METHOD OF COMPILATION 13 



grouping these three shires with Middlesex and Buckingham. 

 In this way Mr. Eyton's nine circuits could be reduced to 

 seven. 



A document in Dugdale's Monasticon 1 gives the names of 

 the Commissioners who visited Worcester and the western 

 counties. For a long time there had been a dispute as to the 

 rights of Worcester Abbey over certain estates in the posses- 

 sion of the Abbey of Evesham, which was eventually tried in 

 a shire moot, over which the Bishop of Coutances was specially 

 sent to preside. The result of this trial was communicated by 

 the bishop to Remigius, Bishop of Lincoln, Henry of Ferrars, 

 Walter Giffard, and Adam fitz Hubert, brother of Eudo the 

 Steward, 2 who in another document are described as the Com- 

 missioners who " came to inquire into the counties ; " 3 and it 

 is noteworthy that none of these were landowners in Worcester- 

 shire. 4 From the writ addressed by the Conqueror to Arch- 

 bishop Lanfranc in the last year of his reign, ordering him to 

 make the return which has come down to us as the Inquisitio 

 Eliensis, it would appear that the Bishops of Winchester and 

 Coutances were the heads of the Domesday Commission for 

 Cambridgeshire and the East-Midland circuit. 5 



When the Commissioners had been appointed to their 

 various circuits, they would visit them county by county. The 

 Cambridgeshire Inquest shows how their proceedings were 

 conducted. There was evidently a meeting of the whole shire 

 a shire moot at which would be present the sheriff, the 

 barons (those who held direct from the King) and their 

 French sub-tenants, and all those who owed suit to the 

 hundred moot, and the priest, the reeve, and six villans from 

 every vill, and these upon oath gave the information the Com- 

 missioners required. It is from the fact that all the information 

 given in Domesday Book is the result of an inquiry upon oath, 

 that Sir Frederick Pollock suggests that the proper title to be 



1 Vol. i. 602. 2 /</., 601. 3 ib. 



4 V, C. H. Wor., J. 246. 5 F. -., 134. 



