Feudal England: Historical Studies on the XIth and XIIth Centuries

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S. Sonnenschein & Company, 1909 - 587 pages
The impact of the Norman victory over England brought about as broad and fundamental a social change as any that has taken place subsequently, and Round's book has been in constant demand since its original publication in 1895. His scrupulous care in collating the facts of eleventh and twelfth century feudalism combines with his sane deductions to create what has become a work of unquestioned authority. In the foreword to a later edition Sir Frank Stenton calls it "a contribution to learning which would place any man among the energizing forces in the scholarship of his day."
 

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Page 118 - The original is preserved in a Register of the Monastery, remaining among the Cotton Manuscripts in the British Museum, marked Tiberius A. VI. and is at least as old as the 12th century.
Page 435 - He took what vengeance he would for the slaughter of his men." 2 He The next point of his march was one where he might to Dover, look to be checked by an obstacle such as he would ' seldom meet with in any part of the land which he had...
Page 397 - horn" (iii. 382). Harold, says Mr. Freeman, was imprisoned at Beaurain. This is quite plain from the Tapestry: " Dux eum ad Belrem et ibi eum tenuit.
Page x - Accurate and minute measurement seems to the nonscientific imagination, a less lofty and dignified work than looking for something new. But nearly all the grandest discoveries of science have been but the rewards of accurate measurement and patient long-continued labour in the minute sifting of numerical results.
Page 134 - The most erroneous date that has been suggested for Domesday is the year 1080. Ellis wrote, referring to Webb's "short account/' that " the Red Book of the Exchequer seems to have been erroneously quoted as fixing the time of entrance upon it as 1080
Page 338 - Of the array of the shield-wall we have often heard already, as at Maldon (see vol. ip 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.
Page 365 - Sic compulsa mori gens maledicta ruit." (w. 435-438.) But the superior numbers of the English give them the advantage, and the Normans are driven to fly in earnest ; " Anglorum populus, numero superante, repellit Hostes, inque retro compulit ora dari ; Et fuga ficta prius fit tune virtute coacta ; Normanni fugiunt, dorsa tegunt clipei.
Page 224 - Survey are quite sufficient to disprove its alleged silence on the subject. As Mr. Freeman has well observed :— Its most incidental notices are sometimes the most precious. We have seen that it is to an incidental, an almost accidental notice in the Survey that we owe our knowledge of the great fact of the general redemption of lands.
Page 312 - 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...
Page 396 - It is not till long afterwards that we find the full developement of those strange fables which, in so many modern histories, have supplanted the truth. Had the Tapestry been a work of later date, it is hardly possible that it could have given the simple and truthful account of these matters which it does give. A work of the twelfth or thirteenth century...

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