Precentor Venables has well described

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 battlefield, 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'

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 some miles from Poitiers, so was it with that of Hastings. Yet we all speak of the Battle of Poitiers, although we might substitute the name of Maupertuis more legitimately than that of Senlac. The only plea that Mr Freeman could advance was that people were led by the old name to imagine that the battle was fought at Hastings itself! Of those who argue in this spirit, it was finely said by the late Mr Kerslake that

instead of lifting ignorance to competence by teaching what ought to be known, they cut down what ought to be known to the capacity of those who are deficient of that knowledge. Instead of making them understand the meaning of the ancient and established word 'Anglo-Saxon', they disturb the whole world of learning with an almost violent attempt to turn out of use the established word, which has been thoroughly understood for ages.

The simple answer to Mr Freeman's contention is, that it is needless to make the change in histories, because those who read them learn that the fight was at Battle; while as to those who do not read histories, it is obvious that such a name as 'Senlac' will in no way lighten their darkness.

The change, therefore, was uncalled for. But it was not merely uncalled for; it was also absolutely wrong. 'To the battle itself,' Mr Freeman wrote, 'I restore its true ancient name of Senlac.' In so doing the writer acted in the spirit of those who 'restore' our churches and who gave that word so evil a sound in the ears of all archæologists, Mr Freeman himself included. I am reminded of the protest of the Society of Antiquaries on hearing 'with much regret that a fifteenth-century pinnacle' at Rochester Cathedral 'is in danger of destruction in order that a modern pinnacle, professing to represent that which stood in the place in the twelfth century, may be set up in its stead'. Precisely such a 'restoration' is Mr Freeman's 'Senlac'. Professing to represent the ancient name of the battle, it is substituted for that name which the battle has borne from the days of the Conqueror to our own. In William of Malmesbury as in Domesday Book we read of 'the Battle of Hastings' (Bellum Hastingense), and all Mr Freeman's efforts failed admittedly to discover any record or any writer who spoke of the Battle of Senlac (Bellum Senlacium) save Orderic alone. Now Orderic wrote two generations after the battle was fought; the name he strove to give it fell from his pen stillborn; and the fact that this name was a fad of his own is shown by what Mr Freeman suppressed, namely, that Orderic, in the same breath, tells us that Battle Abbey was founded as 'cœnobium Sanctæ Trinitatis Senlac', whereas we learn from Mr Freeman himself that

the usual title is 'ecclesia Sancti Martini de Bello', 'ecclesia de Bello', or, as we have seen, in English 'þæt mynster æt þære Bataille'. The fuller form, 'Abbas Sancti Martini de loco Belli', appears in Domesday, 11b: but it is commonly called in the Survey 'ecclesia de Labatailge'.

So much for Orderic's authority.

So violent an innovation as this of our author's could not pass unchallenged. Mr Frederic Harrison threw down the gauntlet (Contemporary Review, January 1886), attacking, in a brilliant and incisive article, Mr Freeman's 'pedantry' along the whole line. But he chiefly complained of

a far more serious change of name that the 'Old English' school have introduced; which, if it were indefinitely extended, would wantonly confuse historical literature. I mean the attempt to alter names which are the accepted landmarks of history. It is now thought scholarly to write of 'the Battle of Senlac' instead of 'the Battle of Hastings'. As every one knows, the fight took place on the site of Battle Abbey, seven miles from Hastings; as so many great battles, those of Tours, Blenheim, Cannæ, Chalons, and the like, have been named from places not the actual spot of the combat.

But since for 800 years the historians of Europe have spoken of 'the Battle of Hastings', it does seem a little pedantic to rename it.... The sole authority for 'Battle of Senlac' is Orderic, a monk who lived and wrote in Normandy in the next century. Yet, on the strength of this secondary authority, the 'Old English' school choose to erase from English literature one of our most familiar names.

