THE CONQUEROR AT EXETER

'And y seide nay, and proved hit by Domesday.'[1]

For a companion study to the Battle of Hastings, one could not select a better subject than the Siege of Exeter by William in 1068. It is so, because, in the tale of the Conquest, 'No city of England', in Mr Freeman's words, 'comes so distinctly to the front as Exeter':[2] and because, as editor of 'Historic Towns', he chose Exeter, out of all others, as the town to be reserved for himself.[3] 'Its siege by William', we are told, 'is one of the most important events of his reign';[4] but it was doubtless the alleged 'federal' character of Exeter's attitude at this crisis that gave its story for him an interest so unique. This episode, moreover, has many advantages: it is complete in itself; it is rich in suggestion; it is taken from the period in which the Professor described himself as 'most at home'; and its scene is laid within his own borders, his own West Saxon land. It presents an admirable test of Mr Freeman's work at the point where he was admittedly strongest, and his thoroughly typical treatment of it affords a perfect illustration of the method he employed.

The year 1067 was drawing to its close when the Conqueror, summoned back from Normandy by the tidings of pressing danger, returned to spend his Christmas at Westminster amidst 'the sea of troubles which still awaited him in his half-conquered island-kingdom'.[5] Threatened at once by foes within and without the realm, he perceived the vital necessity of severing their forces by instant suppression of the 'rebellions' at home, swift suppression before the invaders were upon him, stern suppression before the movement spread. Let us bear in mind these twin motives, by which his policy must at this juncture have been shaped, the need for swiftness, with invasion in prospect, and the need for sternness as a warning to 'rebels'.

Of all the 'rebellious' movements on foot, that at Exeter, as Mr Freeman admits, was 'specially hateful in William's eyes'.[6] It was against Exeter, therefore, that the Conqueror directed his first blow. In the depths of winter, in the early days of the new year, 'he fared to Devonshire'. Such is the brief statement of the English Chronicle.

We hear of William at Westminster; we next hear of him before the walls of Exeter: all that intervenes is a sheer blank. Of what happened on this long westward march not a single detail is preserved to us in the Chronicle, in Orderic or in Florence. Now it is precisely such a blank as this that, to Mr Freeman, was irresistible. We shall see below how, a few months later, we have, in William's march from Warwick to Nottingham, a blank exactly parallel.[7] There also Mr Freeman succumbed to the temptation. He seized, in each case, on the empty canvas, and, by a few rapid and suggestive touches, he has boldly filled it in with the outlines of historical events, not merely events for which there is no sufficient evidence, but events which can be proved, by demonstration, to have had no foundation in fact.

The scene elaborated by Mr Freeman to enliven the void between the departure from London and the entrance into Devonshire is the resistance and the downfall of 'the Civic League'.[8] This striking incident in the Exeter campaign I propose to analyse without further delay.

It must, in the first place, be pointed out that we have no proof whatever of this 'Civic League' having even existed. To apply Mr Freeman's words to his own narrative:

The story is perfectly possible. We only ask for the proof. Show us the proof;... then we will believe. Without such a proof we will not believe.[9]

For proof of its existence Mr Freeman relies on a solitary passage in Orderic.[10] But Orderic, it will at once be seen, does not say that any such league was effected; he does not even say that the league which was contemplated was intended to be an exclusively Civic League. What he does say is that the men of Exeter sought for allies in the neighbouring coasts (plagæ)[11] and in other cities. The Dorset townlets, such as Bridport, with its 120 houses, would scarcely represent these 'cities'. Mr Freeman assumed, however, that 'the Civic League' was formed, assumed that the Dorset towns had 'doubtless' joined it, and finally assumed that they were 'no doubt' besieged by William in consequence.[12] These assumptions he boldly connected with the entries on the towns in Domesday, entries which we shall analyse below, and which are not only incorrectly rendered, but are directly opposed to the above assumptions.

What, then, is the inference to be drawn? Simply this. The 'Civic League' must share the fate of the 'palisade on Senlac'. The sieges which took place 'probably' never took place at all; the League never resisted; the League never fell; in short, there is not a scrap of evidence that there was ever such a League at all. The existence of such a League would be, unquestionably, a fact of great importance. But its very importance imperatively requires that its existence should be established by indisputable proof. Of such proof there is none. One can imagine how severely Mr Freeman would have handled such guesses from others. For he wrote of a deceased Somersetshire historian who boldly connects the story of Gisa with the banishment of Godwine:

One is inclined to ask with Henry II, 'Quære a rustico illo utrum hoc somniaverit?' But these things have their use. Every instance in the growth of a legend affords practice in the art of distinguishing legend from history.

It should, however, in justice be at once added that this story did not originate wholly with Mr Freeman himself. He refers us on the subject of the League to his predecessor, Sir Francis Palgrave. The brilliant imagination of that graceful writer was indeed led captive by the fascinating vision of 'the first Federal Commonwealth', yet he did not allow himself, when dealing with the facts, to deviate from the exact truth. His statement that Exeter 'attempted to form a defensive confederation' reproduces with scrupulous accuracy Orderic's words. And even when he passed from fact to conjecture, there was nothing in his conjecture at variance from fact. From him we have no suggestion that the Dorset towns resisted William or 'stood sieges'. It was left for Mr Freeman to carry into action Palgrave's line of thought, and, by forcing the evidence of the Domesday Survey into harmony with the story he had evolved, to show us, in his own words, 'the growth of a legend'. For, as he observed with perfect truth:

What we call the growth of a story is really the result of the action of a number of human wills. The convenient metaphor must not delude us into thinking that a story really grows of itself as a tree grows. In a crowd of cases ... the story comes of a state of mind which does not willingly sin against historical truth, but which has not yet learned that there is such a thing as historical truth.

