xiv PREFACE 



and cannot be appreciated at their proper value unless these 

 questions are constantly borne in mind. Each question, or 

 group of questions, is therefore taken as the subject of a 

 separate chapter. But Domesday Book deals incidentally with 

 a few matters that were not mentioned in the questions 

 addressed to the Cambridgeshire jurors, and such matters have 

 been treated in the place they would logically occupy. Thus, 

 while the jurors were asked, "What is the name of the 

 mansio ? " and such question affords opportunity for dealing 

 with the various terms that were used to denote areas of local 

 administration they were asked no questions about the 

 hundreds and the shires ; but these terms also denote areas 

 of local administration, and would therefore be logically 

 treated in connection with the vill and the manor. Similarly, 

 the church is treated as one of the appurtenances of the manor. 

 The answers to these questions bear a great general 

 resemblance, but vary in details of phraseology ; a study of 

 these variations often throws light on the nature of the 

 institutions into which inquiry was being made. 



Above all, I have tried to make Domesday Book its own 

 interpreter, and to exhaust its evidence and that of its 

 subsidiary documents, before having recourse to evidence of 

 other periods. This book is therefore a study of existing 

 institutions, rather than an inquiry into their history. 



On one point do I beg lenient judgment. It may be 

 found that some of the figures I have ventured to print are 

 slightly inaccurate ; but a professional man is subject to con- 

 tinual interruptions, and I have had scarcely an hour for this 



