But it is only the feigned flight that connects the Battle of Hastings with Arques and its blockade. We read, as the battle is about to begin, of 'the aged Walter Giffard, the lord of Longueville, the hero of Arques and Mortemer' (p. 457). As our author breaks the thread of his narrative (pp. 128-37) to tell us in detail about those whose names occur in it, we need not scruple in this instance to do the same. Turning back, therefore, we read:
The chief who now commanded below the steep of Arques lived to refuse to bear the banner of Normandy below the steep of Senlac ... and to found, like so many others among the baronage of Normandy, a short-lived earldom in the land which he helped to conquer (p. 123).
In the act of that refusal he is thus described:
Even in the days of Arques [1053] and Mortimer [1054] he was an aged man, and now [1066] he was old indeed; his hair was white, his arm was failing (p. 465).
Yet we meet the veteran again, a generation later, as 'old Walter Giffard, now [1090] Earl of Buckingham, in England ... the aged warrior of Arques and Senlac' (W.R., i. 231). 'Nor do we wonder,' we read, 'to find,' among the supporters of William Rufus in 1095, 'the name of Walter Giffard, him [sic] who appeared as an aged man forty years before' (W.R., i. 472). But even Mr Freeman admits that 'we are somewhat surprised to find', among the opponents of Henry I in 1101, 'now at the very end of his long life, the aged Walter Giffard, lord of Longueville, and Earl of Buckingham' (W.R., ii. 395). Surprised? We are indeed; for, if he was 'an aged man' half a century before, what must he have been when he joined the rebels in 1101? It reminds one of a delightful passage in the quaint 'Memorie of the Somervells', where the artless author, speaking of the action, in 1213, of his ancestor 'being then near the nyntieth and fourth year of his age', observes:
What could have induced him ... to join himself with the rebellious barrons at such an age, when he could not act any in all human probabilitie, and was as unfit for counsel, is a thing to be admired, but not understood or knowne.
One need scarcely point out that Mr Freeman has confused two successive bearers of the name. The confusion is avoided by the Duchess of Cleveland in her work on 'The Battle Abbey Roll', as it had been by Planché and previous writers.
I here notice it chiefly as illustrating Mr Freeman's ready acceptance of even glaring improbabilities.
But one of the most singular flaws in the late Professor's work was his evident tendency to confuse two or more persons bearing the same name. Three or four Leofstans of London were rolled by him into one; Henry of Essex was identified with a Henry who had a different father and who lived in Cumberland; while a whole string of erroneous conclusions followed, we saw, from identifying Osbern 'filius Ricardi' with Osbern 'cognomine Pentecost'.[136] It is strange that one who was so severe on confusion of identity where places were concerned[137] should have been, in the case of persons, guilty of that confusion.