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Hish - English

Allen

11-14-33

28383

PREFACE

THE present work is the outcome of a wish expressed

to me from more than one quarter that I would reprint in a collected form, for the convenience of historical students, some more results of my researches in the history of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. But to these I have added, especially on Domesday, so much which has not yet seen the light, that the greater portion of the work is new, while the rest has been in part re-written. The object I have set before myself throughout is either to add to or correct our existing knowledge of facts. And for this I have gone in the main to records, whether in manuscript or in print. It is my hope that the papers in this volume may further illustrate the value of such evidence as supplementing and checking the chroniclers for what is still, in many respects, an obscure period of our history.

As a foreign scholar has felicitously observed:

Je lis avec plaisir le chroniqueur qui nous raconte les événements de son époque. Les détails anecdotiques, les traits piquants dont son œuvre est parsemée font mes délices. Mais comment saurai-je s'il dit la vérité si les pages qu'il me présente ne sont pas un roman de pure imagination? Dans les chartes, au contraire, tout est authentique, certain, précis, indubitable. Leur témoignage est contradictoirement établi, sous le contrôle de la partie adverse, avec l'approbation et la reconaissance de l'autorité souveraine, en présence d'une imposante assemblée de notables qui apposent leur signature. C'est la plus pure de toutes les sources, où il soit possible de puiser un renseignement historique.1

1 Table chronologique des chartes et diplômes imprimés concernant l'histoire de la Belgique. Par Alphonse Wauters, vol. i., p. xxxi.

An instance in point will be found in the paper on "Richard the First's change of seal."

A collective title for a series of studies covering the period 1050-1200, is not by any means easy to find. But dealing as they do so largely with the origins of "Feudal England," I have ventured to give them this title, which may serve, I hope, to emphasize my point that the feudal element introduced at the Conquest had a greater influence on our national institutions than recent historians admit.2 Even Domesday Book has its place in the study of feudalism, re-arranging, as it does, the Hundred and the Vill under Fiefs and "Manors."

To those in search of new light on our early mediæval history, I commend the first portion of this work, as setting forth, for their careful consideration, views as revolutionary on the Domesday hide and the whole system 'of land assessment as on the actual introduction of the feudal system into England. Although I have here brought into conjunction my discovery that the assessment of knight-service was based on a five-knights unit, irrespective of area or value, and my theory that the original assessment of land was based on a five-hides unit, not calculated on area or value, yet the two, one need hardly add, are, of course, unconnected. The one was an Anglo-Saxon system, and, as I maintain, of early date; the other was of Norman introduction, and of independent origin. My theories were 'formed at different times, as the result of wholly separate investigations. That of the five-hides unit was arrived at several years ago, but was kept back in the hope that I might light on some really satisfactory explanation of the phenomena presented. The solution I now propound can only be deemed tentative. I would hope, however, that the theories I advance may stimulate others to approach the subject, and, above all, that they may indicate to local students, in the future, the lines on which they should work and the absolute need of their assistance.

2 See pp. 247, 262, 536–8.

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Perhaps the most important conclusion to which my researches point is that Domesday reveals the existence of two separate systems in England, co-extensive with two nationalities, the original five hides of the "Anglo-Saxon" in the south, and the later six carucates of the "Danish" invaders in the north.3

No cne, I may add, is better qualified to carry further these enquiries than Prof. Maitland, whose brilliant pen has illumined for us the origins of English law. Himself engaged on the study of Domesday, he kindly offered to withhold his conclusions until my work should have appeared.*

Among the fresh points here discussed in connexion with Domesday Book will be found the composition of the juries by whom the returns were made, the origin and true character of the "Inquisitio Eliensis," and the marked difference of the two volumes compiled from the Domesday

returns.

Of the six early surveys dealt with in conjunction with Domesday, I would call attention to that of Leicestershire as having, it would seem, till now remained absolutely unknown. It has long been a wish of mine to deal with these surveys, not only as belonging to a period for which we have no records, but also as illustrating Domesday Book. In "The Knights of Peterborough" will be found some facts relating to Hereward "the Wake," which seem to have eluded Mr. Freeman's investigations, and even those of Mr. Tout.

In case it should suggest itself that these papers, and some in the other portion of the work dwell at undue length on unimportant points, I would observe that apart from the fact that even small points acquire a relative importance

3 See p. 573.

4

Prof. Maitland informs me that since the appearance of his Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, he has discovered the earlier occurrence of the word "leet" (see p. 101).

* See Domesday Studies.

from our scanty knowledge of the time, there are cases in which their careful investigation may lead to unforeseen results. At the last anniversary of the Royal Society, Lord Kelvin quoted these words from his own presidential address in 1871:—

Accurate and minute measurement seems to the non-scientific 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, longcontinued labour in the minute sifting of numerical results.

The same principle applies to the study of institutional history. Whether we are dealing with military service, with the land, with finance, or with the king's court, "the minute sifting" of facts and figures is the only sure method by which we can extend knowledge.

To those who know how few are the original authorities for the period, and how diligently these have been explored and their information exhausted, the wonder will be not so much that there is little, as that there was anything at all yet left to discover.

In a work dealing with the history of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a writer must inevitably find himself at times dealing with the same subjects as the late Professor Freeman. Without in any way disparaging the genius of that eminent man, one may deem it a duty to correct the errors into which he fell, and conscientiously to combat, as an obstinate and mischievous superstition, the conviction of his pre-eminent accuracy, and authority on matters of fact. It would be far pleasanter to dwell only on his merits; but when one finds that, in spite of the proofs I have been producing for years, Mr. Herbert Fisher, representing the Oxford school of history, can still declare Mr. Freeman to have reached "the highest standard of scholarly exactitude," it is evident that the works of the Regius

6

Fortnightly Review, December, 1894, pp. 804-5.

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