Dead Mans Plack and an Old Thorn | Page 2

minutest detail--the smallest
insect--and in telling her of my days I spoke casually of the cross
placed at a spot called Dead Man's Plack. This at once reminded her of
something she had heard about it before, but long ago, in the seventies
of last century; then presently it all came back to her, and it proved to
me an interesting story.
It chanced that in that far back time she was in correspondence on
certain scientific and literary subjects with a gentleman who was a
native of this part of Hampshire in which we were staying, and that
they got into a discussion about Freeman, the historian, during which
he told her of an incident of his undergraduate days when Freeman was
professor at Oxford. He attended a lecture by that man on the Mythical
and Romantic Elements in Early English History, in which he stated for
the guidance of all who study the past, that they must always bear in
mind the inevitable passion for romance in men, especially the
uneducated, and that when the student comes upon a romantic incident
in early history, even when it accords with the known character of the
person it relates to, he must reject it as false. Then, to rub the lesson in,
he gave an account of the most flagrant of the romantic lies contained
in the history of the Saxon kings. This was the story of King Edgar, and
how his favourite, Earl Athelwold, deceived him as to the reputed
beauty of Elfrida, and how Edgar in revenge slew Athelwold with his
own hand when hunting. Then--to show how false it all was!--Edgar,
the chronicles state, was at Salisbury and rode in one day to Harewood
Forest and there slew Athelwold. Now, said Freeman, as Harewood
Forest is in Yorkshire, Edgar could not have ridden there from
Salisbury in one day, nor in two, nor in three, which was enough to
show that the whole story was a fabrication.
The undergraduate, listening to the lecturer, thought the Professor was
wrong owing to his ignorance of the fact that the Harewood Forest in

which the deed was done was in Hampshire, within a day's ride from
Salisbury, and that local tradition points to the very spot in the forest
where Athelwold was slain. Accordingly he wrote to the Professor and
gave him these facts. His letter was not answered; and the poor youth
felt hurt, as he thought he was doing Professor Freeman a service by
telling him something he didn't know. He didn't know his Professor
Freeman.
This story about Freeman tickled me, because I dislike him, but if any
one were to ask me why I dislike him I should probably have to answer
like a woman: Because I do. Or if stretched on the rack until I could
find or invent a better reason I should perhaps say it was because he
was so infernally cock-sure, so convinced that he and he alone had the
power of distinguishing between the true and false; also that he was so
arbitrary and arrogant and ready to trample on those who doubted his
infallibility.
All this, I confess, would not be much to say against him, seeing that it
is nothing but the ordinary professorial or academic mind, and I
suppose that the only difference between Freeman and the ruck of the
professors was that he was more impulsive or articulate and had a
greater facility in expressing his scorn.
Here I may mention in passing that when this lecture appeared in print
in his Historical Essays he had evidently been put out a little, and also
put on his mettle by that letter from an undergraduate, and had gone
more deeply into the documents relating to the incident, seeing that he
now relied mainly on the discrepancies in half a dozen chronicles he
was able to point out to prove its falsity. His former main argument
now appeared as a "small matter of detail"--a "confusion of geography"
in the different versions of the old historians. But one tells us, Freeman
writes, that Athelwold was killed in the Forest of Wherwell on his way
to York, and then he says: "Now as Wherwell is in Hampshire, it could
not be on the road to York;" and further on he says: "Now Harewood
Forest in Yorkshire is certainly not the same as Wherwell in
Hampshire," and so on, and on, and on, but always careful not to say
that Wherwell Forest and Harewood Forest are two names for one and

the same place, although now the name of Wherwell is confined to the
village on the Test, where it is supposed Athelwold had his castle and
lived with his wife before he was killed, and where Elfrida in her
declining years, when trying