The History of the Norman Conquest of England

Academics have often criticized it for its heavily Whig treatment of the subject, and its glorification of Anglo-Saxon political and social institutions at the expense of their feudal successors, but its influence has nevertheless been profound, many Anglo-Norman historians of modern times having come around to some of Freeman's main conclusions.

Exploring his points of agreement and disagreement with Palgrave Freeman decided to embark on his own history of the Conquest, reasoning that its approaching 800th anniversary might well make such a work popular.

[3] In the event, Freeman's decision to trace the remoter causes of the Conquest in much greater detail than he had originally planned put paid to all hopes of bringing his history down to William the Conqueror's accession in time for the octocentenary.

[1]He drew on the massive corpus of primary sources published over the previous eighty years, and on the works of 19th-century historians, particularly Augustin Thierry, Sharon Turner, Sir Francis Palgrave, and J. M. Lappenberg, but he felt it unnecessary to search out manuscript material and never went to either the British Museum Library or the Public Record Office, preferring his own well-stocked bookshelves.

[6] As a set-off to this list Barlow noted Freeman's dogmatism, pugnacity and indifference to various subjects he considered irrelevant to his survey of 11th century England: theology, philosophy, and most of the arts.

These included Alfred the Great, Earl Godwin and Harold Godwinson, though he also began increasingly to admire William for his policy of protecting his revolution by retaining Old English institutions wherever possible.

[18][19][20][21] Hammering the point home, he wrote that, I cannot too often repeat, for the saying is the very summing up of the whole history, that the Norman Conquest was not the wiping out of the constitution, the laws, the language, the national life, of Englishmen.

The Gentleman's Magazine, for example, noted the harshness with which Freeman treated his opponents and his "unmistakably strong belief in the correctness of his own views", but agreed with many of them, excepting only his insistence on spelling Anglo-Saxon personal names (Ecgberht, Ælfred etc.)

[25][26] The Month, a Catholic magazine, objected only to Freeman's outspokenly Protestant opinions on the "abject superstition" of some of the medieval saints, and bade him keep a civil tongue in his head on this point.

"[35] One exception was General George S. Patton, who in 1944 read Freeman's History in advance of the D-Day landings, hoping to learn where to conduct a campaign in Normandy by studying William the Conqueror's choice of roads.

[36] In 1953 David Douglas wrote that as a detailed narrative of the Norman Conquest, Freeman's book has never been superseded, and it is those best versed in the history of eleventh-century England who are most conscious of its value.

[40] In the present century Anthony Brundage and Richard A. Cosgrove have been more reprehensive, writing that the History’s organization, judgments, and style strike the modern reader as well over the top: uncritical and injudicious, remorselessly detailed, and a prose that adored long, languid sentences.