PREFACE

The present work is the outcome of a wish expressed to me from more than one quarter that I would reprint in a collected form, for the convenience of historical students, some more results of my researches in the history of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. But to these I have added, especially on Domesday, so much which has not yet seen the light, that the greater portion of the work is new, while the rest has been in part re-written. The object I have set before myself throughout is either to add to or correct our existing knowledge of facts. And for this I have gone in the main to records, whether in manuscript or in print. It is my hope that the papers in this volume may further illustrate the value of such evidence as supplementing and checking the chroniclers for what is still, in many respects, an obscure period of our history.

As a foreign scholar has felicitously observed:

An instance in point will be found in the paper on 'Richard the First's change of seal'.

To those in search of new light on our early mediaeval history, I commend the first portion of this work, as setting forth, for their careful consideration, views as evolutionary on the Domesday hide and the whole system of land assessment as on the actual introduction of the feudal system into England. Although I have here brought into conjunction my discovery that the assessment of knight-service was based on a five-knights unit, irrespective of area or value, and my theory that the original assessment of land was based on a five-hides unit, not calculated on area or value, yet the two, one need hardly add, are, of course, unconnected. The one was an Anglo-Saxon system, and, as I maintain, of early date; the other was of Norman introduction, and of independent origin. My theories were formed at different times, as the result of wholly separate investigations. That of the five-hides unit was arrived at several years ago, but was kept back in the hope that I might light on some really satisfactory explanation of the phenomena presented. The solution I now propound can only be deemed tentative. I would hope, however, that the theories I advance may stimulate others to approach the subject, and, above all, that they may indicate to local students, in the future, the lines on which they should work and the absolute need of their assistance.

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.

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.

Yet it is not the scientific method, but its prophet himself that was at fault.

It is not only demonstrable error that justifies critical treatment; no less dangerous, if not more so, is that subtle commixture of guess-work and fact, which leaves us in doubt as to what is proved and what is merely hypothesis. In his lecture on 'The Nature of Historical Evidence', the late Professor himself well brought out the point:

The question is whether a statement can be proved, not whether it can be disproved. Cases in point will be found on pp. 291, 298, 331-3.

To those who may hold that in these studies excessive attention is bestowed on Anglo-Norman genealogy, I commend the words, not of a genealogist, but of the historian Kemble:

It is indispensable to a clear view of the constitutional law and governmental institutions of this country, that we should not lose sight of the distribution of landed estates among the great families, and that the rise and fall of these houses should be carefully traced and steadily borne in mind....

The paper on 'Walter Tirel and his wife' may serve to show that in this department there is still needed much labour before we can hope for a perfect record of the great houses of the Conquest.

I have to thank Mr Murray for his kind permission to make use of two of the articles I have contributed to the Quarterly Review.. Some of the studies have previously appeared in the English Historical Review, and these are now republished with Messrs Longmans' consent. Lastly, I would take the opportunity afforded by this preface of acknowledging the encouragement my researches have derived from the approval not only of our supreme authority—I mean the Bishop of Oxford—but also of that eminent scholar, Dr Liebermann, whose name one is proud to associate with a work on mediaeval history.

J. H. ROUND

[Note: I have not thought it needful to include in the index names of persons or places only introduced incidentally in illustration of arguments. The prefix 'Fitz', as in Geoffrey de Mandeville, has been retained as a useful convention, whatever the actual name may have been.]