Mr Freeman's rejoinder must be noticed, because singularly characteristic. Treating Mr Harrison 'de haut en bas', he expressed surprise that his friends should expect him to reply to an article which had merely amused him, and—unable, of course, to adduce any fresh authority for 'Senlac'—denounced his critic for a 'reckless raid into regions where he does not know the road'. For this charge there was no foundation in the matter of which we treat. Mr Freeman persisted that he had given the battle 'the only name that I found for it anywhere' (which we have seen was not the case), and sarcastically observed that 'so to do is certainly "pedantic", for it conduces to accuracy'.

The truth is simply that the site of the battle had no name at all. As the professor himself wrote:

The spot was then quite unoccupied and untilled; nothing in any of the narratives implies the existence of any village or settlement; our own Chronicle only describes the site as by 'the hoar apple-tree' ('He com him togenes æt þære haran apuldran').

Consequently, when men wished to speak of the great conflict, they were driven, as in similar cases, to term it the Battle of Hastings, or, if they wished to be more exact, they had to describe it, by periphrasis, as fought on 'the site which is now called Battle'.

Henry of Huntingdon, our author tells us, is guilty, though otherwise well informed, of 'a statement so grotesquely inaccurate as that Harold "aciem suam construxit in planis Hastinges"'. Why 'grotesque'? It would be strictly accurate to describe a battle, even seven miles from Salisbury, as fought on Salisbury Plain; while, as to the word 'plain', his horror of field-sports may have caused Mr Freeman's ignorance of the fact that another such stretch of Sussex Down is known as 'Plumpton Plain'.² But the fact is that the whole difficulty arose from that singular narrowness that cramped our author's mind, and that lies at the root, when rightly understood, of his most distinctive tenets. For he was a pedant, after all. And, observe, this 'pedantry' did, in practice, conduce not to true accuracy, but to the very reverse. Paradoxical though this may sound, it is literally true. Let us take a striking instance. In his account of the attack on Dover in 1067, Mr Freeman argued, 'from the distinct mention of oppidum and oppidani in Orderic', that it was not the castle, as supposed, but the town that was attacked. And so convinced was he of this, that he forced his authorities into harmony with his view against their plain meaning. This was because he was not aware that Orderic—'my dear old friend Orderic', as in one place he terms him—was in the habit of using oppidum for castle. He must have afterwards discovered this; for his theory was tacitly and significantly dropped, and the old version substituted, in a subsequent edition. Again, an article on 'City and Borough', which he contributed to Macmillan's Magazine, was based on the fundamental assumption that civitas, in the Norman period, must have had a specialized denotation. The fact that, on the contrary, the same town is spoken of as a civitas and as a burgus, cuts the ground from under this assumption, and, with it, destroys the whole of its elaborate superstructure. Our author's method, in short, placed him in standing conflict with every authority for his period. Never was 'the sacredness of words' treated as of less account; never, indeed, were words more wantonly changed. What would Mr Freeman have said had he known that the compilers of that sacrosanct record, Domesday Book itself, revelled in altering the wording of the sworn original returns? Such was the spirit of the men whose language he strove to limit by a terminology as precise as that of modern philosophy.

I may have wandered somewhat from 'Senlac', but my object was to show that Mr Freeman misunderstood twelfth-century writers by assigning to them his own peculiarities. It did not in any way follow from their speaking of a 'Battle of Hastings' that they 'grotesquely' supposed it to have been fought at the town itself: they allowed themselves an elasticity, both in word and phrase, which was so alien to himself that he could not realize its existence, and therefore accused them of ignorance because their language was different from his. In the same spirit he would never admit that the 'Castellum Warham' of Domesday Book was no other than Corfe Castle, although, as Mr Eyton and Mr Bond have shown, the fact is certain.

But the crux is yet to come. To any one acquainted with 'Old English' it must instantly occur that 'Senlac' is not an English name. Mr Freeman glided over this by simply ignoring the difficulty, but was he aware that the name in question, as 'Senlecque' (or 'Senlecques'), is actually found—in France? One is reminded of his own criticism on the name 'Duncombe Park':

When the lands of Helmsley were made to take the name of Duncombe, a real wrong was done to geography.... How came a combe in Yorkshire? The thing is a fraud on nomenclature as great as any of the frauds which the first Duncombe, 'born to carry parcels and to sweep down a counting-house', contrived to commit on the treasury of the nation.

