METHOD OF COMPILATION 17 



original returns before him, and dissected them while he read 

 out the passages relating to the property of the landowner 

 whose possessions were being described. For instance, if it 

 were a question of enumerating the lands of the Count of 

 Mortain, in Buckinghamshire, the returns from the eighteen 

 hundreds of that county would be laid before him in a certain 

 order ; he would look through the first of these returns, and 

 extract therefrom the details of the count's estates, and dictate 

 them to the other clerk ; he would then deal with the return 

 for the next hundred in a similar way, and so on till all the 

 returns for the eighteen hundreds had passed under his eye ; 

 when he had finished with the Count of Mortain, he would 

 look for the estates of Earl Hugh (of Chester), whose name 

 follows that of the Count of Mortain in the Domesday Book 

 for Buckingham. The reason why it is thought that the 

 returns were dictated, not copied, is that the scribe almost in- 

 variably set the name of the hundred with which he was then 

 dealing in capital letters in the right-hand side of the column 

 he was writing ; (the only exceptions are the south-western 

 counties and Oxfordshire). In many cases the name of any 

 particular hundred varies very considerably. If the scribe had 

 once seen how the name of the hundred was spelt, whether 

 correctly or incorrectly, it is most probable he would have 

 continued to spell it in the same manner ; but as the spelling 

 varies, it is not unreasonable to think that he spelt it phoneti- 

 cally from dictation. 



It is obvious that such a method of procedure was especially 

 liable to mistakes, and we often find that particular estates, and 

 sometimes even all the possessions of a particular landowner, 

 were omitted in their proper places. In Oxfordshire, the 

 omission of the lands of William fitz Ansculf and Hascoius 

 Musard was apparently not discovered till the account of that 

 county was compiled ; the former was therefore written in at 

 at the foot of fol. 157 b. I, and the account of the latter's 

 property stretches across the foot of fols. 159 b. and 160 a. In 

 c 



