To me there is nothing strange in all this shift and shuffle. It has distinguished each of my opponents on this subject from the first. Not only are they all at variance with one another: they are also at variance with themselves. Alone my own theory remains unchanged throughout. The English faced their foes that day in “the close array of the shield wall.” Other defences they had none.
Mr. Oman has actually advanced four theories in succession:
(1) “The impregnable palisades.”[87]
(2) “The impenetrable shield wall.”[88]
(3) “An abattis of some sort.”[89]
(4) “Wattled hurdles.”[90]
The third of these made its appearance after his description in ‘Social England.’ “I still hold,” Mr. Oman wrote, “to the belief that there was an abattis of some sort in front of Harold’s line.”
But how can he “still” hold to a belief which he has never expressed before or since? For neither the first, second, or fourth of the defences he gives above can by any possibility describe an abattis. The New English Dictionary describes an abattis as
a defence constructed by placing felled trees lengthwise, one over the other, with their branches towards the enemy’s line.
The ‘Encyclopædia Britannica’ gives us a similar description, speaking of this defence as constructed of “felled trees lengthwise ... the stems inwards.”[91] One is driven to suppose that Mr. Oman is quite unable to understand what an abattis really is.