erroneous and misleading? Hardly. In

the words of his own criticism on Mr Coote's _Romans in Britain_: 'It

ought to be read, if only as a curious study, to show how utterly

astray an ingenious and thoroughly well-informed man can go.' For

there is the true conclusion. The possession of exhaustive knowledge,

the devotion of unsparing pains--neither of these were wanting. Then

'wanting is--what?' Men have differed and will always differ, as to

how history should be written; but on one point we are all agreed. The

true historian is he, and he only, who, from the evidence before him,

can divine the facts. Other qualities are welcome, but this is the

essential gift. And it was because, here at least, he lacked in that,

in spite of all his advantages, in spite of his genius and his zeal,

our author, in his story of this battle, failed as we have seen.

Mr Freeman held that his predecessors, Thierry and Sir Francis

Palgrave, 'singularly resemble each other in a certain lack of

critical power'. His own lack, as I conceive it, was of a somewhat

different kind. For if he studied the text and weighed the value of

his authorities, yet he was often liable to danger from his tendency

to a _parti pris_. Setting out with his own impression, he read his

texts in the light of that impression rather than with an open mind.

Thus we might say of his 'very lucid and original account' of the

great battle, as he said of Mr Coote's work: 'The truth of the whole

matter is that all this very ingenious but baseless fabric has been

built upon the foundation of a single error.' Had he not stumbled at

the outset over that 'quasi castellum', he might never have erected

that 'ingenious but baseless fabric'. As it is, while the battle

should be largely rewritten, preserving only such incidents as are

taken straight from the authorities, the accompanying plan must be

wholly destroyed. Till then, as Dr Stubbs has said of the discovery

that 'Ingulf' was a forgery, 'it remains a warning light, a wandering

marshfire, to caution the reader not to accept too abjectly the

conclusions of his authority'.

What then remains, it may be asked, of Mr Freeman's narrative? When

one remembers its superb vividness, carrying us away in spite of

ourselves, one is tempted to reply, in his own words on the saga of

Stamfordbridge:

We have, indeed, a glorious description which, when critically

examined, proves to be hardly more worthy of belief than a

battlepiece in the Iliad.... Such is the magnificent legend

which has been commonly accepted as the history of this famous

battle.... And it is disappointing that, for so detailed and

glowing a tale, we have so little of authentic history to

substitute (pp. 365-8).

For, as he has so justly observed, when dismissing as 'mythical'

this 'famous and magnificent saga' (pp. 328-9), 'a void is left which

history cannot fill, and which it is forbidden to the historian to

fill up from the resources of his own imagination'.

Accepting the principle here enunciated by Mr Freeman himself, I do

not merely reject demonstrably erroneous statements. I protest

against his giving us a narrative drawn 'from the resources of his

own imagination'. It is no answer to say that his guesses cannot be

actually proved to be wrong; the historian cannot distinguish too

sharply between statements drawn from his authorities and guesses,

however ingenious, representing imagination alone. No one I am sure,

reading Mr Freeman's brilliant narrative, could imagine how largely

his story of the battle is based on mere conjecture.

What the battle really was may be thus tersely expressed--it was

Waterloo without the Prussians. The Normans could avail nothing

against that serried mass.

Dash'd on every rocky square,

Their surging charges foam'd themselves away.

As Mr Oman has so well observed, the Norman horse might have surged

for ever 'around the impenetrable shield-wall'.[139] It was only, as

he and Mr Hunt[140] have shown, by the skilful combination of horsemen

and archers, by the maddening showers of arrows between the charges of

the horse, that the English, especially the lighter armed, were stung

into breaking their formation and abandoning that passive defence

to which they were unfortunately restricted. 'While no mode of array

could be stronger so long as the line remained unbroken, it made it

hard to form the line again.'[141] Dazzled by the rapid movements

of their foes, now advancing, now retreating, either in feint or in

earnest, the English, in places, broke their line, and then the Duke,

as Mr Oman writes, 'thrust his horsemen into the gaps'.[142] All this

is quite certain, and is what the authorities plainly describe. Let

us, then, keep to what we know. Is it not enough for us to picture

the English line stubbornly striving to the last to close its broken

ranks, the awful scene of slaughter and confusion, as the Old Guard

of Harold, tortured by Norman arrows, found the horsemen among them

at last, slashing and piercing right and left. Still the battle-axe

blindly smote; doggedly, grimly still they fought, till the axes

dropped from their lifeless grasp. And so they fell.

Mr Archer, when he first came forward to defend 'Mr Freeman's account

of the great battle',[143] observed that I claimed 'here to prove

the entire inadequacy of Mr Freeman's work', that I held him 'wrong,

completely wrong in his whole conception of the battle'.[144] And he

admitted that

'such a contention, it will at once be perceived, is very

different from any mere criticism of detail; it affects the

centre and the very heart of Mr Freeman's work. If he could

blunder here in the most carefully elaborated passage of his

whole history, he could blunder anywhere; his reputation for

accuracy would be gone almost beyond hope of retrieving it'

(p. 336).

