14 SPRING MEETING. 



enligliten them, lie invited such to place their knowledge at the 

 disposal of the Institution. The imderstanding of Domesday- 

 was the key that would unlock many a problem as to the social 

 condition of their ancestors, and throw much light on a subject 

 hitherto only glanced at superficially by their writers, namely, the 

 history of their Manors and Bartons. A splendid start had been 

 made by Mr. Michell Whitley in the last volume of their joiirnal, 

 but no one would be more ready than Mr. Whitley himself to 

 acknowledge that it was only a start. To thoroughly clear the 

 ground would take a strong committee, and give them years of 

 work, but work full of interest, and with a splendid result to 

 look forward to at the end. It was, at any rate, work which 

 must be done, if they were ever to have a history of their county 

 worth the name. Unless by some means they collected the straw, 

 it was useless complaining that their historians did not make the 

 bricks. The work would be laborious, but he hoped Cornishmen 

 were not so degenerate that they would shrink from the study of 

 a useful and interesting subject merely because of that. Mr. 

 Michell Whitley had given some helpful translations from the 

 Exeter Domesday, and some valuable tables, but what was 

 wanted in the first place was a copy of the original and not a 

 translation by any one however talented. A translation was 

 certainly easier reading to most of them than the original Latin, 

 but until the meaning of every technical term used was under- 

 stood, a translation was only calculated to mislead. As long as 

 men like Eyton, Hound, Ellis, Maitland, and Whitley could 

 translate the same passage in a different way, as long as they 

 could not agree as to how many acres there were in a hide, or 

 even how many units there were in a hundred, so long were 

 humbler scholars justified in asking for the original, that they 

 might at any rate not be led astray by the glamour that 

 surrounded any of those great scholars' names. He offered to 

 the Council a copy of a MS. in the University Library at 

 Cambridge, which, as far as he could ascertain, had never 

 hitherto been published. It was a part of the register of St. 

 Buryan College in the time of Dean Robert Knollys, 1473 to 

 1485. Mr. Peter then referred to the collection being made of 

 materials for a record of all known and existing mural paintings 

 in Cornish churches, and added that the results of their inquiry 



