Discovery of the Ing. Com. Cant.

5

Domesday students, knew nothing of this precious evidence, and remained therefore virtually unacquainted with the modus operandi of the Great Survey. The pages, we shall find, of the Inquisitio afford information that no one would have welcomed more eagerly than himself. Perhaps, therefore, it is not surprising that Mr. N. E. S. A. Hamilton, when editing this document for the Royal Society of Literature (1876), should have supposed that it had been overlooked till then, or that he was "the first to bring its importance to light" (p. iv.) It is, however, much to be regretted that Mr. De Gray Birch should have strenuously insisted that Webb (whose paper he actually names) and Kelham "appear to have been strangely ignorant of the true and important nature of this manuscript," and should have repeated this assertion after I had shown at the Domesday Commemoration (1886) that the honour of the discovery really belonged to Mr. P. C. Webb. One may claim that Webb should have his due, while gladly expressing gratitude to Mr. Hamilton for his noble edition of the Inquisitio, which has conferred on Domesday students an inestimable boon.6

The printing of the document in record type, the collation throughout with Domesday Book, and the appending of the Inquisitio Eliensis, edited from three different texts, represent an extraordinary amount of minute and wearisome labour. The result is a volume as helpful as it is indispensable to the scholar.

I propose in this paper to take up anew the subject, at the point where Mr. Hamilton has left it, to submit the text to scientific criticism, to assign it its weight in the scale of authority, and to explain its glossarial and its illustrative value for the construction and the contents of Domesday Book.

Athenæum, 1885, I. 472, 566-7; Domesday Book, 1887, p. 44. 5 Domesday Studies (1891), II. 488.

6 Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis. Cura N. E. S. A. Hamilton,

I. NATURE OF THE "INQ. COM. CANT."

Exact definition is needful at the outset in dealing with this document. The Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis, which is entered on fos. 76-113 of Tib. A. VI., must be carefully distinguished from the Inquisitio Eliensis on fos. 38-68. Mr. Hamilton doubted whether any one before him "had distinguished between" the two, but this, we have seen, was a mistake. The distinction however is all-important, the two documents differing altogether in character One would not think it necessary to distinguish them also from the so-called Liber Eliensis (which is not a survey at all) had not Mr. Eyton inadvertently stated that our document has been printed under the title of Liber Eliensis.

The Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis (hereafter styled "the I.C.C.") deals with the county of Cambridge alone, but, in that county, with the lands of all holders. The Inquisitio Eliensis (which I propose to style the I.E.") deals with several counties, but, in these counties, with the lands of the abbey alone. The latter was duly printed, with Domesday Book, by the Record Commission; the former remained in manuscript till printed by Mr. Hamilton. Mr. Hamilton describes his record at the outset as "the Original Return made by the Juratores of the county of Cambridge in obedience to the Conqueror's mandate, from which the Exchequer Domesday for that county was afterwards compiled by the King's secretaries," and as "the original source from which the Exchequer Domesday for that county was derived." Mr. Birch here again repeats the words, insisting "that we have in this very precious Cottonian MS. the original source from which the Exchequer Domesday of Cambridgeshire was compiled."8

Such a description is most unfortunate, being not only inaccurate but misleading. All that we are entitled to pre

Notes on Domesday (1877), reprinted 1880, p. 15.

The italics are his own, Domesday Book, p. 42. Cf. Domesday Studies, II. 486-7.

The Ing. Com. Cant. a Transcript

"

7

dicate of the document is that it is apparently a copy of the original returns from which Domesday Book was compiled. For "the original source of both we must look to the now missing returns of the jurors, the primary authority from which Domesday Book and the Inquisitio Com. Cant. are independently derived. This distinction is all-important, reducing, as it does, the Inquisitio from the rank of an "original" to that of a secondary authority on the same level with Domesday Book. Mr. Hamilton, like Mr. Webb before him, assigned the handwriting of the Inquisitio to about the close of the twelfth century. The copy of the returns which it contains, therefore, was made about a century later than the returns themselves.

The problem then that we have to solve is this: "Is the I.C.C. an actual transcript of these original returns, and if so, is it faithful?" I will not, like Mr. Hamilton, assume an affirmative, but will attempt an impartial enquiry.

The two paths which we must follow in turn to arrive at a just conclusion are (1) the construction of the I.C.C., (2) collation with the Inq. Eliensis. For I hope to show that the latter record must have been derived from the same source as the Inq. Com. Cant.

