[42] Ibid., iii. 416.
[43] Mr A. S. Ellis has suggested that 'Elward filius Reinbaldi' (D.B., i. 170b) King's thegn in Glo'stershire 'was evidently a son' of the chancellor. This suggestion is highly probable, and in any case, the thegn bearing this English name, it may fairly be presumed that his father Reinbald was not of Norman birth.
MR FREEMAN AND THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS
Ὅταν ὁ ἰσχυρὸς καθωπλισμένος φυλάσσῃ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ αὐλήν, ἐν εἰρἑνῃ ἐστὶν τὰ ὑπάρχοντα αὐτοῦ. ἐπὰν δε ἰσχυρότερος αὐτοῦ ἐπελθὼν νικήσῃ αὐτόν, τὴν πανοπλίαν αὐτοῦ αἴρει ἐφ᾽ ᾗ ἐπεποίθει.
It might well be thought the height of rashness to attempt criticism, even in detail, of Mr Freeman's narrative of the Battle of Hastings. For its story, as his champion has well observed, is 'the centre and the very heart of Mr Freeman's work; if he could blunder here in the most carefully elaborated passage of his whole history he could blunder anywhere; his reputation for accuracy would be gone almost beyond hope of retrieving it'.[1] And indeed, it may fairly be described as Mr Freeman's greatest achievement, the point where he is strongest of all. He himself described the scene as the 'battle which is the centre of my whole history', and reminded us that
on its historic importance I need not dwell; it is the very subject of my history.... Looking also at the fight simply as a battle, it is one of the most memorable in all military history.
That is the first point. The second is that in his battle pieces our author was always at his best. Essentially a concrete historian, objective as Macaulay in his treatment, he loved incident and action; loved them, indeed, so well, that he could scarcely bring himself to omit the smallest details of a skirmish:
E ripenso le mobili