How came a French 'Senlac' in 'Old English' Sussex? The name is as obviously foreign as 'Senlis' itself, and the occurrence, in later days of 'Santlachæ' as a local field-name, cannot avail against this fact, or prove that this open down, in days before the Conquest, could have borne such a title. Therefore, when Mr Freeman wrote that the English king 'pitched his camp upon the ever memorable heights of Senlac', he was guilty, not only of anachronism, but of a 'real wrong to geography', and, in the name of accuracy, he introduced error.³

I have gone thus carefully into this matter because the name has been meekly adopted by historians, and even by journalists, thereby proving the power of that tendency to fashion and imitation on which, in his Physics and Politics, Mr Bagehot loved to insist. For my part I make an earnest appeal to all who may write or teach history to adhere to the 'true ancient name' of the Battle of Hastings, and to reject henceforward an innovation which was uncalled for, misleading, and wrong.⁴

THE PALISADE

The distinctive peculiarity of the English tactics, we learn from Mr Freeman at the outset, is found in an entirely novel device introduced on this occasion by Harold. Instead of merely forming his troops in the immemorial array known as the shield-wall, he turned 'the battle as far as possible into the likeness of a siege',⁵ by building around them a 'palisade' of solid timber. How large a part this 'palisade' plays in Mr Freeman's story may be gathered from the fact that it is mentioned at least a score of times in his account of the great battle. This 'fortress of timber', with its 'wooden walls', had 'a triple gate of entrance', and was composed of 'firm barricades of ash and other timber, wattled in so close together that not a crevice could be seen'.

It would be easier for me to deal with this 'palisade' if one could form a clear idea of what it represented to Mr Freeman's mind. Judging from the passages quoted above, and from his praising Henry of Huntingdon for his 'admirable comparison of Harold's camp to a castle';⁶ I was led to believe that he imagined precisely such a timber wall as crowned in those days a castle mound. Such a defence is well shown in the Bayeux Tapestry, crowning the castle mound which William threw up at Hastings. Now, this very parallel is suggested by Mr Freeman himself. Describing Harold's position as 'not without reason called a fortress' [where?] he suggested that 'its defences might be nearly equal to those of William's own camp at Hastings' (p. 447). Following up this parallel, we find Mr Freeman writing of this latter:

A portion of English ground was already entrenched and palisaded, and changed into a Norman fortress (p. 418).... He saw the carpenters come out with their axes; he saw the fosse dug, and the palisade thrown up (p. 419). They had already built a fort and had fenced it in with a palisade (p. 420).

Without binding Mr Freeman down to a defence precisely of this character—and, indeed, in this as in other matters, he may not even himself have formed a clear idea of what he meant—it gives us, I think we may fairly say, a general idea of his 'palisade'. It was certainly no mere row of stakes,⁷ no heap of cottage window frames,⁸ no fantastic array of shields tied to sticks,⁹ no 'abattis of some sort'¹⁰ that Mr Freeman had in view, whatever his champions may pretend. As for the defenders of the 'palisade', they cannot even agree among themselves as to what it really was. Mr Archer produces a new explanation, only to throw it over almost as soon as it is produced.¹¹ One seeks to know for certain what one is expected to deal with; but, so far as it is possible to learn, nobody can tell one. There is only a succession of dissolving views, and one is left to deal with a nebulous hypothesis.¹²

Mr Freeman wrote of his 'palisade' as a mere 'development of the usual tactics of the shield-wall'; but this is an obvious misconception. It might, indeed, be used as a substitute for the 'shield-wall', and would enable the troops behind it to adopt a looser formation; but to suppose that they were ranged 'closely together in the thick array of the shield-wall', with this second wall in front of them, is surely absurd. Till the 'wooden walls' were broken the 'shield-wall' was needless. To retain the disadvantages of its close order, when that order had been rendered needless, would have been simply insane. Yet this insanity, in our author's eyes, was 'the master-skill of Harold'. Was there time, moreover, to construct such a fortress, if 'the battle followed almost immediately', as we learn, 'on the arrival of Harold'? Lastly, would there be material on the spot for a palisade (see ground plan) about a mile in length?¹³ These awkward points may not have occurred to Mr Freeman; but to others they will, I think, cause some uneasiness. Let us then examine Mr Freeman's authorities for the existence of this palisade.

