from overlooking the Domesday entry on Ash, Freeman at least as far back as 1874[1] gave an English version of this entry,[2] which shows Ash 'as held by Hubert's son, Eudo, but which was held T. R. E. by a tenant of Earl Harold'. In Mr. Rye's version, the italicized portion of this entry is suppressed. Instead of corroborating his Chronicle's statement, it actually proves that statement to be false. For it proves that neither Hubert nor Eudo held Ash before the Conquest.
Again, instead of finding out (as Mr. Rye alleges) 'his own mistake', his 'terrible error', later on, Freeman resolutely and quite rightly rejected Hubert's alleged embassy in 1882 and 1883,[3] no less confidently than he had done in 1874.[4]
It is perhaps on account of the enormous use that Mr. Rye has made of the Regesta Regum that he has gratefully refrained from setting Mr. Davis also in the pillory, together with Freeman and myself. For we are all alike guilty of preferring the evidence of Lanfranc to that of his precious 'Chronicle'. Lanfranc, it is true, was on the spot in 1075 and was in charge of the general operations when Norwich Castle fell: of the date or authorship of the 'Chronicle' we know absolutely nothing. But while, on the other hand, Lanfranc tells us who were the three magnates left in charge of the royal garrison and ignores Hubert de Rye, the 'Chronicle' alleges that Hubert de Rye was placed in command of the garrison. Mr. Rye, therefore, ignores the direct statement of Lanfranc and takes his stand on the 'Chronicle'. It is expressly on account of this flat contradiction that he sets himself to vindicate[5] the authorship of the whole document 'in an appendix'.[6]
One of the distinctive features of an old-world antiquary is that he cannot grasp what is meant by 'authority'; for him one authority is as good as another. I have only room for one example. Mr. Rye, we have seen, complains (p. 19) that, because Miss Norgate does not, 'unluckily', mention the date of the great rebellion against Henry II (in 1173-4), 'we are led to guess it from Blomfield, iii, p. 32', &c. Can there be, in these days, any other writer who would instinctively try to 'guess' from 'Blomfield' the date of a landmark in English history? The strange thing is that he had only to turn to a paper edited by himself (1908) in his Norfolk Antiquarian Miscellany,[7] to learn that this formidable rebellion, which threatened to become 'a revolution', broke out 'in 1173'.[8]
