MR. FREEMAN.

Of the array of the shield-wall we have often heard already as at Maldon, but it is at Senlac that we get the fullest descriptions of it, all the better for coming in the mouths of enemies. Wace gives his description, 12941:– (Norm. Cong., iii. 763).

MR. ARCHER.

Now, there are six distinct objections to translating this passage [of Wace] as if it referred to a shield-wall. These objections are, of course, of unequal value; but some of them would, by themselves, suffice to over-throw such a theory (Cont Rev., 349).

IN discussing Mr. Freeman's treatment of the great battle, we saw that the only passage he vouched for the existence of a palisade, consisted of certain lines from Wace's Roman de Rou, which he ultimately declared to be, on the contrary, a description of “the array of the shieldwall.” The question, therefore, as to their meaning–on which my critics have throughout endeavoured to represent the controversy as turning–did not even arise so far as Mr. Freeman was concerned. Still less had I occasion to discuss the authority of Wace, Mr. Freeman's explicit verdict on the lines (iii. 763–4) having removed them, as concerns his own narrative, from the sphere of controversy.