MR FREEMAN'S AUTHORITIES FOR IT

Loyally keeping to this principle, I propose to test his statements by the authorities he gives for them himself. I therefore address myself to the passages in Henry of Huntingdon and in Wace.

(1) Henry of Huntingdon

The passage relied on by the historian is this:

Quum ergo Haroldus totam gentem suam in una acie strictissime locasset et quasi castellum inde construxisset¹⁴ impenetrabiles erant Normannis (iii. 444, note).

Mr Freeman thus paraphrased Henry's words:

He occupied and fortified, as thoroughly as the time and the means at his command would allow, a post of great natural strength, which he made into what is distinctly spoken of as a castle (Ibid.).¹⁵

Although the writer made it his complaint against one of the editors in the Rolls series that he could not 'construe his Latin', we see that the same failing led him here himself into error. Inde refers, and can only refer, to Harold's troops themselves. A fortress Harold wrought; but he wrought it of flesh and blood: it was behind no ramparts that the soldiers of England awaited the onset of the chivalry of France.

The metaphor, of course, is a common one. Henry of Huntingdon himself recurs to it, when describing that 'acies', at the Battle of Lincoln, which Stephen 'circa se ... strictissime collocavit' (p. 271), as Harold, he wrote, 'gentem suam in una acie strictissime locasset' (p. 203). For he shows us Stephen's 'acies' assailed 'sicut castellum'.¹⁶ In the same spirit an Irish bard tells us how his countrymen, on the battlefield of Dysert O'Dea (May 10, 1318), closed in their ranks, 'like a strong fortress', as their enemies surged around them. It was felicitous, indeed, to describe as 'quasi castellum' that immovable mass of warriors girt by their shield-wall,¹⁷ that 'fortress of shields', as Mr Freeman termed it, at Hastings itself (iii. 492), at Stamford Bridge (iii. 372), at Maldon (i. 272), and even in earlier days (i. 151).

It was Mr Freeman's initial error in thus materializing a metaphor (through misconstruing his Latin) that first led me to doubt the existence of the 'palisade'. His champion, Mr Archer, in his first article,¹⁸ was ominously silent as to this error: in the second, he had to confess of this passage, the first of Mr Freeman's proofs, that he himself 'should never think of using it to prove a palisade'.¹⁹ Exit, therefore, Henry of Huntingdon.

(2) Wace

Two passages, and two alone, are in question—

(A) ll. 6991-4, which Mr Freeman has paraphrased thus:

My criticism on this has been from the first that Wace here speaks only of a ditch, and that Mr Freeman has not only introduced here the alleged palisade, from which Wace's 'fosse' was quite distinct, but has also transferred to that palisade the 'treis entrees' of the fosse. That Mr Freeman did treat the 'palisade' and the 'fosse' as distinct and considerably apart is proved by this passage:

The Normans had crossed the [sic] English fosse, and were now at the foot of the hill with the palisades and the axes right before them (iii. 476).

The 'fosse' is that 'artificial ditch' of which Mr Freeman speaks in the above passage, the only one of which he does speak. Therefore, that 'artificial ditch' was, in his view, down in the valley to the south, and had nothing to do with that 'palisade' which he placed on the hill. There is thus no possible doubt as to Mr Freeman's view. On his own showing, the above lines make no mention of a palisade on the hill.²⁰

(B) ll. 7815-26: The passage in question runs thus:

In his first edition, writing, I believe, under the influence of Taylor's version, Mr Freeman gave these lines in a footnote to his narrative of the battle, and appears to have then looked on them as describing his palisade.²¹ But in his 'second edition, revised', in preparing which he went 'minutely through every line, and corrected or improved whatever seemed to need correction or improvement' (p. v), he transferred these lines to his appendix on the battle, where he wrote concerning them as follows:

[(At Maldon) the English stood, as at Senlac, in the array common to them and their enemies—a strong line, or rather wedge, of infantry, forming a wall with their shields (i. 271).]²²

