Feudal England: Historical Studies on the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries

by John Horace Round

[¹²⁵] Compare the death of Robert Marmion, at Coventry, under Stephen, when he fell into one of the ditches he had dug to entrap the enemy's horse. The passage quoted by Andresen in his Wace (ii. 713) from Michel's notes to Benoit is very precise: 'Fecerant autem Angli foveam quandam caute et ingeniose, quam ipsi ex obliquo curantes maximam multitudinem Normannorum in ea præcipitaverant. Et plures etiam ex eis insequentes et tracti ab aliis in eadem perierunt.'

[¹²⁶] See below, p. 292.

[¹²⁷] Early Oxford, pp. 191, 192. And see my preface.

[¹²⁸] See above, p. 278, for Mr Freeman's view.

[¹²⁹] 'Angli vero, illos putantes vere fugere, cœperunt post eos currere volentes eos si possent interficere' (Brevis Relatio). 'Ausa sunt, ut superius, aliquot millia quasi volante cursu, quos fugere putabant urgere' (Will. Pict.).

[¹³⁰] Though admitting, in a footnote, that the 'Brevis Relatio' was opposed to this assumption.

[¹³¹] Supra, p. 278.

[¹³²] Q.R., July 1892, p. 20.

[¹³³] Miss Norgate has indignantly retorted (English Historical Review, ix. 50) that Mr Freeman 'only' omitted the words from 'sicque' onwards. But it is precisely on these words that my statement is based. Mr Freeman, moreover, did not even quote the rest à propos of the feigned flight, where we should look for it.

[¹³⁴] So does Will. Gem., as quoted by Mr Freeman (iii. 133): 'de suis miserunt si quos forte hostium a regio cœtu abstraherent, quos illi in latibulis degentes incautos exciperent.' See also my Addenda.