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',⁶ it is evident that the works of the Regius Professor are still surrounded by a false glamour, and that one must further expose his grave liability to error. I cannot suppose that any competent scholar who may carefully peruse this work will in future venture to deny that, in spite of his many and his splendid gifts, Mr Freeman was as liable as any of us to error, or that however laudable his intentions, he was capable of precisely the same inaccuracy and occasionally of the same confusion as he denounced so bitterly in others.

It is, indeed, my contention, as I have already explained,⁷ that to these denunciations of the errors of others is largely due the conviction of Mr Freeman's supreme accuracy. The question raised may seem to affect the whole method of history, for if, as has been said, it is the argument of the scientific historian that we ought to prefer accuracy of fact to charm of presentment and to literary style, the proof that his method fails to save him from erring like any 'literary' historian strikes at the root of his whole contention.

Yet it is not the scientific method, but its prophet himself that was at fault.

Although I am here only concerned with inaccuracy in matters of fact, I would guard myself against the retort that, at least, Mr Freeman's errors are of little consequence as compared with that obliquity of vision which led Mr Froude, at all hazards, to vindicate Henry the Eighth. Without insisting on an absolute parallel, I trace a resemblance even here. Just as his bias against the Roman church led Mr Froude to vindicate Henry in order to justify the breach with Rome, so Mr Freeman's passion for democracy made him an advocate on behalf of Harold, as 'one whose claim was not drawn only from the winding-sheet of his fathers'. I have elsewhere maintained, as to Harold's election 'by the free choice of a free people', that Mr Freeman's undoubted perversion of the case at this 'the central point' of his history, gravely impairs his narrative of the Conquest, because its success, and even its undertaking, can actually be traced to that election.⁸ Unless we realize its disastrous effect on the situation both at home and abroad, we cannot rightly understand the triumph of the Duke's enterprise.

It had been my hope, in the present work, to have avoided acute controversy, but the attitude adopted, unfortunately, by the late Professor's champions has rendered that course impossible. One can but rejoice that his accuracy should find strenuous defenders, as it removes the reluctance one would otherwise feel in continuing to criticize it now. A case is doubly proved when proved in the teeth of opposition. But one expects that opposition to be fair, and the line my opponents have taken throughout cannot, by any stretch of courtesy, be so described. My difficulty, indeed, in dealing with their arguments on the Battle of Hastings, is that they do not affect or even touch my case. In spite of their persistent efforts to obscure a plain issue, there is not, and there cannot be, any 'controversy' as to Mr Freeman and the 'palisade'. For, while fully recognizing that the onus probandi lay on those who assert its existence, he failed, on his own showing, to produce any proof of it whatever.⁹ Mr Archer has ended,¹⁰ as he began,¹¹ by deliberately ignoring Mr Freeman's words,¹² on which my case avowedly rests, and without suppressing which he could not even enter the field. This, indeed, I have explained so often, that I need not again have disposed of his arguments had not Mr Gardiner, in the exercise of his editorial discretion, allowed him to make certain statements,¹³ and refused me the right of exposing them. A typical example will be found on p. 273.¹⁴

It is not only demonstrable error that justifies critical treatment; no less dangerous, if not more so, is that subtle commixture of guess-work and fact, which leaves us in doubt as to what is proved and what is merely hypothesis. In his lecture on 'The Nature of Historical Evidence', the late Professor himself well brought out the point:

Many people seem to think that a position is proved if it can not be disproved.... Very few see with Sir George Lewis—though Sir George Lewis perhaps carried his own doctrine a little too far—that in a great many cases we ought to be satisfied with a negative result, that we must often put up with knowing that a thing did not happen in a particular way, or did not happen at all, without being furnished with any counter-statement to put in the place of that which we reject.¹⁵

The question is whether a statement can be proved, not whether it can be disproved. Cases in point will be found on pp. 291, 298, 331-3.

It may, in view of certain comments, be desirable, perhaps, to explain that the study on the origin of knight-service appeared in Mr Freeman's lifetime,¹⁶ and that my open criticism of his work began so far back as 1882. It will be seen, therefore, that I challenged its accuracy when he was himself able to reply.

To those who may hold that in these studies excessive attention is bestowed on Anglo-Norman genealogy, I commend the words, not of a genealogist, but of the