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 Prèvost 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 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. Angl., 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. 38 Genealogist, viii. 4. Robert, Son of Wimarc 331 I 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. 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 "Rodbertus regis consanguineus" of the Waltham charter.11 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. 39 Dr. Liebermann asks whether Geoffrey's daughter was not thus "the first wife, else unknown, of the future King of Jerusalem." 41 Zb., ii. 673. 42 Ib., iii. 416. 40 N. C., iii. 576. 43 Mr. A. S. Ellis has suggested that "Elward filius Reinbaldi” (D.B., i. 1706) 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. Οταν ὁ ἰσχυρὸς καθωπλισμένος φυλάσσῃ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ αὐλήν, ἐν εἰρήνῃ ἐστὶν τὰ ὑπάρχοντα αὐτοῦ. ἐπὰν δε ἰσχυρότερος αὐτοῦ ἐπελθὼν νικήση αὐτόν, τὴν πανοπλίαν αὐτοῦ αἴρει ἐφ' ᾗ ἐπεποίθει. IT T 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: 1 Mr. T. A. Archer (Contemporary Review, March, 1893, p. 336). Mr. Freeman at his Strongest E ripenso le mobili Precentor Venables has well described 333 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 battle-field, 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 |