Had Mr Freeman done so himself? Did he ever really learn to distinguish conjecture from fact? One asks this because within the covers of a single work, his English Towns and Districts, that Civic League which in the Norman Conquest is said to have existed 'no doubt', is in one place said to have existed 'perhaps', and in another is set forth as an undoubted historic fact:

Exeter stood forth for one moment ... the chief of a confederation of the lesser towns of the West.... A confederation of the western towns, with the great city of the district at their head, suddenly started into life to check the progress of the Conqueror.

Finally, in his 'Exeter' (1887), the same story again appears, without a word of caution, as absolute historic fact. Exeter, we read, was

the head of a gathering of smaller commonwealths around her; ... the towns of Dorset were in league with Exeter.... We have no record of the march, but it is plain that the towns of Dorset were fearfully harried.

Through all Mr Freeman's work we trace this same tendency to confuse his own conjectures with proved historic fact.

For the details of this fearful harrying we are referred to the Domesday Survey. It was 'no doubt', we learn, when William marched on Exeter (1068), that

Dorchester, Bridport, Wareham, and Shaftesbury underwent that fearful harrying, the result of which is recorded in Domesday. Bridport was utterly ruined; not a house seems to have been able to pay taxes at the time of the Survey. At Dorchester, the old Roman settlement, the chief town of the shire, only a small remnant of the houses escaped destruction. These facts are signs, etc., etc.

'These facts', we find, will not bear investigation. To refute them in the case of Bridport, 'there is nothing to be done but to turn to the proper place in the great Survey'. Following this, his own, precept, we learn that there is nothing in Domesday of our author's 'utter ruin'; and that so far from 'not a house' being 'able to pay taxes', Domesday tells us that four-fifths of the houses then existing could and did pay them. Here, again, the errors arose from not reading Domesday 'with common care'. The entry runs: 'Modo sunt ibi c. domus, et xx. sunt ita destitutæ', etc. The meaning, of course, is that twenty houses were impoverished. Mr Freeman must have hurriedly misconstrued his Latin, and read it as a hundred and twenty. No error that he detected in Mr Froude could be worse than representing Bridport, on the authority of Domesday, as the greatest sufferer among the Dorset towns, when Domesday itself proves that it suffered least of all. And so, too, with Dorchester. On turning to Domesday, we learn with surprise that the 'small remnant' of houses remaining there was eighty-eight as against one hundred and seventy-two in the days of King Edward. From an appendix of our author's to which we are referred, we glean the fact that

at Dorchester, out of a hundred and seventy-two houses no less than a hundred and twenty-eight were 'penitus destructæ a tempore Hugonis vicecomitis usque nunc'.

Here, again, Mr Freeman's error can be traced beyond the possibility of question, to a misreading of Domesday: the entry runs, 'modo sunt ibi quater xx. et viii. [88] domus, et c. [sunt] penitus destructæ'. Mr Freeman must have hurriedly ignored the 'quater', and then added the 'twenty-eight' thus evolved to the hundred houses that were destroyed. All this Mr Freeman did, and we have in 'that great record, from which there is no appeal', the proof of the fact. Clearly, in the notable words of M. Bémont (Revue Historique), 'il est prudent de revoir après lui les textes qu'il invoque'.[13]

The strange thing is that Sir Henry Ellis's work, though 'far from being up to the present standard of historical scholarship', could have saved him, here also, from error, as it gives the correct figures from Domesday.

But passing from 'facts' to theories, we find Mr Freeman holding that 'no doubt', 'doubtless', 'probably', the destruction recorded in Domesday was wrought by the Conqueror himself in 1068. Why should this guesswork be substituted for history, when we have 'always the means', as our author himself wrote, 'of at once turning to the law and testimony to see whether these things are so'? A glance at Domesday effectually disposes of Mr Freeman's theory; for the Survey is here peculiarly explicit: with anxious care, with painful iteration, it assures us that, in the case of Wareham, the devastation was wrought 'a tempore Hugonis vicecomitis', and that, in the case of Shaftesbury and in the case of Dorchester, it was wrought 'a tempore Hugonis vicecomitis usque nunc'. These categorical statements are conclusive: they place the whole of the devastation subsequent to the accession of the Norman sheriff, Hugh FitzGrip. Mr Eyton, in his work on the Dorset Domesday, held that they fix it as having occurred between 1070 and 1084; the words, however, 'usque nunc' carry it on down to 1086, and, but that I must now come to Exeter, I could show the real bearing of these allusions to Sheriff Hugh.