Of the array of the shield-wall we have often heard already, as at Maldon (see vol. i. p. 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. Wace gives his description, 12941:

So William of Malmesbury, 241. 'Pedites omnes cum bipennibus, conserta ante se scutorum testudine, impenetrabilem cuneum faciunt; quod profecto illis eâ die saluti fuisset, nisi Normanni simulatâ fugâ more suo confertos manipulos laxassent.' So at the battle of the Standard, according to Æthelred of Rievaux (343), 'scutis scuta junguntur, lateribus latera conseruntur' (iii. 763-4).

The unquestionable meaning of Mr Freeman's words is that Wace's lines (like the other passages) describe the time-honoured shield-wall, 'the fortress of shields, so often sung of alike in English and in Scandinavian minstrelsy' (iii. 372).

Appealing to this, his own verdict, in my original article,²³ I spoke of these lines as referring to the 'shield-wall', and maintained that 'escuz' meant shields, not 'barricades'. This also, it will be seen, must have been Mr Freeman's view, when he pronounced these lines to be a description of the shield-wall. I therefore declared that the only evidence he adduced for his palisade had been demonstrably obtained by misconstruing his Latin, and (on his own showing) by mistranslating his French.

This has been my case from the first: it remains my case now.

Unlike our forefathers on the hill of battle, I will not be decoyed into breaking 'the line of the shield-wall'.²⁴

MY ARGUMENT AGAINST IT

It is clear that if he (Mr Freeman) found it needful, in his story of the great battle, to mention this barricade about a score of times, it must have occupied a prominent place in every contemporary narrative. And yet we assert without fear of contradiction that (dismissing the 'Roman de Rou') in no chronicle or poem, among all Mr Freeman's authorities, could he find any ground for this singular delusion; while the Bayeux Tapestry itself, which he rightly places at their head, will be searched in vain for a palisade, or for anything faintly resembling it, from beginning to end of the battle.²⁵

On this passage we take our stand: it is the very essence of our case. We made our statement 'without fear of contradiction'; and it is not contradicted. Moreover, we can now further strengthen it by appealing to Baudri's poem,²⁶ an authority of the first rank, in which, as in the others, there is no allusion to the existence of any 'palisade'.

It will be observed that, in this passage, we expressly excluded Wace's poem. We did so because—although, as we have seen, Mr Freeman failed to produce from it any proof of a palisade—we preferred to leave it an open question whether Wace did or did not believe the English to have fought behind a palisade. In rebutting Mr Freeman's evidence, that question did not arise.

There is another argument that we refrained from bringing forward because we thought it superfluous. The Normans, of course, as Mr Freeman reminds us, magnified the odds against them: 'Nothing but the special favour of God could have given his servants a victory over their enemies, which was truly miraculous' (p. 440). William of Poitiers, he adds (p. 479), sets forth their difficulties in detail:—

'Angli nimium adjuvantur superioris loci opportunitate, quem sine procursu tenent, et maxime conferti; atque ingenti quoque numerositate suâ atque validissimâ corpulentiâ; præterea pugnæ instrumentis, quæ facile per scuta vel alia tegmina viam inveniunt.'

Now William who was not only a contemporary writer, but, says Mr Freeman (p. 757), 'understood' the site, had, obviously, every inducement to include, among the difficulties of the Normans, that special 'development', which according to Mr Freeman (pp. 444, 468), 'the foresight of Harold' had introduced on this occasion, and which, he assures us, involved 'a frightful slaughter' of the Normans. And yet this writer is absolutely silent, both here and throughout the battle, as to the existence of a barricade of any sort or kind.²⁷

Here I would briefly refer to certain misrepresentations. Mr Archer claimed, in his original article (Cont. Rev., 344) to 'mainly rely' upon Wace, on the ground that I did so myself. I was obliged to describe this statement at once as 'the exact converse of the truth'.²⁸ For it will be seen, I expressly excluded Wace from the authorities on whom I relied, and specially rested my case, from the first, on the evidence of the Bayeux Tapestry. It is much to be regretted that Mr Archer has deliberately repeated his statement,²⁹ though even his ally reluctantly admits that it was 'not very happily worded'.³⁰

