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I have told you that the Topographer’s worst troubles begin 
when he first cuts loose from Domesday ; then is the time to try 
his mettle, and labour he must if he will show for the first time 
the line of lords of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Charters, 
records and grants must be searched everywhere and always, and 
the Fates’ rewards will come quite capriciously and irrespectively 
of the labour bestowed in the search. What the Topographer’s 
resources are I may now shortly detail from a communication on 
the subject by a well-known antiquary which was read to the 
members assembled in this Institution well nigh fifty years ago. 
“Tf there is something which cannot be known, there is very 
much also that is open to everyone in the written records of the 
past, and very much also that is open to him in an easier manner, 
the original records having been scrutinized by the laborious 
antiquaries of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and made 
to yield what they contain concerning the more eminent persons 
of our nation, all of whom stood in the relation of lord to one 
or more of these feudal supremacies. In fact the lines of those 
who were tenants in capite, those who held the great feudalities 
immediately of the crown, as hereditary dignities usually inhered 
in them, have been the subject of research by those who have 
written on the descent of the hereditary dignities of the realm, 
and in the main the results have been so complete and successful 
that little remains for the Topographer but to adopt what has 
been prepared for him, and happy is he if he can sometimes 
correct a date or supply a new name. Thus much with respect 
to the higher order of feudal lords; and what is said of the 
sources of information respecting them, may, in a qualified manner 
be said of those who held of them large tracts and divers vills 
in the position of mesne lords ; for these, the men of the second 
layer of the population of England, often became the possessors of 
hereditary dignities, and, like the chief lords, the subjects of 
research to the writers whose subject was professedly genealogical. 
But the case is different when we descend to the owners of single 