The breakdown, when tested, of the alleged 'Civic League' strangely vindicates the sound insight of that sagacious historian who explicitly asserted that the English boroughs

never, as was the case in Scotland and in Germany, adopted a confederate bond of union, or organized themselves in leagues.[14]

Yet, in his English Towns and Districts, Mr Freeman was led by his own tale of the resistance of the western lands and their capital to argue from it as from a proved historic fact:

When Exeter stood forth for one moment ... the chief of a confederation of the lesser towns of the West ... we see that the path was opening by which Exeter might have come to be another Lübeck, the head of a Damnonian Hanse, another Bern, the mistress of the subject-lands of the western peninsula. Such a dream sounds wild in our ears.[15]

It does indeed. But it does so for the reason that it is founded on a fact which has no historic existence. Yet, for Mr Freeman, with his fertile imagination afire with the glories of ancient Greece and of countless mediaeval Commonwealths, this same 'wild dream' possessed an irresistible fascination. 'It is none the less true', he hastened to add, that

when a confederation of the western towns, with the great city of the district at their head, suddenly started into life to check the progress of the Conqueror, it shows that a spirit had been kindled, etc., etc.... It is worth while to stop and think how near England once was to running the same course as other lands, etc., etc.[16]

Returning now to sober fact, let us ask how the city of Exeter came into William's hands. This is the pivotal point on which the whole story revolves. On this point Mr Freeman spoke with no uncertain sound: the city was 'taken by means of a mine'.[17] It was, he wrote, 'by undermining the walls that William at last gained possession of the city', the citizens being thus forced 'to submit unreservedly'.[18] He added, contrasting the success of William with the failure, in 1003, of Swend:

William might have been beaten back from Exeter as Swend had been, if the military art of Normandy in William's days had not been many steps in advance of the military art of Denmark in the days of Swend.

This allusion to 'Swend' involves a perfect tangle of confusion. Turning back a couple of pages, we are reminded that on Penhow, 'sixty-seven years before (1001), Swend, of Denmark, driven back from the city, had found his revenge' (p. 154). Guided by a footnote, we turn for information to the earlier volume to which the author refers us, only to learn that it was not Swegen, but the adventurer Pallig who was driven back from Exeter in 1001 (i. 307), while 'of Swegen himself we hear nothing in English history for nine years (994-1003)'.[19] Moreover, when Swegen did come—in 1003—invading England to avenge the massacre of Saint Brice, he was not 'driven back from the city', but, on the contrary, 'stormed and plundered it' (p. 315), for 'the citizens who had beaten back Pallig had no chance of beating back Swegen' (Exeter, p. 27). Moreover, the suggestion that the Danes would not have been able to attack and breach the city wall is in direct conflict with the evidence quoted by Mr Freeman himself. Not only did Pallig, in 1001, direct his attack against the wall,[20] but 'Swegen', we read, in 1003, 'Civitatem Exanceastram infregit'.[21] Now, speaking of 1063, Mr Freeman wrote that 'the expression of Florence "infregit" seems to fall in with' his view that William breached the wall. That is to say that, according to Mr Freeman, 'Swend' was 'beaten back' (which he was not), because he could not breach the walls, which is precisely what, on his showing, Swegen succeeded in doing. Could confusion further go?

For his statement that 'William's mine advanced so far that part of the wall crumbled to the ground, making a practicable breach' (p. 156), Mr Freeman relied on an ingenious combination of Orderic's statement that the Conqueror 'obnixe satagit cives desuper impugnare et subtus murum suffodere' with William of Malmesbury's assertion that he triumphed 'divino scilicet adjutus auxilio, quod pars muralis ultro decidens ingressum illi patefecerit'. He argued that, on the supposition that 'Exonia' is the right reading in William of Malmesbury, his 'story, allowing for a little legendary improvement, fits so well into Orderic's as to support the theory of a breach'. The argument is ingenuous and plausible, nor can it be lightly dismissed. But whether the words of Orderic imply, of necessity, a mine or not,[22] the real point is that he does not mention a breach. He speaks of William's efforts, but he does not say they were successful. It is difficult to suppose that William of Poitiers, of whom Orderic is here the mouthpiece, would not have mentioned his hero's success, had success rewarded his efforts. We are reduced then, as the sole and unconfirmed authority for Mr Freeman's absolute statement—or rather as the legend from which he 'infers' the facts he states—to the words of William of Malmesbury. Now William was classed, by Mr Freeman himself, among those writers whose 'accounts are often mixed up with romantic details', so that 'it is dangerous to trust them' (i. 258); and he pointed out of the murder of Edward that:

In the hands of William of Malmesbury the story becomes a romance.... The obiter dictum of William of Malmesbury that Ælfhere had a hand in Edward's death is contrary to the whole tenor of the history ... (i. 265).

If there is thus, on Mr Freeman's showing, need for accepting with some caution a statement made by William alone, there is further, in this special case, the consideration that even if his story does refer to Exeter, the phrase, 'leviter subegit' is justly queried by Mr Freeman;[23] and that William here deals in hyperbole and miracle. Indeed, when we find Mr Freeman writing: 'I infer this from William of Malmesbury', we are reminded of his words on his predecessor's treatment of the legend of Siward: 'Such stuff would not be worth mentioning, had not Sir Francis Palgrave inferred from it the existence of an historical Tostig, Earl of Huntingdon' (iv. 768-9). I will not express an opinion of my own, but will quote from Mr Freeman's able essay on 'The Mythical and Romantic Elements in Early English History'.[24] In it he expressly disclaimed

sympathy with the old pragmatizing or euhemeristic school of mythological interpretation.... The pragmatizers take a mythical story; they strip it by an arbitrary process of whatever seems impossible; they explain or allegorize miraculous details; and having thus obtained something which possibly may have happened, they give it out as something which actually did happen.... It will never do to take the tale of Troy, to leave out all intervention of the gods, and to give out the remnant as a piece of real Grecian history (p. 3).

