Feudal England

Professor are still surrounded by a false glamour, and that one must further expose his grave liability to error. I cannot suppose that any competent scholar who may carefully peruse this work will in future venture to deny that, in spite of his many and his splendid gifts, Mr. Freeman was as liable as any of us to error, or that however laudable his intentions, he was capable of precisely the same inaccuracy and occasionally of the same confusion as he denounced so bitterly in others.

It is, indeed, my contention, as I have already explained," that to these denunciations of the errors of others is largely due the conviction of Mr. Freeman's supreme accuracy. The question raised may seem to affect the whole method of history, for if, as has been said, it is the argument of the scientific historian that we ought to prefer accuracy of fact to charm of presentment and to literary style, the proof that his method fails to save him from erring like any "literary" historian strikes at the root of his whole contention.

Yet it is not the scientific method, but its prophet himself that was at fault.

Although I am here only concerned with inaccuracy in matters of fact, I would guard myself against the retort that, at least, Mr. Freeman's errors are of little consequence as compared with that obliquity of vision which led Mr. Froude, at all hazards, to vindicate Henry the Eighth. Without insisting on an absolute parallel, I trace a resemblance even here. Just as his bias against the Roman church led Mr. Froude to vindicate Henry in order to justify the breach with Rome, so Mr. Freeman's passion for democracy made him an advocate on behalf of Harold, as "one whose claim was not drawn only from the windingsheet of his fathers." I have elsewhere maintained, as to Harold's election "by the free choice of a free people," that Mr. Freeman's undoubted perversion of the case at this "the central point" of his history, gravely impairs his Quarterly Review, July, 1892.

narrative of the Conquest, because its success, and even its undertaking, can actually be traced to that election.8 Unless we realise its disastrous effect on the situation both at home and abroad, we cannot rightly understand the triumph of the Duke's enterprise.

It had been my hope, in the present work, to have avoided acute controversy, but the attitude adopted, unfortunately, by the late Professor's champions has rendered that course impossible. One can but rejoice that his accuracy should find strenuous defenders, as it removes the reluctance one would otherwise feel in continuing to criticise it now. A case is doubly proved when proved in the teeth of opposition. But one expects that opposition to be fair, and the line my opponents have taken throughout cannot, by any stretch of courtesy, be so described. My difficulty, indeed, in dealing with their arguments on the Battle of Hastings, is that they do not affect or even touch my case. In spite of their persistent efforts to obscure a plain issue, there is not, and there cannot be, any "controversy" as to Mr. Freeman and the "palisade." For, while fully recognising that the onus probandi lay on those who assert its existence, he failed, on his own showing, to produce any proof of it whatever. Mr. Archer has ended, as he began," by deliberately ignoring Mr. Freeman's words," on which my case avowedly rests, and without suppressing which he could not even enter the field. This, indeed, I have explained so often, that I need not again have disposed of his arguments had not Mr. Gardiner, in the exercise of his editorial discretion, allowed him to make certain statements, and refused me the right of exposing them. A typical example will be found on p. 353."

See Quarterly Review as above.

See pp. 340-347.

10 English Historical Review, July, 1894.

11 Contemporary Review, March, 1893, pp. 335-355 12 Norman Conquest (2nd Ed.), iii. 763-4.

18 English Historical Review, as above.

I have, therefore, been obliged to refer in some detail to these

It is not only demonstrable error that justifies critical treatment; no less dangerous, if not more so, is that subtle commixture of guess-work and fact, which leaves us in doubt as to what is proved and what is merely hypothesis. In his lecture on "The Nature of Historical Evidence," the late Professor himself well brought out the point:

Many people seem to think that a position is proved if it can not be disproved. . . Very few see with Sir George Lewisthough Sir George Lewis perhaps carried his own doctrine a little too far-that in a great many cases we ought to be satisfied with a negative result, that we must often put up with knowing that a thing did not happen in a particular way, or did not happen at all, without being furnished with any counter-statement to put in the place of that which we reject.15

The question is whether a statement can be proved, not whether it can be disproved. Cases in point will be found on pp. 379, 389, 433-5.

It may, in view of certain comments, be desirable, perhaps, to explain that the study on the origin of knightservice appeared in Mr. Freeman's lifetime," and that my open criticism of his work began so far back as 1882. It will be seen, therefore, that I challenged its accuracy when he was himself able to reply.

To those who may hold that in these studies excessive attention is bestowed on Anglo-Norman genealogy, I commend the words, not of a genealogist, but of the historian Kemble:

It is indispensable to a clear view of the constitutional law and governmental institutions of this country, that we should not lose sight of the distribution of landed estates among the great families, and that the rise and fall of these houses should be carefully traced and steadily borne in mind. . .

Amidst all the tumult and confusions of civil and foreign wars; statements, while for those I have already disposed of I have given the references to the Q.R. and E.H.R.

15 Methods of Historical Study, p. 141.

16 English Historical Review, July, 1891-January, 1892.

throughout religious and political revolutions; from the days of Arminius to those of Harald; from the days of Harald to our own; the successions of the landowners and the relations arising out of these successions, are the running comment upon the events in our national history: they are at once the causes and the criteria of facts, and upon them has depended the development and settlement of principles, in laws which still survive, in institutions which we cling to with reverence, in feelings which make up the complex of our national character."

The paper on Walter Tirel and his wife" may serve to show that in this department there is still needed much labour before we can hope for a perfeet record of the great houses of the Conquest.

I have to thank Mr. Murray for his kind permission to make use of two of the articles I have contributed to the

Quarterly Review. Some of the studies have previously appeared in the English Historical Review, and these are now republished with Messrs. Longmans' consent. Lastly, I would take the opportunity afforded by this preface of acknowledging the encouragement my researches have derived from the approval not only of our supreme authority -I mean the Bishop of Oxford-but also of that eminent scholar, Dr. Liebermann, whose name one is proud to associate with a work on medieval history.

J. H. ROUND.

17 The Names, Surnames, and Nicknames of the Anglo-Saxons. Read at Winchester, September 11th, 1845.

[NOTE. I have not thought it needful to include in the index names of persons or places only introduced incidentally in illustration of arguments. The prefix "Fitz," as in Geoffrey de Mandeville, has been retained as a useful convention, whatever the actual name may have been.]

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART I.-TERRITORIAL STUDIES.

DOMESDAY BOOK