Heraut sout que Normant vendreient
E que par main se combatreient:
Un champ out par matin porpris,
Ou il a toz ses Engleis mis.
Par matin les fist toz armer
E a bataille conreer.
(ll. 7768-72)
I have little doubt that he here follows William of Jumièges: '[Heraldus] in campo belli apparuit mane', and that he was thus led to contradict himself.
Mr Freeman had a weakness for Wace, and did not conceal it: he insisted on the poet's 'honesty'. But 'honesty' is not knowledge; and in dealing with the battle, it is not allowable to slur over Wace's imperfect knowledge. Mr Freeman admits that 'probably he did not know the ground, and did not take in the distance between Hastings and Battle' (p. 762). But he charitably suggests that 'it is possible that when he says "en un tertre s'estut li dus" he meant the hill of Telham, only without any notion of its distance from Hastings'. But, in spite of this attempt to smooth over the discrepancy, it is impossible to reconcile Wace's narrative with that of Mr Freeman. The latter makes the duke deliver his speech at Hastings, and then march with his knights to Telham, and there arm. But Wace imagined that they armed in their quarters at Hastings ('Issi sunt as tentes ale'), and straightway fought. The events immediately preceding the battle are far more doubtful and difficult to determine than could be imagined from Mr Freeman's narrative, but I must confine myself to Wace's version. I have shown that his account is not consistent as to the movements of Harold, while as to the topography, 'his primary blunder', as Mr Freeman terms it, 'of reversing the geographical order, by making William land at Hastings and thence go to Pevensey', together with his obvious ignorance of the character and position of the battlefield, must, of course, lower our opinion of his accuracy, and of the value of the oral tradition at his disposal.
To rely 'mainly'[46] on such a writer, in preference to the original authorities he confused, or to follow him when, in Mr Freeman's words, he actually 'departs from contemporary authority, and merely sets down floating traditions nearly a hundred years after the latest events which he records'—betrays the absence of a critical faculty, or the consciousness of a hopeless cause.