Chapter XV: Part II: Historical Studies (1)

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).