This criticism would seem to apply to the 'legendary' tale that the walls of Exeter fell down, like those of Jericho, by supernatural intervention. At least, we may say of the breaching of the walls, when given out 'as something which actually did happen', what was said of the possible siege of Oxford, this same year, by Mr Freeman:

The direct evidence for a siege of Oxford is so weak that the tale cannot be relied on with any certainty (iv. 188).

Having now examined the direct evidence for the statement that the citizens were forced to surrender unconditionally to William by the successful breaching of their walls, I propose to show that the acceptance of this statement does violence not only to the facts of the case, but to all that is known of William's character, to the English Chronicle, and to Domesday; and I shall prove that it rests beyond dispute 'on the foundation of a single error'.

Assuming for the moment the accuracy of Mr Freeman's version, namely, that the city had been placed, by a breach, absolutely at William's mercy, what treatment of its citizens would his character and his whole career lead us to expect? 'At all stages of his life,' as Mr Freeman observed, paraphrasing the famous words of the English Chronicle (1087), 'if he was debonnair to those who would do his will, he was beyond measure stern to all who withstood it' (ii. 167). Again, speaking of his march on Exeter, the Professor insisted on the fact that 'the policy of William was ever severity to those who withstood him, and gentleness to those who submitted to his yoke'.[25] How he applied this principle in practice was shown at Romney and at Dover in 1066. Romney had successfully resisted the landing of a party of Normans,[26] and William was resolved to avenge the deed.

It was his policy now, as ever, to be harsh whenever he met with resistance, and gentle to all who submitted easily.... Harrying then as he went, William reached Romney. The words which set forth his doings there are short, pithy, and terrible. He took what vengeance he would for the slaughter of his men (iii. 533-4).

Dover, on the contrary, made no resistance, but surrendered before he 'had thrown up a bank, or shot an arrow'. It was, therefore, 'plainly his policy to show himself mild and debonnair as it had been his policy at Romney to show himself beyond measure stark'.[27]

Such being William's settled principle, what might the citizens of Exeter expect? Even before the siege began the fear that they had sinned too deeply for forgiveness made them disown the capitulation their leaders had arranged.[28] The reference is doubtless to conduct similar to that which had brought upon Romney William's merciless vengeance.[29] But how stood the case at its close?

Verily, in William's eyes, the cup of Exeter's iniquities must have been exceedingly full.

Even in cases of ordinary resistance his practice, we learn, was so uniform that Mr Freeman could take it for granted, 'after the fall of Exeter', that

the heavy destruction which fell on the town of Barnstaple, in the north-western part of Devonshire, and the still heavier destruction which fell on the town of Lidford, might seem to show that these two boroughs were special scenes of resistance (iv. 163).[30]

Therefore, in the aggravated case of Exeter, we could but expect him to deal with its citizens as he had dealt with those of Alençon,[31] and as he was to deal, hereafter, with the sturdy defenders of Ely.[32] A fearful vengeance was their certain doom. There was, moreover, as I stated at the outset, a need for sternness at this juncture that might justify William, apart from vengeance, in inflicting such signal punishment as should deter all other 'rebels'.

Yet what do we find? The citizens, we read, were 'favourably received', and 'assured of the safe possession of their lives and goods'. Nay, William even 'secured the gates with a strong guard of men whom he could trust in order to preserve the goods of the citizens from any breaches of discipline'.[33] The dreaded Conqueror, 'post tot iras terribilesque minas', had suddenly become mild as a lamb, and Mr Freeman accepts it all quite as a matter of course.

Such conduct would, surely, have been a positive premium on revolt.

A castle, of course, was raised; but this was inevitable, whether a town submitted peaceably or not. For instance, 'it is plain', Mr Freeman wrote, 'that Lincolnshire submitted more peaceably, and was dealt with more tenderly, than most parts of the kingdom' (iv. 216); but 'a castle was, of course, raised at Lincoln, as well as elsewhere', and 'involved the destruction of a large number of houses' (217-8), very many more than at Exeter.

