PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.
This third English edition of these two volumes has been again thoroughly revised throughout. I have not however thought it needful to recast or enlarge the earlier chapters, as I still cling to the hopes with regard to my first and fifth volumes which I expressed in the Preface to the fifth volume. But I have added and corrected in detail, wherever I have found any fresh matter or any fresh light on old matters. And I found also, in revising what I wrote twelve years back, that I could improve a good deal in point of mere style. I have often put a good English word where I had at first allowed a stranger to creep in. In the first volume I have seen reason to alter my narrative on one point of some local and personal interest, though not greatly affecting the general history. I have been convinced by the arguments of Mr. James Parker that the murder of Sigeferth and Morkere at Oxford has been confounded with the massacre of Saint Brice, and that some details which belong to the earlier event have been transferred to the later. In the Norman chapter in the second volume, I have once or twice worked in, in the form of new or enlarged local description, the results of later journeys in Normandy and Maine. And I have also made some improvements in the maps.
The author of a work on this scale always does wisely in not reviewing his reviewers, and I shall certainly not spend any great time reviewing mine. I, and doubtless others, have been amused at many pieces of criticism, perhaps not the least at the amazement with which some people have seen Old-English names written in Old-English fashion. As this seems to be commonly looked on as some special device of my own, we thus become aware of the singular fact that there are people who think themselves fit to write about early English history without having looked at Kemble or Lappenberg. But, without strictly reviewing my reviewers, I have had some doubts whether I ought not to examine in detail an article headed “Earl Godwin and Earl Harold,” which appeared in the North British Review for April 1870, and which bears the signature of Mr. C. H. Pearson. In earlier revisions I have made a few references to Mr. Pearson’s views as set forth in his other works, and I believe that there are one or two to this article itself. But in my present revision I thought it was better on the whole not to go into any long controversy—for a long controversy it could hardly fail to be—with regard to my general views either of Godwine or of his son. When I read Mr. Pearson’s arguments, I find that his notions of historical evidence, and his general way of looking at everything, are so different from mine that it is really better to leave the question to the judgement of the few scholars who may think it worth while to make a minute comparison between Mr. Pearson’s statements and my own. I say a minute comparison, because it would not be safe to accept either my views or the statements of the original writers on Mr. Pearson’s showing. I must decline to have my judgement of Godwine measured by the report which Mr. Pearson has thought fit to give of it. I do not know where Mr. Pearson found that “Godwin is the spotless being of Mr. Freeman’s imagination, the saint and hero of an impure and unheroic age.” He certainly did not find that picture any where in the History of the Norman Conquest, least of all where my notions of Godwine are most formally put forth, namely in the seventh chapter, the first in the second volume. I must further protest against Mr. Pearson’s statement that I “believe in” a “settlement of the Witan in 1051” in favour of William. Of this belief no trace will be found in my writings; indeed it is expressly denied at p. 430 of my second volume (p. 421 of the first edition). Nor do I admit that I have “started from the conception that history for eight hundred years has been in a conspiracy against truth.” I simply go back from legend to history, from the slanders of later times to the witness of the men who eight hundred years back wrote real history. Mr. Pearson goes on to say that “my style throughout is that of a pleader who tries to demolish the character of witnesses by detecting them in trivial inconsistencies, and who delights in accumulating the absurd stories of late and obscure chroniclers in order to throw doubts on a general verdict.” I can only infer that Mr. Pearson is not a student of comparative mythology. I can only infer that he does not see the importance of tracing how a story grew, and what shapes it took in different hands, according to times, places, and changes of feeling. When Mr. Pearson utterly misunderstands my plainest words, when I can find no common ground with him from which to examine historical evidence, I must leave it to others to judge between him and me on the general question.
At the same time, in case any one should make it his business to compare Mr. Pearson and me in detail, I must ask him to accept nothing on Mr. Pearson’s showing—as I ask no one to accept anything on my showing—without minutely testing it by the authorities. I think that any one who does so will not fail to see how much of Mr. Pearson’s genealogical argument is upset by his constant confusion between Wulfnoth the son of Godwine and Æthelnoth the thegn of Kent. Even a Domesday copyist, in his wildest departures from the true forms of English names, would not write Alnod and Ulnod indiscriminately. I have gone thoroughly into this matter in Appendix N., vol. iv, where I see that I have referred to an earlier work of Mr. Pearson’s. So again, when Mr. Pearson rakes up the real or supposed evil deeds (among which he seems to reckon the marriages) of several English Bishops of the eleventh century, he makes his list longer by bringing in a tale, true or false, about Walter of Hereford, who was not an Englishman. And I must lastly beg that no one will accept Mr. Pearson’s summary of any part of the Encomium Emmæ, without reading every word of the Encomiast’s text for himself.
As Mr. Pearson is an historical writer of some reputation, I have thought it right not to let his distinctly controversial article pass by altogether unnoticed. I do not know that there is any other writer of position with whom I need to enter into any controversy. If I were to examine any anonymous criticism, it would be an article signed “H. A.” in the North American Review, in which I am blamed for maintaining the innocence of Godwine, though his guilt is asserted in “the Saxon Chronicle.” It would almost seem as if “H. A.” had written this without either looking at the Chronicles themselves or at the examination of their witness in my Appendix. Indeed it would seem that, even in such respectable quarters as the North American Review, the idea still lingers that there is a single book called “The Saxon Chronicle.” I need hardly say that strange havoc would be made of the history, as strange havoc often has been made, by any one who did not stop to compare the wide difference in statement and feeling between Abingdon and Peterborough.
The Index to the whole five volumes, which will include the index to the present edition of these two, is in preparation.