'Blunder', surely, is a harsh word. I would rather say that the

historian is seen here at his strongest and at his weakest: at his

weakest in his tendency to follow blindly individual authorities

in turn, instead of grasping them as a whole, and, worse still,

in adapting them, at need, to his own preconceived notions; at his

strongest, in his Homeric power of making the actors in his drama live

and move before us. Not in vain has 'the wand of the enchanter', as an

ardent admirer once termed it, been waved around Harold and his host.

We are learning from recent German researches how the narratives of

early Irish warfare are 'perfectly surrounded with magic'; how, for

instance, at the battle of Culdreimne 'a Druid wove a magic hedge,

which he placed before the army as a hindrance to the enemy'. But

spells are now no longer wrought

With woven paces and with waving hands;

and the Druid's hedge must go the way of our own magician's

'palisade'.

But, as I foresaw, in his eagerness to prove, at least, the existence

of a palisade, my critic was soon reduced to impugning Mr Freeman's

own supreme authority, and at last to throwing over Mr Freeman

himself. 'Incidit in Scyllam cupiens vitare Charybdim.' Sneering[145]

at what the historian termed his 'highest', his 'primary' authority,

that 'precious monument', the Bayeux Tapestry--merely because it will

not square with his views--he rejects utterly Mr Freeman's theory as

to its date and origin,[146] and substitutes one which the Professor

described as 'utterly inconceivable'.[147] He has further informed us

that 'common sense' tells him that the English axemen cannot possibly

have fought 'in the close array of the shield-wall', as Mr Freeman

says they did.[148] And then he finally demolishes Mr Freeman's

'conception of the battle' by dismissing 'an imaginary

shield-wall',[149] and assuring us that the absurd vision of 'an

extended shield-wall vanishes like smoke'.[150]

It is impossible not to pity Mr Freeman's would-be champion. Scorning,

at the outset, the thought that his hero could err 'in the most

carefully elaborated passage of his whole history',[151] his attitude

of bold defiance was a joy to Mr Freeman's friends.[152]

[Greek: amphi d' ar' autô baine leôn hôs alki pepoithôs,

prosthe de hoi dyry t' esche kai aspida pantos eisên,

ton ktamenai memaôs hos tis tou g' antios elthoi,

smerdalea iachôn.]

But his wildly brandished weapon proved more deadly to friend than

foe: he discovered, as I knew, he could only oppose me by making

jettison of Mr Freeman's views. Of this we have seen above examples

striking enough; but the climax was reached in his chief contention,

namely, that the lines in the _Roman de Rou_, which describe, Mr

Freeman asserted, 'the array of the shield-wall',[153] cannot, on many

grounds, be 'referred to a shield-wall'.[154] No contradiction could

be more complete. So he now finds himself forced to write:

I do not say--I have _never_ said--that I agree with every

word that Mr Freeman has written about the great battle; but I

do regard his account of Hastings as the noblest battle-piece

in our historical literature--perhaps in that of the

world.[155]

'O most lame and impotent conclusion!' We are discussing whether that

account is 'right', not whether it is 'noble'. To the splendour of

that narrative I have borne no sparing witness. I have spoken of its

'superb vividness', I have praised its 'epic grandeur', I have dwelt

on the writer's 'Homeric power of making the actors in his drama live

and move before us', and have compared his tale with the 'glorious

description' in the saga of Stamfordbridge. But the nearer it

approaches to the epic and the saga, the less likely is that stirring

tale to be rigidly confined to fact.

I will not say of Mr Archer, 'his attack must be held to have failed',

for that would imperfectly express its utter and absolute collapse.

The whole of my original argument as to the narrative of the battle

remains not merely unshaken, but, it will be seen, untouched. Mr

Archer himself has now pleaded that 'the only' point he 'took up

directly' was that of the disputed passage in Wace;[156] and here he

could only make even the semblance of a case by deliberately ignoring

and suppressing Mr Freeman's own verdict (iii. 763-4), to which, from

the very first, I have persistently referred. In his latest, as in

his earliest article, he adheres to this deliberate suppression, and

falsely represents 'Mr Freeman's interpretation' as 'a palisade or

barricade' alone.[157]

Those who may object to plain speaking should rather denounce the

tactics that make such speaking necessary. When my adversary claims

that his case is proved, if the disputed passage does not describe a

shield-wall, he is perfectly aware that Mr Freeman distinctly asserted

that it did. To suppress that fact, as Mr Archer does,[158] can only

be described as dishonest.

Judging from the desperate tactics to which my opponent resorted,

it would seem that my 'attack' on Mr Freeman's work cannot here be

impugned by any straightforward means. The impotent wrath aroused

by its success will lead, no doubt, to other attempts equally

unscrupulous and equally futile. But truth cannot be silenced, facts

cannot be obscured. I appeal, sure of my ground, to the verdict

of historical scholars, awaiting, with confidence and calm, the

inevitable triumph of the truth.

CONCLUSION