One 'penalty', however, remains as the price that Exeter was called upon to pay for all her guilt. This, we read, was 'the raising of its tribune to lessen the wealth which had enabled it to resist'.[34] For its wealth is admitted. Now, before criticizing Mr Freeman's view, let us clearly understand what that view was. Taking, as is right, his latest work—though his view had not altered—we read of Exeter in 1050:

The city which had been the morning-gift of Norman Emma was now, along with Winchester, part of the morning-gift of English Edith, daughter of Godwine, sister of Harold. At Exeter she was on her own ground; the royal revenues within the city were hers.[35]

In 1086, we learn:

The whole payment was eighteen pounds yearly. Of this sum six pounds—that is the earl's third penny—went to the Sheriff Baldwin.... The other twelve pounds had formed part of the morning-gift of the lady, and though Edith had been dead eleven years, they are entered separately as hers.[36]

So far, all is consistent and clear enough. But we find it immediately added that:

This regular yearly payment of eighteen pounds had taken the place of various uncertain payments and services.... Thus the citizens of Exeter, who had offered to pay to William what they had paid to former kings, found their burthens far heavier than they had been in the old time. And the lady, while she lived, reaped her full share of the increased contributions of her own city.[37]

Or, as expressed in his great work:

The money payment was now raised from an occasional half-marc of silver to eighteen pounds yearly. The rights of the old lady were not forgotten, and Eadgyth received two-thirds of the increased burthen laid upon her morning-gift.[38]

If the 'twelve pounds had formed part of the morning-gift of the lady', and were accordingly received by her, as we learn,[39] in the days of King Edward, how could they possibly form part of a new 'burthen' laid upon Exeter, as a punishment for its resistance, by William? And if the only payment due, under Edward, was an occasional half-marc of silver 'for the use of the soldiers'[40] what were 'the royal revenues' from Exeter that Edith was drawing in 1050? A moment's thought is enough to show that Mr Freeman's statements contradict themselves, as, indeed, he must have seen, had he stopped to think. But this he sometimes failed to do.

The whole source of Mr Freeman's confusion was his inexplicable misunderstanding of the Domesday entry on the city.[41] We must first note that both his predecessors—Palgrave, who was lacking in 'critical faculty', and Ellis, who was 'far from being up to the present standard of historical scholarship'—had read this entry rightly, and given, independently, its gist. It will best enable my readers to understand the point at issue if I print side by side the paraphrases of Exeter's offer given by Palgrave and by our author.

Palgrave Freeman
Tribute or gafol they would proffer to their king such as was due to his predecessors...They (1) would weigh out the eighteen pounds of silver; (2) the geld would be paid, if London, York, and Winchester submitted to the tax; and (3) if war arose, the king should have the quota of service imposed upon five hydes of land.... But the citizens refused to become the men ... of their sovereign; they would not ... allow the Basileus to enter within their walls. We are ready to pay to him the tribute which we have been used to pay to former kings.... The city paid in money only when London, York, and Winchester paid, and the sum to be paid was a single half-marc of silver. When the king summoned his fyrd to his standard by sea or by land, Exeter supplied the same number of men as were supplied by five hides of land.... But the men of Exeter would not, each citizen personally, become his men; they would not receive so dangerous a visitor within their walls.[42]

I have numbered the clauses in Palgrave's paraphrase which render the three successive clauses in the Domesday Book entry. The first refers to the firma of the town, payable to its lord (the king);[43] the second to the 'geld' (tax), payable to the king qua king;[44] the third to its military service.[45] The distinction between the three clauses is admirably seen under Totnes (i. 108, b), and the sense of Domesday is absolutely certain to any one familiar with its formulas.[46]

The 'commutation of geldability' (as Mr Eyton termed it) was by no means peculiar to Exeter. Totnes paid, 'when Exeter paid', the same sum of half a marc 'pro geldo'. Bridport paid the same 'ad opus Huscarlium regis' (75), Dorchester and Wareham a marc each, and Shaftesbury two marcs (Eyton's Dorset Domesday, 70-72). In these Dorset instances, one marc represented an assessment of ten hides.

What Mr Freeman did was to confuse the first clause with the second, and to suppose that both referred to the 'money payment' of the town, the first under William, the second under Edward. He thus evolved the statement that under William 'the money payment was raised from an occasional half-marc of silver to eighteen pounds yearly'. This is roughly equivalent to saying of a house rented at fifty pounds, and paying a tax of one pound, that its 'money payment' was raised from one pound to fifty.

But this confusion, with all its results, is carried further still. Edith's share of the eighteen pounds is entered in Domesday as 'xii. lib[ras] ad numerum'. This Mr Freeman rightly gave as the amount in 1086;[47] but turning back a few pages, we actually read that

In Domesday twelve houses in Exeter appear as 'liberæ ad numerum in ministeriis Edid reginæ'.[48]

This is, of course, the same entry, only that here our author changed pounds into houses, and libras into liberæ. What idea was conveyed to his mind by a house 'libera ad numerum' I do not profess to explain. But, oddly enough, as he here turned pounds into houses, so in a passage of his William Rufus he turned houses into pence.[49]

The essence of the whole matter is that the 'burdens' to which Exeter was subject were not raised at all, but remained precisely the same as had been paid to former kings. And this fact is the more notable, because, as Mr Freeman had to admit, 'even the tribute imposed by William' [on his own hypothesis] 'was not large for so great a city', and, one may add, a rich one.[50] Indeed, it was so small as to fairly call for increase.[51] Even Lincoln, which, according to Mr Freeman, received 'favourable' treatment from William, had its 'tribute largely raised'[52] in fact, more than trebled.[53] What we have to account for, therefore, is the fact that a city which had defied, insulted, and outraged William, received not only 'a free pardon',[54] but peculiar favour at his hands.

The paradox itself is beyond dispute, whatever may be said of my solution.

