AN EVENTFUL PERIOD OF ENGLISH HISTORY

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27641, 23 April 1955, Page 3

AN EVENTFUL PERIOD OF ENGLISH HISTORY

[Reviewed by <

J.J.S]

Hie Feudal Kingdom of England, 1042. 1216. By Frank Barlow. Longmans. 465 pp.

Fifty years ago Messrs Longmans brought out a Political History of England in 12 volumes, the last of which covered the reign of Queen Victoria. It was in its day one. of the best works of its kind, and several of the volumes are still worth reading. Though written by specialists, it was designed for the use of the general public, and long retained its authority and popularity. Now the same publishers have begun the production of a new co-operative history, which will carry the story of England down to the present day. The need for such a work is unquestioned. Every generation has to reinterpret the past; new documents, new archaeological material come to light, perspectives change, and old facts appear in a fresh guise. Discoveries which would otherwise lie buried in the files of learned periodicals are incorporated by experts in popular narrative histories and placed in their proper setting, and the new knowledge slowly (often all too slowly) filters down into the school textbooks and the consciousness of the educated public. The new Longmans series is in general plan similar to its predecessor, though the title “political” has been dropped and more attention will be paid to social and economic developments than was fashionable half a century ago. The initial impression on opening the first volume is one of slight disappointment. For reasons

best known to themselves, the publishers have decided to dispense entirely with footnotes and references, and all we are given is a short list of secondary works at the end of the book. The motive may well be to reduce the cost of production, though the, decision may have been partly due to the foolish notion that notes distract and irritate that strange creature, the general reader. In fact, they are essential in any book claiming to be a work of scholarship. They are a means of checking the statements of the writer, they are a guarantee of his veracity, ana they indicate the evidence on which he bases his conclusions. He puts his cards on the table and says in effect: “This is how I arrive at my interpretation of such-and-such an episode.” Without references, the reader is reduced to helpless dependence on his author’s word, and when he comes across some new fact or argument, he has no idea where it originates and no means of following up the matter for Himself. He is cheated of his due. A further defect is that the reader is told nothing, either in the text or elsewhere, of the primary sources on which rests our knowledge of Norman and Plantagenet England. In the corresponding volume in the old Longmans series, a useful section was devoted to a critical appraisal of the great English medieval monastic chroniclers (Eadmer, Simeon of Durham, William of Malmesbury, Roger of Hoveden, and others), who are not nearly so well known as they should be. Notwithstanding the valuable evidence of characters and writs and pipe-rolls, we must»still turn to the chroniclers to give us, not merely connected facts, but the “feel” and atmosphere of the times. They make a few fleeting appearances in Professor Barlow’s book, and though it would be unreasonable to expect a modern scholar to fill his narrative-with long excerpts from them, it is a pity that more obvious use has not been made of them. If history is to resurrect the past in the mind of the reader, a strong appeal must be made to the imagination and this can best be done by having recourse to vivid contemporary writings. Professor Barlow seems to stand too far away from the people and events he describes; the

kings and barons and prelates never quite come to life, and even the short, stocky, red-haired Angevins, with their ferocious tempers and volcanic energy, are subdued and muted in his pages. And why are our modern historians so shy of the date 1066? professor Barlow starts with 1042, the accession of Edward the Confessor: Mr Poole, in the corresponding volume in the Ox-

ford series,’with” 1087, the death of Wiuiam the. Conqueror. Can it be possible that since the appearance of the immortal masterpiece of Sellar and an t he feeling has grown up that there is something comic or vulgar about 1066? If we must divide history periods (and apparently we must), let us at least choose dates of real significance. The Norman Conquest ushered in more sweeping changes than had hitherto occurred since England became England. 1042 and 1087 are nothing compared with

After these strictures, it is only fair to acknowledge the substantial merits of Professor Barlow’s book. His narrative is clear and readable, and he can turn a good phrase (“The Cistercians were so humble that they knew they were superior to other men”). He excels in his chapters of sociological analysis, where he masters with deft competence an amorphous mass of material drawn from diverse sources. He has something fresh to say on the administration of the Duchy of Normandy, the growth of anti-monastic sentiment in the twelfth century towns, the social background of the anti-Semitic outbreaks of Angevin times, the transformation of estatemanagement into a,professional business, and the inflationary tendencies of John’s reign, consequent on the increased output of the European silvermines, which played no small part in bringing the Angevin monarchy to its humiliation at Runnymede. On Magna Carta his balanced comments are especially welcome. He rightly holds that the reaction against the “Whig interpretation” of that celebrated document has gone too far. No doubt it was absurd for the opponents and critics of Stuart absolutism from Coke to Hallam to read into it trial by jury, habeas corpus, no taxation without representation, and other features of later Parliamentary liberalism, but as Professor Barlow remarks, if it did not guarantee these things, it did guarantee their thirteenth century equivalents. Many of the rebel barons were indeed selfish reactionaries, but the liberties they demanded for their own class were eventually secured by other sections of the “community of the realm,” a phrase used with increasing frequency after Runnymede, and English freedom in one aspect may be said to represent the principle of aristocracy for all. But the author’s observation that “the right of resistance to a king behaving unlawfully was one of the deepest constitutional ideas of the Germanic people” recalls the vagaries of Stubbs and the Victorian school of Teutonists and perhaps even of Montesquieu, who thought that the liberties of Europe had sprung from the forests of Germany. That the barons of 1215 knew much about “the constitutional ideas of the Germanic people” may be doubted: is it not more probable that they were more influenced by many centuries of teaching by the Church that kingship is a sacred trust and that political power is derived from the community? Professor Barlow’s volume, .if it lacks sparkle, is a safe and competent guide through one of the most critical and eventful periods of English history, which saw the Hildebrandine Reform of the Church, the imposition of Norman-French culture upon the land, the beginning of the rule of law and constitutional government, the rise and fall of the Angevin despotism, and the gradual fusion of Saxon, Dane and Norman into the “communitas Angliae * the community or nation of England.