Talk:Senlac Hill

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Background controversy[edit]

At the back of this article, I suspect, is a controversy, in which EA Freeman preferred 'Senlac' as the contemporary name for the site of the battle, and JH Round strongly disagreed. If anyone is more familiar than I with this disagreement, which some folk believe fatally damaged Freeman's credibility, could they enlighten this article? I don't think any professional worker in Anglo-Saxon history these days takes the 'Senlac' case seriously.Delahays (talk) 21:14, 18 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Your point is well made about the Etymology section. The EPNS lists the different sources and spellings of Senlac, and it is only Orderic Vitalis who spells it as Senlac, and that was several generations after the Battle of Hastings. I think that Round was a bit ingenuous just describing Vitalis as a monk who lived and wrote in Normandy as he was actually Anglo-Norman, having an English mother. Certainly some of Orderic's writings showed a fairly detailed knowledge of the English, presumably because of his own English roots. Having said that, contemporary sources do not refer to anything like Senlac, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle just says that the battle was near a grey apple tree, and the Domesday Book refers to the Battle of Hastings. However, the name Sandlake continued for several centuries as a tithing in Battle( more detail on Battle here). Wilfridselsey (talk) 14:19, 19 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Orderic Vitalis was born 9 years after the battle, so where this "several generations" malarkey comes from I do not know. DuncanHill (talk) 00:44, 6 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Although Orderic Vitalis was born 9 years after the battle, he wrote his Historia ecclesiastica ~70 years after 1066. Wilfridselsey (talk) 11:19, 6 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Still a stretch to make that "several generations". DuncanHill (talk) 11:31, 6 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Based on what? Average life expectancy for a man then was ~30 years . Wilfridselsey (talk) 11:48, 6 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"Several generations" is likely to be taken by readers to imply something like a century or more, and certainly to imply that the authr would not even have known anyone alive at the time of the battle. It's a weaselly formulation, far better to actually use numbers. As noted below, the article had put Orderic's birth "several generations" after the battle, which was clearly wrong. Is the 30 years life expectancy an expectancy at birth? If so, then it's also misleading to use it to justify your "several generations" phrase, as means such as this are distorted by high rates of infant mortality. Most people who survived the first few years of life would have had a significantly higher expectancy than 30 years. DuncanHill (talk) 12:27, 6 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

And anyway, a generation is highly unlikely to be less than 20 years, regardless of life expectancy at birth. 70 years (your number, our article on Orderic suggests somewhat less for his material dealing with the Conquest), would only be 3 and a half generations, and again to call that "several" is misleading. DuncanHill (talk) 12:37, 6 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"Orderic was born several generations after the Battle of Hastings"[edit]

according to the wiki page about Orderic Vitalis he was born in 1075, hardly 'generations' after the battle.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.31.135.218 (talk) 20:33, 3 January 2016

Quite so, I have edited the article accordingly. DuncanHill (talk) 00:45, 6 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]