For a solution there is. Only it is not to miracles or legends, nor to the flatterings of courtly chaplains that we must look to learn the truth, but, in the words of a memorable essay, to 'the few unerring notices in Domesday and the chronicles'.[55] As yet we have not, it must be remembered, heard the story from the English side. Let us turn, therefore, to the English version, to what Mr Freeman described as 'the short but weighty account in the Worcester Chronicle, which gives hints which we should be well pleased to see drawn out at greater length'.[56] These hints I shall now examine, though I doubt if Mr Freeman's friends will be well pleased with the result.

We have in the Chronicle a straightforward story, not only intelligible in itself, but also thoroughly in harmony with the known facts of the case. The king finds himself compelled to lay formal siege to Exeter ('besæt þa burh'); he is detained before its walls day after day ('xviii. dægas') in the depth of an English winter, 'and þær wearð micel his heres forfaren'. The need for sternness was there indeed; but swiftness was to him, for the moment, a matter of life and death. Held at bay by those stubborn walls, learning the might of those 'two generals'—January and February—in whom the Emperor Nicholas put his trust, William was in sore straits. Take Mr Freeman's own words:

The disaffected were intriguing for foreign help;... there was a chance of his having to struggle for his crown against Swend of Denmark;... men were everywhere seeking to shake off the yoke, or to escape it in their own persons. Even where no outbreak took place local conspiracies were rife.[57]

Swend was in his rear, half England on his flank; before him reared their head the walls of dauntless Exeter.[58] In that bleak wilderness of frost and snow his men were falling around him, and, in very bitterness of spirit, the Conqueror bowed himself for need. So, at least, I boldly suggest. He fell back on his 'arts of policy', and set himself to win by alluring terms the men whom he could not conquer. In the words of the Chronicle, he promised them well ('ac he heom well behet').

This solution, of course, differs toto cælo from Mr Freeman's narrative. We have seen that he blindly accepted the statements of that 'abandoned flatterer', William of Poitiers (whom Orderic had here 'doubtless followed'[59]) —against whom he elsewhere warned us—and combined them with a miracle from William of Malmesbury, which he euhemerized in the style that he himself had ridiculed in Thierry.[60] And as he could not harmonize the courtly version with the 'short but weighty account' in the Chronicle he cut the knot by dismissing the latter, and pronouncing his own version 'the most likely'.[61]

Resuming the narrative, we learn that the thegns—the party of non-resistance from the first—must have seized this opportunity for impressing on their 'concives' the necessity of embracing the offer, whereupon the latter, in the words of the Chronicle, 'gave up the town because the thegns had betrayed them'. It is just possible that the word 'geswicon' may point to some direct treachery, but it seems best and most naturally explained as referring to their unpatriotic advice, which would naturally appear to English eyes a 'betrayal' of the national cause. There can be little doubt, from the admissions of William of Poitiers (through the mouth of Orderic), that the terms of agreement included not only a free pardon for all past offences, and for the city's aggravated resistance, but also security for person and property from plunder by the Norman soldiery. And the witness of 'the great record' implies that 'the Exeter patricians', as Mr Freeman styled them[62] —'the civic aristocracy'[63] —gained their original selfish aim, and secured an undertaking that they should not pay a penny more than their 'tributum ex consuetudine pristina'.

What security, it may be asked, could they obtain for the terms they seem to have exacted? Bold as it may seem, I would here venture to read between the lines, and to make the suggestion—it is nothing more—that when there issued from the gates 'the clergy of the city, bearing their sacred books and other holy things' (as Mr Freeman rendered the words of Orderic), the real object of their coming forth was to make the king swear upon their relics[64] to the observance of the terms they had obtained. It was indeed the irony of fate if William, who was ever insisting on the breach of Harold's oath, was driven, by the force of circumstances, to take such an oath himself.

But, it may be urged, should we be justified in treating thus drastically the witness of Orderic, or rather, of William of Poitiers? At Alençon, I reply, in Mr Freeman's words:

William of Poitiers is silent altogether, both as to the vengeance and as to the insult. Neither subject was perhaps altogether agreeable to a professed panegyrist (Norm. Conq., ii. 285).

Stronger, however, is the case of Le Mans, and more directly to the point. 'William,' we read, 'followed the same policy against Exeter (1068) which he had followed against Le Mans' (1063);[65] and so, in 1073, we find him 'calling on the men of Le Mans, as he had called on the men of Exeter', to submit peacefully, and escape his wrath.[66] Unlike 'the Exeter patricians', indeed, 'the magistrates of Le Mans' did receive the king peacefully within their walls; they did not incur the guilt of offering armed resistance. But the essential point at Le Mans is that

the Norman version simply tells how they brought the keys of the city, how they threw themselves on William's mercy, and were graciously received by him. The local writer speaks in another tone. The interview between the king and the magistrates of Le Mans is described by a word often used to express conferences—in a word, parliaments—whether between prince and prince, or between princes and the estates of their dominions. They submitted themselves to William's authority as their sovereign, but they received his oath to observe the ancient customs and justices of the city. Le Mans was no longer to be a sovereign commonwealth, but it was to remain a privileged municipality.[67]

The words 'acceptis ab eo sacramentis, tam de impunitate perfidiæ quam de conservandis antiquis ejusdem civitatis consuetudinibus'[68] would apply exactly to the case of Exeter, and William may well have done there what he actually did, we here read, at Le Mans. There would have been at Exeter even greater need for an oath, in that its 'perfidia' had been so much the worse.

