The topography of the battle of Lincoln is a very puzzling matter. We have two sources of information, and it seems impossible to make them agree. The questions to be solved are two: 1. Which way did Robert and Ralf approach the city? 2. Where was the battle actually fought?
1. The first question lies between William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon. William (Hist. Nov., l. iii. cc. 39, 40; Hardy, p. 741) says distinctly that the main army started from Gloucester; that Ralf and his troops joined them somewhere on the road; that Stephen, hearing of their approach, left off besieging the castle and went forth to meet them; and that on Candlemas day they arrived “ad flumen quod inter duos exercitus præterfluebat, Trenta nomine, quod et ortu suo et pluviarum profluvio tam magnum fuerat ut nullatenus vado transitum præberet.” He then gives the story of the crossing. Henry of Huntingdon (l. viii. c. 13; Arnold, p. 268) describes the crossing much in the same way, except that the “consul audacissimus” to whom he attributes the first plunge seems to be Ralf, whereas in William’s version Robert is the hero. But Henry makes no mention of the Trent; in his story the plunge is into “paludem pœne intransibilem.”
For both these versions there is something to be said. The authority of the two witnesses is very evenly balanced. Chronologically, both are equally near to their subject. Geographically, the archdeacon of Huntingdon is nearer than the librarian of Malmesbury; but he is not a whit more likely to have been personally present; and if Henry may have got his information from Bishop Alexander, William may just as probably have got his from Earl Robert himself. The question therefore becomes one of the intrinsic probability of the two stories. Here again there is something to be said for William; for although the most direct and obvious road from Gloucester to Lincoln would undoubtedly be the Foss-Way, along the eastern side of the Trent valley, yet it is possible that the earls might have chosen a more unusual route along its western side, just because it would seem less likely to their enemies. Yet we can hardly accept William’s version; for the fording of the Trent, especially in winter, and when its waters were—as he himself tells us—swollen with heavy rains, would be little short of a physical impossibility. At the origin of his mistake (or of Earl Robert’s, for it must surely have been Robert who told him the story) we may perhaps be able to guess. The writer of the Gesta Stephani (Sewell, p. 71) says nothing of either river or marsh; the only thing which he mentions is a ford, of whose whereabouts he gives no indication whatever. “Cumque fortissimam ... [Stephanus] præmississet cohortem in exitu cujusdam vadi eis ad obsistendum, illi ... cum violentiâ in ipsos irruentes vadum occupaverunt.” Now, if the earls had followed the Foss-Way quite up to Lincoln, it would have brought them not to any ford, but to the bridge over the Witham, leading directly into the city by the south gate. But the city was bitterly hostile to them; had they attempted to pass through it to reach the castle, they must have cut their way through a crowd of enemies. There was however another and a much more practicable route open to them. Some little distance to westward of the bridge, the Witham at its junction with the Foss-Dyke expands into a broad sheet of water known by the name of Brayford. The kindness of the Rev. Precentor Venables has enabled me to ascertain that half way between the bridge and Brayford Head (i.e. the eastern end of this sheet of water) there still exists in the bed of the river a well-paved ford road, probably of Roman origin. By this ford the army could cross the river and advance towards the castle without entering the town at all; and I feel little doubt that this was the ford at which Stephen posted the guard mentioned by his biographer, and across which the two earls swam with their followers. In that case William of Malmesbury’s mistake as to the name of the river is not surprising. The Foss-Dyke unites the Witham and the Trent; a medieval geographer could hardly be expected to know accurately where the one ended and the other began. Out of the three names so closely connected, he not unnaturally chose the one most generally known, and concluded the whole water-way under the comprehensive name of Trent; while on the other hand, the overflowing of dyke and river may quite sufficiently account for Henry of Huntingdon having described them and the flooded ground on each side of them all together as an “almost impassable marsh.”
2. Local tradition persists in asserting that the battle was fought to the north of the city, somewhere beyond the New Port. If this was so, Stephen must have led his troops out of the city by the old Roman way—the Ermine Street—through the New Port, and drawn them up on the plateau formed by the top of the range of hills whose southern extremity is occupied by the city itself; and his enemies, after crossing the water, must have marched all round the south-western foot of the hill, below the castle, and then climbed the western slope to meet Stephen on the top. Such a manœuvre is doubtless possible; but it hardly seems to agree with the indications—provokingly few and slight though they are—given us by the historians. None of them indeed tells us which way Stephen went forth; the nearest approach to a clear statement is that of his own biographer, who says “extra civitatem obvius eis audacter occurrit” (Gesta Steph. as above). Now marching up northward can hardly be called “going forth boldly to meet” an enemy who was coming from the south-west. The tradition in fact is in itself very improbable, and has no evidence to support it. In 1881 I made two attempts at a personal examination of the topography, with the help of indications kindly furnished me by Precentor Venables. The result was as follows: The western wall of the castle-enclosure does not stretch to the extreme edge of the hill; beyond it lies a part of the plateau, now occupied by the County Asylum, and marked by Stukeley as the site of Stephen’s encampment. Stukeley was probably misled by the circumstance that an adjoining bit of ground was called “Battle-piece”—a name which is now known to have been derived not from any battle fought there, but from the place having been set apart for trials by battle. But farther to the west there lies at the foot of the ridge a tract of comparatively level ground, rising slightly on the one side to join the slope of the hill, and on the other gradually sinking into the lower land which spreads to the bank of the Trent. This tract—part of it is now a race-course—seems to be really the only place in which it is possible for the two armies to have met. The ground immediately south of the castle, between its outer wall and the northern bank of the Foss-Dyke, is too steep to allow of anything like a pitched battle between two formally-arrayed armies. The earls after crossing the ford could hardly do anything but lead their troops round the foot of the hill, to draw them up at last on the western side of the level tract above described. Stephen, on the other hand, could hardly have chosen a better post for defence than its eastern side, with the ridge of the hill at his back.