DOMESDAY SURVEY 



H 



ERTFORDSHIRE is one of a group of counties which are 

 surveyed at considerable length in Domesday Book. With 

 the surveys of Bedfordshire and of Cambridgeshire to the north, 

 and of Middlesex to the south, its own has certain points in 

 common, which render it desirable to keep them in view while engaged 

 upon its study. Essex, to the east, is surveyed in that other volume of 

 Domesday which is compiled on a different system, and affords there- 

 fore little facility for comparison. It must be remembered that in 

 Domesday Book we have only a compilation from the original returns 

 for Hertfordshire, not the actual returns themselves. These returns 

 were more extensive than those which are preserved in our great record, 

 and were drawn up on a system altogether different. A separate return 

 was made for each Hundred of the county, at the head of which were 

 placed the names of the sworn residents by whom it was made. And 

 the vills within the Hundred were surveyed one by one. With these 

 returns the compilers of our record dealt in drastic fashion. They left 

 out the names of the jurors ; they cut down the contents of the returns 

 by omitting certain classes of information ; and they then arranged all 

 that was left under the names of tenants-in-chief, breaking up the 

 geographical arrangement and considering only the tenure of the 

 estates. 1 



For Hertfordshire we are fortunately afforded a glimpse of these 

 original returns quite exceptional in its nature. In response, as I hold, 

 to a writ of the king, the abbey of Ely made use of these returns, which 

 were still in existence at the time, to draw up a list of its possessions 

 which gave their contents in full. 2 As the abbey happened to possess 

 three manors in Hertfordshire Hatfield, Hadham, and Kelshall we 

 obtain for these manors the full contents of the returns, 3 and are able to 

 compare them with the information given in Domesday Book. I print 

 below, to illustrate the difference, a translation of the full return for 

 Hatfield in the Inquisitio Eliensis by the side of Mr. Ragg's translation of 

 the Domesday entry for the manor : 



1 For fuller details of this process see the paper on ' Domesday Book ' in my Feudal England. 



* Ibid. 



* They are printed in the ' Additamenta ' volume of the Record Commission's Domesday Book 

 (iii. 50910), and in Hamilton's Inqmsitio Comifatus Cantabrigiensis, pp. 124-5. 



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