A HISTORY OF DEVONSHIRE 



collectors' accounts, had copies made of the already completed Exchequer 

 digests for these two counties, while for Devonshire, Cornwall, and Somerset- 

 shire he had his digest made from the original returns. If Reginald de 

 Valletorta was the official employed, it is probable that being a chief-tenant of 

 the count of Mortain, he made it at the count's instance, and that it was 

 made for reference in the west before the returns were dispatched to 

 Winchester. 



In tabulating the returns from the counties of Devon, Cornwall, and 

 Somerset, several assistants were evidently employed. One of these, Richard 

 by name, has in several places put himself in evidence. At the foot of 

 fol. 316 he has written: 'Richard wrote the above' [h. scfpsit Ricardus). 

 On fol. 414, between ' Ruald has a manor called' and ' Hanecheforda ' he has 

 inserted : 'Thus far R. has written ' {Usq : hue scfpsit R.). Several times at 

 the end of a fief the word ' Finished ' {Consummatum est) is found, as on 

 fols. 209^, 370^, 387/^, 474^, and 494^. Once (fol. 490) : ' Finished up to 

 here ' ; but there is nothing to indicate that all these notes were made by the 

 same hand, for it is certain that more than one scribe was employed. One 

 uses ^, the Runic contraction for el ; another writes it &, and even writes 

 ' hab & ' ; and hence it has been inferred, though apparently without suffi- 

 cient reason, that one was a Saxon and another a Norman. There is also 

 evidence of a supervisor who has added the word ' Verification ' {Probatio) in 

 the margin of fol. 317, and to whose care is no doubt due the occasional 

 belated entry of a manor which had been accidentally omitted in dealing with 

 the hundred to which it belonged, and the, not infrequent correction of names 

 and numbers. In working, the first scribe would take the roll of one 

 hundred, say for instance Hairidge, and extract from it all the estates belong- 

 ing to one baron, say Baldwin the sheriff, whilst another scribe would take 

 the roll returned from another hundred, say Wonford, and extract from it the 

 estates belonging to another baron, say the count of Mortain. This done 

 they would then exchange rolls, and thus the sequence of these two hundreds 

 would be interchanged in the booklets of these two barons. The same inter- 

 change of the hundred sequence would again be in evidence whenever two 

 scribes were simultaneously at work upon any two hundreds. Judging there- 

 fore by the sequence of hundreds we infer that the extracting was carried on 

 by two scribes or by two or more sets of two each.^ In the case of Coldridge, 

 Ermington, and Stanborough hundreds, as also in the case of Hairidge, 

 Wonford, and Hemyock,^ the variations of sequence are more complicated. 

 Perhaps a third scribe or the supervisor took a turn in the work of extracting. 

 The handwriting and colour of the ink on fol. 153^ and 436/^ are different 

 from the rest of the MS. 



It has been generally taken for granted that when the returns from the 

 hundreds had been digested in the Exeter Book, that volume was forwarded 

 to Winchester together with the original returns, where a further process of 

 editing took place, resulting in the Exchequer text as we now have it. But 

 for this supposition I cannot find a particle of evidence ; whereas it is clear 

 that parts of the Exeter Book were taken from the Exchequer Book. These 

 parts of the latter must therefore have been made first. No doubt the 



' See Mr. Whale's paper in Trans. Devon Assoc, xxviii, 391, and remarks thereon, ibid, xxxiii, 583. 

 ' Trans. Devon Assoc, xxxiii, 583. 



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