Mr Archer might well seek to avoid the Bayeux Tapestry, for its evidence is dead against him, and he cannot explain it away. His first attempt was a brief allusion, accepting its authority without question, but suggesting that it might represent that part of the line where the barricade was absent.³¹ Of this suggestion I at once disposed by showing that it is 'not only absolutely without foundation, but is directly opposed to Mr Freeman's theory, and, indeed, to his express statements'.³² Forced to drop this explanation, my opponent, in his next article, fell back on the desperate device of repudiating the authority of the Tapestry,³³ 'the most authentic record' of the battle according to the late Professor, who was never weary of insisting on its 'paramount importance'. On my showing, beyond the possibility of question, that this amounted to rejecting everything that Mr Freeman had written on the subject,³⁴ Mr Archer once more shifts his tactics, and now writes thus:

If any fact in Hastings is more certain than another, it is that at the beginning of the battle the main body of the English was posted on a hill. Now 'the priceless record'—the Bayeux Tapestry—represents them on a plain. If the Tapestry could leave out this central feature—the hill of Senlac—from its picture of the opening battle, still more easily could it leave out the intricate barriers upon the hill.³⁵

This ad captandum argument is disposed of as easily as the others. The Tapestry does not concern itself with landscape, and shows us neither a hill nor a plain. It could not, on a narrow strip, show us 'the hill of Senlac', but it could—and would—show us the alleged palisade. For not only does it strive under every difficulty to represent such objects as churches, castles and houses, but it faithfully shows us the 'palisade'³⁶ raised by William at Hastings itself. And if it be urged that it could not depict men fighting behind such a defence, let us turn to the scene at Dinan. If we compare it with the opening scene of the great battle itself, we see precisely similar horsemen advancing to the attack, similar infantry resisting that attack, and similar spears flying between them. But at Dinan the defenders have a palisade, and on the hill of battle they have not.³⁷

But although the evidence of the Bayeux Tapestry, Mr Freeman's own supreme authority, remains absolutely unshaken, it must not be supposed that I rely on that evidence alone. I attach as much importance as ever—and so will, I think, all prejudiced persons—to the other portion of my argument, that if there had been a barricade playing so important a part in the battle that Mr Freeman found it needful to mention it at least a score of times, it is practically inconceivable that all the authorities I enumerate should have absolutely ignored its existence. Judging from Mr Freeman's own experience, it would be simply impossible to describe the battle without mentioning the 'palisade'.

It is very significant that when we turn to a real feature of the English line, namely its close array, we find the above authorities as unanimous in mentioning the fact as they are in ignoring that 'curious defence',³⁸ those 'intricate barriers', as Mr Archer terms them, 'upon the hill'.³⁹

The fight has raged so fiercely around this 'palisade' that I have been obliged to discuss it at somewhat disproportionate length. But to sum up, we have now seen, firstly, that the alleged palisade was a new 'development', and needs, as such, special proof of its existence; secondly, that of Mr Freeman's proofs, one at least must admittedly be abandoned, while he himself has impugned the other;⁴⁰ thirdly, that the evidence, both positive and presumptive, is altogether opposed to the existence of a palisade. In the narrative of the battle we shall find Mr Freeman interpolating the alleged defence solely from his own imagination, such references proving, on inquiry, to be imaginary and imaginary alone.⁴¹

THE SHIELD-WALL

The English clave to the old Teutonic tactics. They fought on foot in the close array of the shield-wall.⁴²

Mr Archer says they cannot have done so.⁴³ There was also, according to Mr Freeman, a barricade, in front of—and distinct from—the shield-wall, being a special development which, he tells us, 'the foresight of Harold' had introduced on this occasion (pp. 444, 468). The barricade is denied by me, the shield-wall by Mr Archer. Whichever of us is right, Mr Freeman's accuracy is, in either case, equally impugned.

