EARLY ENGLISH HISTORY.*
THR REV, CHARLES WATTS WHISTLER, who died in Juno, 1913, was a man distinguished in various walks of life. Born in 1856, he was educated at Merchant Taylors' and trained at St. Thomas's Hospital, and for some years he practised as A surgeon. Then Ile took Holy Orders, ministered to fishermen, and held several livings in the West Country, the last of them being Cheselbourne in Dorset. Like many members of the medical profession, he became an enthusiastic and learned antiquary, and he took part in the work of the Somerset Archaeological Society and the Dorset Field Club, published books on the Anglo-Saxon period, and made a specially important contribution to the vexed question of the site of the battlefield of Ethandun. His last task was to collaborate with Mr. Albany Major in this recondite treatise on the wars of the West Saxons; he is described on the title-page as "editor," but in the preface, signed by both writers, we read "It may be difficult to say where the work of the author has ceased, and that of the editor begun, in these pages. Indeed, we ourselves might find it hard to decide whether author or editor has had the larger share in shaping the book." The note of affection in Mr. Major's dedication to the memory of his dead friend makes it clear that the critics, to whose insight the division of the work between author arid editor is commended, will not be far wrong in treating it as one of the happy instances of successful and harmonica* collaboration.
The Wok has a special interest ad an attempt to *rite history from personal observation. "Mush of the early history of these islands," the authors tell us, "remains writ large on the face of the country, if only we Had the knowledge and ability to interpret the signs aright." they are well aware of the dangers of their method, and have avoided the obvious traps of "history without documents" by a careful study of documentary evidence, and they base some of their conclusions on "certain entries in Glastonbury charters, whose historical value has not before been recognized." Their object is, in fact, to apply intimate local knowledge to the investigation of written records. There has been, for the last fifteen or sixteen years, a controversy about the trustworthiness of the early entries in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle with regard to the origins of Wessex, and Mr. Munro Chadwick and Professor Oman have both shown an inclination to adopt the sceptical position originally taken up by Sir Henry Howortb, and to look to the Thames valley for the earliest settlements of the West Saxons,
In an appendix the authors of the present volume bring to _ .
ihtrIOnint Wakke brito 1111.M.. from ../inggaifiri Moot .of A r'fitishr /fa X.7ntirSie Ittage ii13441.4 wi1°1'''*'11.94 bear upon the revolutionary theory ' the ordinary weapons of historical attack ; in the text they defend the narrative of the akremiele on the ground that "there is nothing in the story that clashes with military and strategical requirements, and where we are able to cheek it by topographical and archaeo- logical evidence, we find it confirmed and explained in a curious and striking way." The reader's difficulty lies in the fact that such an argument can only be fully appreciated by an inquirer on the spot who knows the country, and that, though his present teachers speak with knowledge and with certainty, other experts are only too likely to differ from them. And. further, the whole chain of argument is so hypothetical as to produce something like bewilderment. Thus, for example, we find in the first chapter this sentence: "If we are right in supposing that the old boundaries of Hampshire repre, sent the frontier of Cerdic's Wessex, and if the boundaries opposite Charford date from that period, they can have but one explanation."
There are several difficult hypotheses involved here, and the
one explanation" is itself an additional hypothesis, the peculiar (and very interesting) property of the authors. The second chapter is built on them all, because "the evidence we have drawn from -the frontier opposite Charford shows that the final campaign must have ended in a drawn battle and an agreement that left each aide in possession of the ground it held," and the third chapter identifies "what were of necessity some of the ancient frontier lines as existing between Saxon and Welsh after the battle of Charford." The whole hypothetical evidence, it must be remembered, depends upon the identification of " Cerdicesford," the site of a battle fought, according to the Chronicle in .519, with Charford. The identity is, in the view of our authors, not open to doubt; Mr. Chadwick is content with saying that Cerdicesford t seems from lethelweard's account [more than four hundred years later] to be Charford on the Avon." We do not under- value the learning, the acuteness, or the ingenuity of these early chapters, nor do we find any inconsistencies in their argument. But we do not think that, suggestive as they are, they prove more than this—that, if you give the Chronicle the benefit of every doubt, it is possible to discover localities, within the required area, which could have furnished the scenes of such events as the Chronicle describes. Even BO, it is a point worth making.
In their later chapters, which deal with the invasions of the Northmen, there is more evidence of the ordinary kind, and the value of the authors' methods is more clearly brought out. The story of the earliest Scandinavian settlements breaks, as they claim, fresh ground. The careful account of Mired's campaigns gains much from a patient study of the keography of the West, and this remark applies especially to the chapters which discus the site of Ethandun. The narrative of the Chronicle is reprinted to show that "it is Impossible to read into the history any incidents which justify belief in bases of operation sixty or more miles apart across forest country," and it is added "It is still less possible to believe in them when the country is known or its features realized." Mr. Major and Mr. Whistler suggest that the identification of Ethandun with Edington in Wiltshire arose from an ancient misunderstanding. The view that it is Edington in Somerset has much a priori to commend it, and the arguments adduced in this book in support of it are not easy to meet. It is interesting to find that the theory is as old as Rapin's history, published in the second quarter of the eighteenth century.
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