Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/14

6 historian had in mind, when he so wrote, was, not (as Mr. Rye alleges) the 'Chronicle' which he had rejected, but Wace's Roman de Rou and its narrative of William's headlong flight, when he rode for his life from Valognes. 'As the sun rose', Freeman wrote, 'he drew near to the church and castle of Rye, the dwelling-place of a faithful vassal named Hubert.' Of him we further read:

"He welcomed his prince to his house, he set him on a fresh horse, he bade his three sons ride by his side. … The command of their father was faithfully executed by his loyal sons. We are not surprised to hear that the house of Rye rose high in William's favour; and we can hardly grudge them their share in the lands of England, when we find that Eudo the son of Hubert, the King's Dapifer, &c., &c."

I do not claim, in this instance, that Mr. Rye, when charging Freeman with an absolute volte face on the subject (p. 37), wilfully misrepresented the historian's true meaning; because his action might be accounted for by carelessness or mental confusion. It is, however, obvious that Freeman, when he wrote as above in his fourth volume (1871), could not possibly be withdrawing, as Mr. Rye alleges, 'his case against the Chronicle'; for, in his William Rufus (1882), more than ten years later, he was denouncing its evidence in no measured terms. Mr. Rye, moreover, cannot plead that he was imperfectly acquainted with William's flight through Rye; for he here 'ventured to paraphrase it in rhyme'. From these rhymes we learn that the Norman aristocracy were then in the habit of addressing one another in almost modern fashion. 'Ranoulf de Bessin', on seeing Hubert, "Speaking fairly, said—'Tell us, O Rye, Hast thou seen the Bastard riding past?'"

Commenting on the foot-note in which Freeman suggests that 'there is a passage … which sounds mythical', namely that Hubert, when thus questioned, puts the pursuers 'on a wrong scent'—because 'this story is as old as the babyhood of Hermes'—Mr. Rye denounces, in his graceful way, 'this extraordinary piece of silliness' and observes of his victim that 'with this one stupid exception [sic] he admits the whole!'

It was, perhaps, unfortunate that, when rejecting the 'Chronicle', Freeman did not give in detail the reasons why