But now comes the curious parallel. Though quoting and scrutinizing so closely the meagre accounts of the Exeter campaign, Mr Freeman seems to have oddly overlooked the significant words of Florence, although, of course, familiar with his narrative. Florence, we find, employs a phrase corresponding with that in the Vetera Analecta.

Florence 'Vet An'
Cives autem dextris acceptis regi se dedebant. Acceptis ab eo sacramentis ... sese et sua omnia dederunt.

Mr Freeman argues from the case of Le Mans that dedere in these times did not imply the fulness of a Roman deditio.[69] But we are not merely dependent upon this. The words, 'dextris acceptis', I contend, imply a promise and a pledge for its performance, and cannot therefore be reconciled with an unconditional surrender.

Now if it were not for the fortunate preservation of the Vetera Analecta in the case of Le Mans, Mr Freeman would there also, as at Exeter, have been hoodwinked by 'the Norman version'.[70] I am anxious not to employ a phrase which might be deemed offensive or unjust, so I restrict myself to that which he himself applied to his predecessor, Palgrave, when, speaking of the story of Eadric and his brother, he wrote that Sir Francis Palgrave 'swallowed the whole tale'.[71] Whether my solution be accepted or not, it is, I repeat, conjectural. I have, at least, shown that there is a mystery to be solved, that Mr Freeman's version fails to solve it, and that, so far from Domesday recording the punishment inflicted upon Exeter, it actually heightens the mystery of the case by proving that Exeter obtained exceptionally favourable treatment.

It is not merely a question of how Exeter fell. The issue illustrates the policy and affects the character of William. The lame manner in which Mr Freeman accounts for his sudden conversion from fury to lamb-like gentleness is no less unsatisfactory than his treatment of the 'weighty account' in the Chronicle when he found that this, his valued authority, rendered the problem difficult. Even at Le Mans more was needed than merely to print both stories. The fact that we find in 'the Norman version' the truth conveniently glossed over ought to be insisted on and duly applied. Time after time in Mr Freeman's work we find him paraphrasing patches of chronicles, under the impression that he was writing history. The statements of witnesses are laid before us, neatly pieced together, but they are not subjected to more than a perfunctory cross-examination. Even if the accurate reproduction of testimony were all that we sought from the historian, we should not, so far as Domesday is concerned, obtain it in this instance. But the case of Exeter is one where something more is needed, where even accuracy is not sufficient without the possession of that higher gift, the power of seizing upon the truth when the evidence is misleading and contradictory. The paraphrasing of evidence is the work of a reporter; from the historian we have a right to expect the skilled summing-up of the judge.

[1] Letter from John Shillingford, Mayor of Exeter, 1447.

[2] Exeter (1887), p. 34.

[3] It was also the subject of a special paper in his 'Historic Towns and Districts' (1883) reprinted from Arch. Journ., xxx. 297, pp. 49 et seq., and Sat. Rev., xxix. 764-5.

[4] Sat. Rev., xxix. 765.

[5] Norman Conquest, iv. 123. The metaphor of a 'sea' waiting in an 'island' is sufficiently original to be deserving of notice.

[6] Ibid., iv. 140.

[7] See 'The alleged destruction of Leicester', infra, p. 347.

[8] iv. 151. 'It is certain', Mr Freeman had written, 'that what William had to strive against in the West was a league of towns' (Sat. Rev., xxix. 765).

[9] Cont. Rev., June 1877, p. 22. See also Preface.

[10] 'Hi nimirum socios e plagis finitimis inquiete arcessebant ... alias quoque civitates ad conspirandum in eadem legationibus instigabant.' Ord. Vit., 510 A (quoted in Norman Conquest, iv. 140).

[11] Mr Freeman rendered it 'neighbouring shires', but I am not at all sure that, taken in conjunction with the words just before about the accessibility of Exeter from Ireland and Brittany, and those just after, about 'mercatores advenas', plagæ does not refer to the shores from which these merchants came.

[12] The boroughs of Dorset were doubtless among the towns which had joined in the Civic League. Probably they stood sieges and were taken by storm (Norm. Conq., iv. 151).

[13] Mr Archer deemed it sufficient reply to all these 'trifling blunders' to admit that 'Mr Freeman did misread 128 for 100' (Cont. Rev., March 1893, p. 337). I invite comparison of the errors I have corrected, and of all the edifice built upon them, with this disingenuous attempt to represent them as unimportant 'slips' (Ibid., p. 354).

[14] Stubbs' Const. Hist., i. 625.

[15] Stubbs' Const. Hist., i. 71.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Norm. Conq., iv. xiii, and marginal note on p. 156.

[18] Ibid., p. 156.

[19] Ibid., i. 289.

[20] 'Dum murum illius destruere moliretur' (quoted from Florence, on i., p. 309).

[21] Quoted from Florence, on i., p. 315.

[22] It seems possible, at least, that they might describe a direct attack on the foot of the walls.

[23] I would here compare William's description of the Conqueror's 'peaceful progress' to London after his great victory, which better evidence, Mr Freeman observed, 'quite upsets' (iii. 533).

