Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/22

14 "We now come to a mysterious charter ascribed to 1093–7 (Davis, no. 399, p. 101), by which 'Eudo Dapifer' had seizin of the manor of Dereman (Notts.), which Lefstan his brother held. But this must refer to the other 'Eudo Dapifer', for I cannot trace any such brother, or that Eudo ever had anything to do with Dereman."

It is not easy to do justice to such a rendering as this. Here are two brothers, with the Old English names of Deorman and Leofstan, of whom the latter has succeeded to a manor which 'Dereman' had held, and of which Eudo is now to have seisin. Mr. Rye, failing to understand Mr. Davis's abstract, converts 'Dereman' into a manor, and then—because the charter was 'dated' at Nottingham —places that imaginary manor in 'Notts.'! As he then has to provide a 'brother' for the English Leofstan, he finds him in the Norman Eudo, who, he adds, must be the other 'Eudo Dapifer', of whom there seems to be no other mention (as such) in his treatise.

The reader must remember that this criticism is evoked by the fierce and confident attacks on Mr. Freeman's work by a writer whose own blunders are incomparably worse. As is, of course, notorious, I have had occasion myself to correct the former's errors, so that no one can allege that I am biased in his favour. But when we read of the 'glaring errors' that Mr. Rye has found in his work, and of its 'almost innumerable inaccuracies', it is time to speak plainly of Mr. Rye's own work. At the very outset, after quoting two passages in which Freeman criticized the 'Chronicle', Mr. Rye alleges that 'Later on, as will be seen in the following pages, he trims and modifies this opinion very greatly'. This is not the case, and, indeed, could not be so. For, although Mr. Rye is silent as to where 'Freeman says' &c., these statements are derived from the latest of his well-known works, namely William Rufus (ii. 463). It is not, therefore, surprising that a search through 'the following pages' fails to reveal any change in Freeman's view of the 'Chronicle'. The allegation, on the same page, that 'Freeman, before he died, practically withdrew his case against the Chronicle' has been completely disposed of by me already in this paper.

One can well imagine how Freeman, were he now alive, would himself have trounced his critic. To dwell on the former's many errors, when wholly irrelevant, is in no way to 'vindicate' the 'Chronicle'; it is, on the contrary, equivalent to admitting that its authority cannot be established and that Mr. Rye, as its champion, finds himself reduced to the device of diverting the reader's mind from the one and only issue. This brings me to the passage in which he deliberately invites me to justify