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THI

THE LINDSEY SURVEY

(1115-1118)

HIS "invaluable Survey," as Mr. Stevenson has termed it,' might be described as a miniature Domesday for each of the Wapentakes in the three trithings into which Lindsey was divided. For although drawn up, Wapentake by Wapentake, as is the Leicestershire Survey, Hundred by Hundred, the lands within each Wapentake described are grouped under the names of the holders of fiefs, instead of being entered Vill by Vill. It was doubtless compiled, like other surveys, in connexion with the assessment of the "geld.""

Remarkable from a palæographic standpoint, as well as from the nature of its contents, the record, which is found in a Cottonian MS. (Claud. C. 5), has been singularly unfortunate in its editors. As Mr. Greenstreet truly observed :

The indefatigable Hearne, seeing that the manuscript related to a very ancient period of our history, and recognising its great importance, printed it in the Appendix to his "Liber Niger," but he does not appear to have properly examined either the question of the date of the writing, or the internal evidence As a natural consequence of his superficial examination, he associates it wrongly with the reign of Henry II.

Stapleton, of course, knew better than this, and assigned

1 English Historical Review, v. 96.

"I have discussed above (pp. 73-77) the bearing of its evidence on the problem of Domesday assessment, so need not recur to the subject here.

the survey at one time to circ. 1108, but in his Rotuli Scaccarii Normannia to 1106-1120. It was subsequently investigated and analysed with great care by Mr. Eyton, whose note-books, now in the British Museum, show that he adopted the sound method of comparing it in detail with Domesday Book. After his death Mr. Chester Waters issued (1883) an annotated translation of the text, with an introduction, analysis, etc., in which the place-names were carefully identified, and the same system of comparison with Domesday adopted."

It is, unfortunately, necessary to explain that Mr. Waters in the table of contents described his translation as "from the Cotton MS., Claudius C. 5," and wrote on the opposite page :

This MS. engaged the attention of Thomas Hearne, the antiquary, who has printed it amongst the additaments to his edition. of the Liber Niger Scaccarii; but Hearne was one of those industrious but uncritical antiquaries who had no conception of the duties of an editor of the importance of accuracy.

Knowing the high opinion entertained of Mr. Waters's works, I accepted his translation in all good faith as "from the Cotton MS." and was, I confess, not a little startled to discover from Mr. Greenstreet's facsimiles that it was made not from the Cotton MS., but from that inaccurate edition by Hearne, which Mr. Waters had mentioned only to denounce. On fo. 4b a whole line, containing three entries, was accidentally omitted by Hearne, and is, consequently, absent also from Mr. Waters' version. On collating the two, however, I found, to my great surprise, that matters were even worse than this, and that Hearne's text was far less inaccurate than Mr. Waters' own, the erroneous figures found in the latter being almost

Vol. II. p. xcvi.

3 See note 31 below. A Roll of the Owners of Land in the parts of Lindsey. ("Reprinted from the Associated Architectural Societies Reports and Papers").

In consideration of which he received a pension on the Civil List

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always correctly given by the "uncritical" Hearne. As for the version given by Mr. Waters, even in the very first Wapentake, there are three serious errors, five carucates being given as three, nine as seven, and eleven as two! And for Bradley Wapentake (p. 27), his figures are so erroneous that, according to him, "Radulf Meschin alone had 42 cars. 6 bovs. in this Wapentake," though his real holding was only 15 cars. 3 bovs. With another class of resultant errors I shall have to deal below.

To the enterprise of Mr. Greenstreet scholars were indebted for an édition de luxe of the record in facsimile, which made its appearance shortly after the treatise of Mr Waters. Unfortunately no attempt was made in the appended literal translation to identify the names of places or persons, while such a word as "[ap]pendiciis," which occasionally appears in the survey, is mistaken for a placename "Pendicus." The book enjoys, however, the great advantage of an index.

The identification of places and of persons in Mr. Water's treatise shows extraordinary knowledge; but both Mr Eyton and Mr. Waters had the provoking habit of making important assertions without giving their authority. I expressed a wish in the Academy, at the time, that Mr. Waters would give us some clue as to his sources of information, but as he did not think fit to do so, we have to test his statements as best we can for ourselves. Now we learn from him on p. 36 that "Walter fitz William," a tenant at South Willingham, was "brother of Simon mentioned above," namely of "Simon fitz William (ancestor to the Lords Kyme)." This is impressive until we discover that the actual words in the survey (as indeed in Hearne's text) are "Walt[erius] fil[ius] Walt[eri]i" (fo. 11 b.) To an expert such a test as this will prove significant enough. But to turn from an actual misreading of the text to cases in which are incorporated interlineations, not part of the

7 There is a similar error on fo. 13, where the "William fitz Aubrey' of Mr. Waters proves to be "filius Albrede" (not Alberici).

original text, but written in later times, we find Mr. Waters-like other antiquaries who had followed Hearne's text-stating that "Ranulf [Meschin] is twice styled in the Roll Earl of Lincoln, but there is no record of his creation, and no other authority for possession of the earldom" (p. 8). The difficulty vanishes when we discover that this supposed style was a mere interlineation made by a much later hand. So again we read on p. 30:

Richard, Earl [of Chester], has 6 cars. in Barnetby-le-Wold, where [William], the constable of Chester, is his tenant [as his father was Earl Hugh's in Domesday].

But on turning to Mr. Greenstreet's facsimiles, we find that the survey had nothing about "the constable of Chester," the words "constabularia [sic] Cestrie" being only a faint interlineation by a later hand.

And even where a reference to the true text does not at once dispose of the matter, these statements of Mr. Waters are, on other grounds, open at times to question. He assumes, for instance, that Hugh fitz Ranulf, who occurs as a landowner in the survey, was a younger son of Ranulf Meschin, afterwards Earl of Chester (p. 12). No such son would seem to be known; and this assumption, moreover, does violence to chronology. For the pedigree it involves is this:

Now William de Roumare was not old enough to claim his inheritance from the Kiug till 1122, and his half brother, Ranulf, was some years younger than he was, as the words of Orderic imply in 1140. Consequently Hugh, the youngest brother, can have been only a boy in 1212.

8 Hearne duly prints it as an interlineation.