Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/17

Hants [sic] is this entry: "in Ovretune Hundred Eudo the son of Hubert holds Esse of the King"', he continues:

I should imagine that this terrible error of Freeman arose because he did not find the entry in Ellis's Domesday (ii. 250), when [sic] it was unaccountably omitted, and that he did not trouble to look up the entry in the text itself.^[1]

The facts are these: when in the passage I have quoted above (viz. Norman Conquest, iii. 694), Freeman (as Mr. Rye was aware) cited the Domesday entry concerning the Hampshire Ash, he was careful to include the words which I have here italicized—

The place is Ashe in Hampshire which appears in Domesday, 47, as held by Hubert's son Eudo, but which was held T. R. E. by a tenant of Earl Harold.^[2]

These vital words are omitted by Mr. Rye (p. 40 b). They prove that, at King Edward's death, the land was held, not by Hubert, but by an English tenant, who held, not of the king, but of Harold the earl. 'I should imagine', therefore (to quote Mr. Rye's words), 'that this terrible error' was not Freeman's, but his own. It is curiously characteristic of the writer's carelessness and haste. He even charges Ellis with here misleading Freeman by having 'unaccountably omitted' what he terms 'the entry'. Incredible though it may appear, Mr. Rye must actually imagine that the Ash entry cited above proves the gift of the land by King Edward to Hubert (as alleged in his precious 'Chronicle'), although what it does prove is precisely the reverse, namely that Eudo had here obtained the land of an English tenant.

In at least two places Mr. Rye goes further, by making Eudo, as well as Hubert, the pre-Conquest holder. He asserts that—

It is clear that besides Ash Eudo held other possessions in England before the Conquest.^[3]
Besides Ash Eudo had, before Domesday, held land T. R. E.^[4]

What is Mr. Rye's authority for alleging this pre-Conquest tenure of Ash by Eudo? He cites none. Apparently he may even have mixed up the alleged tenures of Eudo and of his father Hubert, for he tells us that 'Hubert I … was probably living in 1060',^[5] and that 'Hubert (Eudo's father) owned 12 shops and sollars in St. Mary Colechurch, London, … to Shouldham Priory [sic] and afterwards Geoffrey Fitz Piers … gave these

1. p. 40 b.
2. iii. 694. See also my translation of the entry in Victoria County History, Hants, i. 401 a: 'Ælwacre held it of Earl Harold.'
3. p. 44 a.
4. p. 51 a.
5. pp. 42, 44 a.