the rear. Soon a swampy valley was to be encountered. The retreating English, climbing the opposite hill, paused, at once to take breath and to examine their position. Finding the Normans struggling with the difficulties of the morass, and conscious of the advantage which their elevated position gave them, they wheeled about, and became the attacking party. Their efforts were crowned with success; the invaders were thrown into a state of confusion nearly inextricable. But it is necessary now to refer to our authorities. The account given in the _Roman de Rou_ of this important part of the events of that eventful day is the following: “In the plain was a fosse, which the Normans now had behind them, _having passed it in the fight without regarding it_. But the English charged, and drove the Normans before them, till they made them fall back upon this fosse, overthrowing into it horses and men. Many were to be seen falling therein, rolling one over the other, with their faces to the earth, and unable to rise. Many of the English also, whom the Normans drew down along with them, died there. At no time during the day’s battle did so many Normans die as perished in that fosse. So said they who saw the dead.” The account given in the _Chronicle of Battle Abbey_ is similar. “There lay between the hostile armies a certain dreadful precipice.... It was of considerable extent, and being overgrown with bushes or brambles, was not very easily seen, and great numbers of men, principally Normans in pursuit of the English, were suffocated in it. For, ignorant of the danger, as they were running in a disorderly manner, they fell into the chasm, and were fearfully dashed to pieces and slain. And this pit, from this deplorable accident, is still called _Malfosse_.” With these statements that of William of Malmesbury agrees--“By frequently making a stand, they slaughtered their pursuers in heaps; for, getting possession of an eminence, they drove down the Normans, when roused with indignation and anxiously striving to gain the higher ground, into the valley beneath, when, easily hurling their javelins and rolling down stones on them as they stood below, they destroyed them to a man.” With these descriptions the delineation of the Tapestry agrees in a remarkable manner. The only point which remains for us is to identify the scene of this skirmish with some locality in the vicinity of Battle. This Mr. Lower enables us to do. “There is no place near Battle which can, with a due regard to the proprieties of language, be called a ‘dreadful precipice’ (_miserabile præceipitium vaste patens_), though, by comparing Malmesbury with the Monk of Battle, I think I have succeeded in identifying the locality of this ‘bad ditch.’[97] From all the probabilities of the case, it would seem that the flight and pursuit must have lain in a north-westerly direction, through that part of the district known as Mountjoy. Assuming this, the