Following the first of these paths, we note at once that while Domesday Book arranges the Manors according to fiefs, the Inq. Com. Cant., on the contrary, arranges them by hundreds and townships. Its system is regular and simple. For every hundred it first enumerates the principal jurors who made the return, and then gives the return itself, arranged according to townships (ville). These townships are thus the units of which the Manors they contain are merely the component fractions. This is precisely what we should expect to find in the original returns, but it only creates a presumption; it does not afford a proof. For instance, it might be reasonably urged that these copies may

It is not even proved that the I.C.C. is copied from the original returns themselves. There is the possibility of a MS. between the two. See Addenda.

have omitted certain items in the returns, just as Domesday Book omitted others.

To reply to this objection, we must turn to the second path; that is to say, we must collate the Inquisitio Eliensis with the Inq. Com. Cant. I shall prove below that the latter cannot have been taken from the former, which only covers a portion of its field, and that, on the other hand, the former cannot have been taken from the latter, because the Inquisitio Eliensis is accurate in places where the Inq. Com. Cant. is in error. Consequently they must both have been derived independently from some third document. This being so, if we should find that their versions agree closely, we may fairly infer that each is intended to be a faithful reproduction of the above "third document." In other words, if neither version omits items which are given in the other, we are entitled to assume that the copy is in each case exhaustive, for two scribes working independently are not likely to have systematically omitted the same items from the document before them.

What then was the "third document" from which they both copied? Obviously it was either the original returns of the Domesday jurors, or a copy (exhaustive or not) of these returns. Now we cannot suppose that two scribes, working, as I have said, independently, would both have worked, not from the original returns themselves, but from a copy, and that the same copy of these returns—a copy, moreover, of the existence of which we have no evidence whatever. Moreover, in this hypothetical copy, there would, we may safely assert, have been some clerical errors. These would have duly re-appeared in both the Inquisitiones, and collation with Domesday Book would enable us to detect them. Yet in no single instance, though each of them contains errors, have I found a clerical error common to both. We are thus driven to the conclusion that in both these Inquisitiones we have copies of the actual returns made by the Domesday jurors.

One of the postulates in the above argument is that the

The "Inquisitiones" Compared

9

Ing. Com. Cant. and the Inq. Eliensis "agree closely" in their versions. Here is an instance in illustration10:

I.C.C.

Meldeburna pro x. sol[idis] se defendebat T.R.E. et modo pro viii. Et de his x. hidis tenet predictus abbas ii. hidas et Iam. virgam. v. carrucis est ibi terra. Una carruca et dimidia, et una hida et una virga in dominio, et dimidia carruca potest fieri. iii. carucæ villanis. vi. villani, ix. bordarii, iii. cotarii, dimidium molendinum de iii. solidis, et viii. denariis. Pratum v. carrucis. Pastura ad pecora villæ, ccc. oves iii. minus, xxxiiii. porci. Inter totum valet c. sol., et quando recepit totidem. T.R.E. vi. lib. Hæc terra jacet et jacuit in ecclesia sancte AEdel. de eli in dominio.

Et de his x. hidis tenet Wido de Reb' curt de rege, &ca., &ca.

I.E.

Meldeburne pro x. hidis se defendebat in tempore R.AED. et modo pro viii. Et de his x. hun[dredis] tenet abbas de eli ii. hidas et i. v[irgam]. v. carucis ibi

est terra. I. caruca et dimidia, et i. hida et dimidia, in dominio, et dimidia caruca potest fieri. iii. carucæ hominibus. vi. villani, ix. bordarii, iii. cotarii. Pratum v. carucis. i. molendinum de ii. solidis et viii. denariis. Pastura ad pecora villæ. oves ccc., iiies. minus, et xxxiiii. porci. Inter totum valet v. lib. Quando recepit v. lib. T.R.E. vi. lib. Hæc terra jacet et jacuit in ecclesia sancte AEdel' ely in dominio.

In eadem villa habet Guido de Raimbecurt de rege, &ca., &ca.

These extracts are typical and instructive. They leave, in the first place, no doubt upon the mind that both are versions of the same original. This, which proves my postulate, will be shown below to possess a further and important bearing. But while these versions closely agree, we notice (1) independent blunders, (2) slight variants in diction. As to blunders, we see that the I.C.C. has "sol[idis]" where the I.E. has the correct "hidis," while, conversely, the I.E. reads "hun[dredis]" where the I.C.C. has, rightly, "hidis." Again the I,C.C. allots to demesne an assessment of a hide and a virgate, but I.E. a hide and a half (ie. two virgates). Collation with Domesday Book confirms the former version. Conversely, the I.C.C.

10 These extracts are extended and punctuated to faciliate the comparison. Important extensions are placed within square brackets.