Franceis, flamengs e normand.
Mr. Orpen aptly quotes the case of the dying Roland, when ‘por ses pechiez Dieu porofrit lo guant,’ and refers us to ‘vadium in duello,’ and ‘plicare vadia’ in Du Cange. But the most instructive remarks on this custom will be found in Professor Maitland’s introduction to precedents for the Court Baron.[349] The formula he finds for this antique wager runs thus: “He shall wage his law with his folded glove (de sun guant plyee) and shall deliver it into the hand of the other, and then take his glove back and find pledge for his law.” The learned, writer explains that the folded glove typified that chattel of value which “in very old times” was the vadium, wed, or gage constituting the contract, and that this was now supplanted by a contract with sureties, who had become the real security for the party’s appearance in court. This procedure, it will be seen, is brought out in our poem, which was written about a century earlier than the treatise Mr. Maitland quotes. The mention here, I may add, of “his peers,” and the phrase, as Mr. Orpen points out, ‘Li reis receut le cors’ (l. 2635) suggest surely that the writer of the poem had a special knowledge of legal formulas.
The careful reader will detect also a constitutional hint in the summons to the tenants by knight service to come to the assistance of king Henry in the rebellion of 1173:
Chevalers, baruns e meyne,
A chescun barun par sei,
Par le commandement le rei,
Que tuz passassent la mer
En normandie li reis aider.
For we see here an allusion to that special summons, to which, whether for council or for war, each ‘baron’ was entitled. One of the grievances of Becket, it may be remembered, at Northampton was that he had not been summoned ‘par sei,’ but only through the sheriff. Perhaps, however, the most important contribution made by this poem to institutional history is found in that most important passage, ll. 3064–3177, which the editor describes as “a sort of original Domesday Book of the first Anglo-Norman settlement,” and as presenting all the appearance of being, in substance, a contemporary account. For, apart from its obvious value as “the only connected account of the subinfeudation of Leinster and Meath by earl Richard Fitz Gilbert and Hugh de Laci, respectively,” it affords a very striking confirmation of the new theory on knight service advanced by me in the pages of the ‘English Historical Review,’ in which, as against the accepted view maintained by Dr. Stubbs and Mr. Freeman, I contended that the quota of knight service was determined not by the area of the fief, but by “the unit of the feudal host,” and is therefore reckoned in round numbers, and is almost invariably a multiple of 5, if not of 10.[350] I proved this to be the case for England, and appealed to the Irish evidence as confirming the discovery. But I did not quote this remarkable passage, from which we learn that in Meath—which Henry had granted to Hugh de Lacy for the service of fifty knights (l. 2730)—Richard Fleming was enfeoffed to serve with twenty knights, and Gilbert de Nugent (as we learn from charter evidence) with five; while in Leinster, which the Earl, as we learn from charters, held by the service of a hundred knights, Maurice de Prendergast received his fief “pur dis [10] chevalers servise,” Walter de Riddlesford was bound to furnish twenty knights, and a certain Reginald was assigned fifteen as his quota. Our confidence in the poem is increased by the fact that it names fifty knights as the service due from Meath, which we know to be correct, while so good an authority as the ‘Gesta’ makes it a hundred. The whole of this curious passage is ably annotated by Mr. Orpen, and the puzzling place-names identified. But, familiar though he clearly is with almost every source of information, he would seem to be unacquainted with the valuable Gormanston Register, which contains, I believe, a transcript (fo. 190 a) of the actual charter by which earl Richard granted to Maurice Fitz Gerald Naas and Wicklow (ll. 3085–92)—the former for the service of five knights.[351] The same Register has copies of three charters (fos. 5b, 188b), showing how the lands spoken of in the poem as granted to Gilbert de Nangle came, under Richard I., to Walter de Lacy, who granted them in turn to his brother Hugh.
The comparative ease and rapidity with which a handful of adventurers had parcelled out among themselves the most fertile portions of the island is perhaps the most surprising feature of the whole story. It is certain that the native Irish were by no means wanting in courage; indeed, they were then, as they always have been, only too ready to fight. Their weapons were good and were skilfully wielded; but like the wild Celts of Galloway, who had hurled themselves in vain, at the Battle of the Standard, against a line of mailed warriors, they scorned the use of defensive armour. Their mode of warfare was essentially suited to woods and bogs and passes, while their assailants were accustomed, from continental warfare, to cavalry actions in the open. Combining the evidence of our poem with that of Master Gerald, we can see clearly that, as in so many decisive encounters, from Hastings itself to Culloden, the issue turned on the conflict of wholly differing tactics. Precisely as at Hastings, the Normans—now the Anglo-Normans—enjoyed the enormous advantage derived from the use of the bow. Giraldus, whatever his defects, was a shrewd and sound observer; and he tells us of the demoralizing effect on the natives, in the early days of the conquest, of the arrows against which they had no means of defence. Careful investigation shows that each band of the invaders landed with a force of knights and archers, the latter being usually found in the proportion of ten to one. In the combined action of these two arms, as at the great battle which had decided the fate of England, the Normans excelled. “In Hibernis conflictibus,” wrote Gerald, “hoc summopere curandum, ut semper arcarii militibus turmis mixtim adjiciantur.” As Harold had discovered, before the Conquest, how unsuitable was a force composed of heavily-armed English infantry for pursuit of the nimble Welsh, as Richard was shortly to find his host of mailed knights and men-at-arms harassed to death by the swift movements of the light Saracen cavalry, so, writes Gerald, the Irish could only be successfully attacked by troops able to pursue them among their mountain fastnesses. Nor are his criticisms less true for being animated, as they evidently are, by the scorn of his gallant relatives, as the pioneers of the conquest, for those later comers who despised their experience, and on whom they looked in their fierce warfare, as a rough colonist of the present day would look on a pipeclayed guardsman.