ROUND, JOHN HORACE (1854 –), English historian, only son of John Round, lord of the manor of West Bergholt in Essex, and through his mother grandson of Horace Smith, author of Rejected Addresses, was born at Brighton on Feb. 22 1854. He was educated privately, afterwards going to Balliol College, Oxford, where he took a first-class in modern history. The teaching of Dr. Stubbs, then Regius Professor of History, greatly stimulated the young student, whose independent and critical genius had already begun to revolt against the superficial methods of historical study traditional in the English schools, and after a few years he devoted himself to historical research. His own aim as a historian, as stated by himself, was “to add to or correct our knowledge of facts” (preface to Feudal England), and from the first he insisted that students of mediaeval history must go to the records in order to find evidence to supplement and check the chroniclers on whom historians of the type of Freeman had too exclusively relied. In 1883 he published in the Antiquary a criticism of Brewer's introduction to the Book of Howth (Rolls Series), in which he proved that the author was “strangely at fault” in his views on its authorship, its origin and its contents; and three years later, in his Early Life of Anne Boleyn, he again pointed out errors “on the simplest matters of fact” made by the same eminent scholar. In 1884-5 he published in a magazine articles on “The Origins of the House of Lords” (reprinted in Peerage and Pedigree, 1910), in which he argued for “that feudal origin of the House which, in view of the teaching of Freeman and Stubbs, it was, at that time, heresy to assert.” In 1888 appeared his edition of Ancient Charters, Royal and Private, prior to 1200 (Pipe Roll Soc. vol. x.), in the preface to which he pointed out their use for genealogy, topography, legal and ecclesiastical antiquities, etc. In 1891 appeared his Introduction of Knight-service into England (privately printed, reprinted in Feudal England, 1895), in which he proved the entirely Norman and feudal origin of this institution (see the article by Round in the E.B. 15.867).
In 1892 he published in the Quarterly Review (vol. 175, No. 349) his famous attack on Freeman's historical method. He accused him of working as a historian “not from manuscripts, but from printed books,” and pointed out “the danger to our national school of history in the wide-spread and almost superstitious belief in his unimpeachable authority.” This authority he proceeded to assail, centring his attack on that “palisade” of solid timber which, in his Norman Conquest, Freeman had imaginatively built round the English host at “Senlac,” and proving that this palisade had as little existence as “Senlac” itself (see E.B. 13.59 note). Round had begun openly to attack Freeman as early as 1882, but the fact that the Quarterly article, though written before Freeman's death, did not appear till afterwards excited unjust comment, and blinded the dead historian's friends to the convincing force of the criticism itself. The long and bitter controversy that followed was summed up by Round in “Mr. Freeman and the Battle of Hastings” in Feudal England. In 1892 also appeared Geoffrey de Mandeville, a study of the anarchy under Stephen, which established the author's reputation as a constructive historian. In Feudal England, which appeared in 1895, Round published in collected form some of the results of his researches into the history of the 11th and 12th centuries, the first part of the book setting forth views as revolutionary on the Domesday side and the whole system of land assessment as on the actual introduction of the feudal system into England. In 1899 was published his Calendar of Documents preserved in France illustrative of the history of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. i., pp. 918-1206, and also another collected series of studies under the title of The Commune of London. In the following year he published his Studies in Peerage and Family History, and at the Congress of Archaeological Studies he read a paper (subsequently published) on “the systematic study of our English place-names,” in which he again pointed out the impossibility of accomplishing any scientific work in the department of research until the place-names of England had been classified and traced to their origins.
Round's vast and detailed knowledge of the periods which he had made his own led to his opinion being sought by successive law officers of the Crown charged with the conduct of peerage cases brought before the House of Lords. His attention was thus drawn to peerage law, and he soon discovered that there “was room for its treatment on fresh and historical lines.” In 1910 he published Peerage and Pedigree, containing studies on peerage law and its problems, in which incidentally he attacked “the muddle of the law,” pointing out that the lawyer, whose vision is bounded by his “books,” is still in the Middle Ages, while the historian is a man of science. Although the labour involved in these peerage cases was immense, Round refused to accept any remuneration; in 1912, however, his services were publicly recognized by the creation in his favour of the new office of Honorary Adviser to the Crown in Peerage Cases. His passion for historic truth led him to wage ruthless war on the “pedigree-mongers,” whom he attacked with mordant wit (see, e.g. in Peerage and Pedigree, “Some 'Saxon' Houses,” “The Great Carington Imposture”), and on those who were attempting to give a false value to the possession of coats-of-arms (ibid. “Heraldry and the Gent”). Occasionally he extended the range of his attacks, falling, for instance, upon those who, consciously or unconsciously, falsified history in the interests of particular political or religious opinions (e.g. “The Elizabethan Religion, in correction of Mr. George Russell,” Nineteenth Century, vol. xli., p. 191).
History on a large scale Round never attempted. His books are all collections of particular studies, and they represent but a tithe of his published work. He edited, with prefaces, a whole series of the Pipe Rolls; he was a frequent contributor to the English Historical Review; he helped to edit the Ancestor, for which he also wrote; and innumerable papers by him are scattered in various historical and archaeological journals and reviews. In 1913 he had begun to prepare a catalogue of these scattered works, but in 1921 this had not yet been published. Round's historical method—reaching conclusions by induction from isolated facts whose connexion he had in turn to prove— prevented his becoming a popular writer; but his style is always luminously clear, and the articles contributed by him to this Encyclopaedia (Domesday, Knight Service, Baron, Baronet, Earl, Bayeux Tapestry, Scutage, the families of Fitzgerald and Neville, etc.) are excellent examples of his capacity for concise statement. (W. A. P.)