Note 586 — XIV Bannockburn
Reading edition
Ibid. p. 203. It will be observed that this description of the Scots—“quasi sepes densa”—is an admirable parallel to the metaphor—“quasi castellum”—which Henry of Huntingdon applies to the English “acies” at the Battle of Hastings, and which Mr. Freeman so deplorably misunderstood (‘Feudal England,’ p. 343–4). So, too, Adam de Murimuth speaks of the French fleet at the Battle of Sluys (1340) as “quasi castrorum acies (or aciem) ordinatum” (p. 106). Such metaphors, I have shown, were common.