Among the fresh points here discussed in connection with Domesday Book will be found the composition of the juries by whom the returns were made, the origin and true character of the Inquisitio Eliensis, and the marked difference of the two volumes compiled from the Domesday returns.
Of the six early surveys dealt with in conjunction with Domesday, I would call attention to that of Leicestershire as having, it would seem, till now remained absolutely unknown. It has long been a wish of mine to deal with these surveys,[5] not only as belonging to a period for which we have no records, but also as illustrating Domesday Book. In 'The Knights of Peterborough' will be found some facts relating to Hereward 'the Wake', which seem to have eluded Mr Freeman's investigations, and even those of Mr Tout.
In case it should suggest itself that these papers, and some in the other portion of the work dwell at undue length on unimportant points, I would observe that apart from the fact that even small points acquire a relative importance from our scanty knowledge of the time, there are cases in which their careful investigation may lead to unforeseen results. At the last anniversary of the Royal Society, Lord Kelvin quoted these words from his own presidential address in 1871:
Accurate and minute measurement seems to the non-scientific imagination a less lofty and dignified work than looking for something new. But nearly all the grandest discoveries of science have been but the rewards of accurate measurement and patient, long continued labour in the minute sifting of numerical results.
The same principle applies to the study of institutional history. Whether we are dealing with military service, with the land, with finance, or with the king's court, 'the minute sifting' of facts and figures is the only sure method by which we can extend knowledge.
To those who know how few are the original authorities for the period, and how diligently these have been explored and their information exhausted, the wonder will be not so much that there is little, as that there was anything at all yet left to discover.
In a work dealing with the history of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a writer must inevitably find himself at times dealing with the same subjects as the late Professor Freeman. Without in any way disparaging the genius of that eminent man, one may deem it a duty to correct the errors into which he fell, and conscientiously to combat, as an obstinate and mischievous superstition, the conviction of his pre-eminent accuracy and authority on matters of fact. It would be far pleasanter to dwell only on his merits; but when one finds that, in spite of the proofs I have been producing for years, Mr Herbert Fisher, representing the Oxford school of history, can still declare Mr Freeman to have reached 'the highest standard of scholarly exactitude',[6] it is evident that the works of the Regius Professor are still surrounded by a false glamour, and that one must further expose his grave liability to error. I cannot suppose that any competent scholar who may carefully peruse this work will in future venture to deny that, in spite of his many and his splendid gifts, Mr Freeman was as liable as any of us to error, or that however laudable his intentions, he was capable of precisely the same inaccuracy and occasionally of the same confusion as he denounced so bitterly in others.
It is, indeed, my contention, as I have already explained,[7] that to these denunciations of the errors of others is largely due the conviction of Mr Freeman's supreme accuracy. The question raised may seem to affect the whole method of history, for if, as has been said, it is the argument of the scientific historian that we ought to prefer accuracy of fact to charm of presentment and to literary style, the proof that his method fails to save him from erring like any 'literary' historian strikes at the root of his whole contention.
Yet it is not the scientific method, but its prophet himself that was at fault.
Although I am here only concerned with inaccuracy in matters of fact, I would guard myself against the retort that, at least, Mr Freeman's errors are of little consequence as compared with that obliquity of vision which led Mr Froude, at all hazards, to vindicate Henry the Eighth. Without insisting on an absolute parallel, I trace a resemblance even here. Just as his bias against the Roman church led Mr Froude to vindicate Henry in order to justify the breach with Rome, so Mr Freeman's passion for democracy made him an advocate on behalf of Harold, as 'one whose claim was not drawn only from the winding-sheet of his fathers'. I have elsewhere maintained, as to Harold's election 'by the free choice of a free people', that Mr Freeman's undoubted perversion of the case at this 'the central point' of his history, gravely impairs his narrative of the Conquest, because its success, and even its undertaking, can actually be traced to that election.[8] Unless we realize its disastrous effect on the situation both at home and abroad, we cannot rightly understand the triumph of the Duke's enterprise.