with having 'overlooked the fact that in Domesday under Hants' [sic] is the entry concerning Ash ('Esse') in the Hampshire Hundred of 'Ovretune', adds at once 'the fact that Ash is close to Guildford'.[1] To this 'fact' he appends the foot-note with which I have dealt above. We there read that 'it is only about six miles from Guildford on the north slope of the Hog's Back, and it is noteworthy it is next to a village bearing the suggestive name of Normandy', &c. This precision of statement removes all possible doubt as to which was the place of which Mr. Rye is here speaking. In the text it is first the Hampshire Ash, found in Domesday 'under Hants'; and then, even in the next line, it is the Surrey Ash. In the foot-note it is the Surrey Ash, 'only about six miles from Guildford'! More than twenty miles apart, the two places, of course, have nothing to do with one another. In this reckless confusion of the two we discover the clue to the meaning of the word 'now' in this same foot-note. Ash, Mr. Rye there observes, is 'now [sic] said to be in the Hundred of Woking in Surrey'. That is to say that Mr. Rye's one and only Ash was in the heart of Hampshire in 1086, but is 'now' found in Surrey! He is thus enabled to denounce, after his 'facts' as to Ash, Freeman's 'terrible error' (p. 40 b), one of those 'glaring errors' which he has 'occasion to point out' (p. 37 a).
Is it true that 'Freeman seems later to have found out his own mistake'? It is not true. When he 'sets out the history' of Hubert's embassy on the page cited,[2] it is not because he accepts it. On the contrary, a year later (1876), he expressly states that 'the embassies on which Hubert is sent between William and Eadward simply take their place among the Norman legends of the Conquest'.[3] Mr. Rye, however, boldly insists that—
The Colchester Chronicle I am now defending, says that Hubert was employed as an ambassador between the Duke and King Edward under the circumstance it sets out, and that he received from the latter a gift of land in Ash, which I shall substantiate.[4]
Mr. Rye does not substantiate it; he does not even mention again this alleged gift to Hubert in his remaining pages.[5] Mr. Rye's treatment of Freeman is here perfectly outrageous; asserting that Freeman 'denied the gift to Hubert of Ash' because 'he had overlooked the fact that in Domesday under
- ↑ p. 40 b.
- ↑ Viz. iii. 694. I have before me the 'second edition, revised' (1875).
- ↑ Address at Colchester 1 August 1876, reprinted in English Towns and Districts (1883), pp. 383, 410. In William Rufus (1882) he expressly styles the passage cited by Mr. Rye (viz. 'iii. 683') 'another legend' (ii. 463). The further passage quoted by Mr. Bye (from Norman Conquest, iii. 685) refers, not to Hubert's embassy, but to alleged trouble in Maine ('at Coenomanica', says Mr. Rye!) in 1066.
- ↑ p. 43 b.
- ↑ pp. 44–52.
