[833] "Centum et quadraginta milites tunc secum adduxit."
[834] "Ut fama adventus ejus se latius, sicut solet, diffunderet, multa scilicet millia secum adduxisse ... postquam certum fuit ... militum eum globum exiguum, non autem exercitum adduxisse" (p. 130).
[835] William of Malmesbury, who was well informed, lays stress on this, describing the earl as "fretus pietate Dei et fide legitimi sacramenti; ceterum multo minore armorum apparatu quam quis alius tam periculosum bellum aggredi temptaret ... in sancti spiritus et dominæ sanctæ Mariæ patrocinio totus pendulus erat."
[836] Mr. Freeman (Norm. Conq., v. 291) takes the place of landing (Portsmouth) from the one account, and the date (September 30) from the other, without saying so. I notice this because it is characteristic. Thus Mr. James Parker (Early History of Oxford, p. 191) observes of Mr. Freeman's account of the Conqueror's advance on London: "Though by leaving out here and there the discrepancies, the residue may be worked up into a consecutive and consistent series of events, such a process amounts to making history, not writing it. Amidst a mass of contradictory evidence it is impossible to arrive at any sure conclusion.... It is, however, comparatively easy to piece together such details as will fit out of the various stories; and more easy still to discover reasons for the results which such mosaic work produces."
[837] See p. 55.
[838] Cont. Flor. Wig., p. 115.
[839] "Obsidionis diutinæ pertæsus" (ibid., p. 118).
[840] It is an instance of the extraordinary confusion, at this point, in the chroniclers that the author of the Gesta makes him go from Trowbridge to London, and thence to Ely, omitting all the intervening events, which will be found set forth above.
[841] "Fama volante regiæ majestati nunciatur inimicos suos, juratæ quidem pacis violatores Herefordiam invasisse, monasterium S. Æthelberti regis et martyris, velut in castellinum munimen penetrasse." It seems absolutely certain, especially if we add the testimony of the other MSS., that this passage refers to the attack on the royal garrison in the castle so graphically described by the author of the Gesta, but (apparently) placed by him among the events of the summer of the following year. As, however, his narrative breaks off just at this point, his sequence of events is left uncertain, and in any case the chronology of the local chronicler, who here writes as an eyewitness, must be preferred to his.
[842] This passage (p. 121) should be compared with that on pp. 123, 124 ("Rex et comes ... Oxenefordiam"), which looks extremely like a repetition of it (as the passage on pp. 110, 111 is an anticipation of that on pp. 116, 117).