[24] Essays, 1st series.

[25] Exeter, p. 36.

[26] Norm. Conq., iii. 412.

[27] Ibid., iii. 536-7.

[28] 'Supplicia pro reatu nimis metuebant.'

[29] 'Militibus crudeliter et contumeliose illuserant quos ipse de Normannia miserat et tempestas ad portum illorum appulerat.'

[30] So too we read of Torkesey, a little later on, that it suffered so 'severely as to suggest the idea that William met with some serious resistance at this point' (Ibid., iv. 217); while speaking of the 'Fall of Chester', Mr Freeman wrote: 'We know that the resistance which William met with in this his last conquest was enough to lead him to apply the same stern remedy which he had applied north of the Humber. A fearful harrying fell on city and shire, and on the lands round about' (Ibid., iv. 314-5).

[31] 'The Conqueror, faithful to his fearful oath, now gave the first of that long list of instances of indifference to human suffering', etc. (Ibid., ii. 285).

[32] 'At Ely, as at Alençon, the Conqueror felt no scruple against inflicting punishments which to our notions might seem more frightful than death itself' (Ibid., iv. 476).

[33] Ibid., iv. 160.

[34] English Towns and Districts.

[35] Exeter (1887), p. 32.

[36] Ibid., pp. 43-4.

[37] Ibid., p. 44.

[38] Norm. Conq., iv. 162.

[39] Exeter, p. 32.

[40] Exeter, p. 44; Norm. Conq., iv. 147.

[41] This grave confusion, with all that it involves, was one of the 'trifling slips', as Mr Archer terms them (Cont. Rev., p. 354), exposed in my original article (Q.R., July 1892). Such a description is either dishonest, or must imply that Mr Archer, who boasts that he has 'a sterner criterion' than myself (English Historical Review, ix. 606), deems such errors of no consequence.

[42] Norm. Conq., iv. 146-7.

[43] 'Hec reddit xviii. lib. per annum' (100).

[44] 'Hæc civitas T.R.E. non geldabat nisi quando Londonia et Eboracum et Wintonia geldabant, et hoc erat dimidia marka Argenti ad opus militum' (100).

[45] 'Quando expeditio ibat per terram aut per mare, serviebat hæc civitas quantum v. hidæ terræ' (100).

[46] The practice in the Survey of Devon was to state the render in 1086, and, if it had been different formerly, to add a note to that effect. Thus we read on 100b: 'Reddit xlviii. lib. ad pensam. Ante Balduinum reddebat xxiii. lib.' So, too, of Totnes: 'Inter omnes redd' viii. lib. ad numerum. Olim reddebant iii. lib. ad pensam et arsuram' (108b).

[47] Norm. Conq., iv. 162.

[48] Ibid., 139.

[49] Reading 'Eudo Dapifer [tenet v. denarios', where Domesday (ii. 106) has, of course, 'v. d[omus]'.

[50] Mr Freeman held that Domesday hinted it might be classed with London, York, and Winchester (Norm. Conq., iv. 147; Exeter, 45), and quotes William of Malmesbury's description of its wealth and importance. Even in earlier days, he wrote, 'both the commercial and the military importance of the city were of the first rank' (i. 308).

[51] The firma of Gloucester had been raised to £60, and that of Chester to over £70, while at Wallingford, where the king had about as many houses as at Exeter, it was £80.

[52] Norm. Conq., iv. 213.

[53] 'T.R.E. reddebat civitas Lincolia regi xx. libras et comiti x. libras. Modo reddit c. libras ad numerum inter regem et comitem' (D.B., i. 336b).

[54] Norm. Conq., iv. 160.

[55] Mr Freeman's 'Pedigrees and Pedigree-makers' (Cont. Rev., June 1887, p. 33).

[56] Norm. Conq., iv. 151.

[57] Ibid., iv. pp. 103, 118. So too Ibid., p. 126: 'There was the imminent fear of an invasion from Denmark, and the threatening aspect of the still independent west and north. William had need of all his arts of war and policy to triumph over the combination of so many enemies at once.'

[58] 'Cives eam tenebant furiosi, copiosæ multitudinis, infestissimi mortalibus Gallici generis.'—Ord. Vit.]

[59] Norm. Conq., iv. 146.

[60] It is curious to see how Thierry waters down the miracle: 'Son cheval, glissant sur le pavé, s'abattit et le froissa dans sa chute.' Of course this is likely enough to have been the kernel of truth in the legend, but no man has a right to tell the tale in this shape as if it were undoubted fact.—Norm. Conq., iv. 291.

[61] Norm. Conq., iv. 151-2.

[62] Ibid., 146.

[63] Ibid., p. 147.

[64] Cf. the familiar phrase, 'Tactis sacris evangeliis', with Orderic's words here, 'sacros libros'.

[65] Norm. Conq., iv. 151.

[66] Ibid., 559.

[67] Ibid., 560.

[68] Ibid.

[69] Norm. Conq., iv. 560.

[70] 'Edicta regalia suis opportune intimavit, et urbanis imperiose mandavit, ut prudenter sibi consulerent' (Ord Vit., ii. 255).

[71] Ibid., i. 662.