It is essential to remember that Mr Freeman, throughout, treated the palisade and the shield-wall as separate and distinct. Thus he wrote so late as 1880:

Besides the palisade the front ranks made a kind of inner defence with their shields, called the shield-wall. The Norman writers were specially struck with the close array of the English.⁴⁴

So in his great work we read of 'the shield-wall and the triple palisade still unbroken' (iii. 467). Later still 'the shield-wall still stood behind the palisade' (p. 487). Even when 'the English palisade was gone the English shield-wall was still a formidable hindrance in the way of the assailants (p. 491). The array of the shield-wall was still kept, though now without the help of the barricades' (p. 491). Here we have the very phrase of note NN, 'the array of the shield-wall',⁴⁵ and it is shown beyond question that Mr Freeman's shield-wall, whatever Mr Archer may pretend, was quite distinct from the palisade, and was a shield-wall 'pure and simple'.

Let it also be clearly understood what Mr Freeman meant by that 'array of the shield-wall', of which the disputed passage in Wace was, he held, a description. He shows us the whole English army 'ranged so closely together in the thick array of the shield-wall, that while they only kept their ground the success of an assailant was hopeless'.⁴⁶ He describes them as, 'a strong line, or rather wedge, of infantry, forming a wall with their shields',⁴⁷ and he ascribes their defeat to their 'breaking the line of the shield-wall'.⁴⁸

Of this shield-wall my opponent rashly wrote:

The Reviewer's [sic] theory of an extended shield-wall vanishes like smoke. If Wace is any authority ... the question is settled once and for all. There was no extended shield-wall at Hastings.⁴⁹

Of course, 'the Reviewer's theory' here is no other than Mr Freeman's own.

If, in spite of the above evidence, it should still be pretended by anyone that the plain meaning of Mr Freeman's words is not their meaning, I will refer them not to my own interpretation, but to that of Mr Freeman's friend and colleague, the Rev W. Hunt, who wrote in the historian's lifetime, 'at his request' and by his 'invitation', and whose proofs were revised by Mr Freeman himself.⁵⁰ This is Mr Hunt's version:

Set in close array behind a palisade forming a kind of fortification, shoulder to shoulder and shield to shield, the army of Harold presented a steady and immovable front to the Norman attack ... Fatal was the national formation of the English battle, when men stood in the closest order, forming a wall with their shields. While no mode of array could be stronger so long as the line remained unbroken it made it hard to form the line again.⁵¹

So, again, in his life of Harold:

All the heavy-armed force fought in close order, shield touching shield, so as to present a complete wall to the enemy.⁵²

Here we have no tortuous imaginings, but, in plain and straightforward words, 'what historians in general evidently mean' when they speak of a 'shield-wall', what it meant to Mr Freeman, what it means to Mr Hunt, and it is admitted, to myself.⁵³ Such was the English shield-wall, according to Mr Freeman, at 'Senlac'; it was what Mr Archer definitely declares it cannot possibly have been.

Lastly, as to the ground on which Mr Archer pronounces impossible a continuous shield-wall⁵⁴ —namely, that the English could not have fought in such close order,⁵⁵ and that the axe-men being 'shieldless ... could not have formed the shield-wall'; one need only confront him with Mr Freeman's words.

I am compelled to repeat what I said in the Quarterly Review.

We almost hesitate to waste our own and our readers' time on a writer who, professing to vindicate Mr Freeman's view as against us, devotes his energies to proving that view to be utterly absurd.⁵⁹

Nor will Mr Archer derive comfort from 'our only English "specialist" on mediaeval warfare';⁶⁰ who holds, as I had pointed out, that 'the English axemen' did fight 'arranged in a compact mass'.⁶¹

It is significant that the fact Mr Archer so confidently rejects is precisely that on which I am at one with Mr Freeman, Mr Hunt, and Mr Oman, and to which the original authorities bear witness with peculiar unanimity. Thus William of Poitiers, an authority of the first rank, describes the English as 'maxime conferti', speaks of their 'nimia densitas', and proceeds to dwell on the terrible effect of their weapon, the famous battle-axe. William of Malmesbury tells us that the axemen 'impenetrabilem cuneum faciunt'. Even Mr Archer's authority, Wace, writes of these warriors: