A HISTORY OF ESSEX taken. The original idea appears to have been to compile the volume in fasciculi of 8 folios each, the contents of which alone should appear on the recto of the first folio. When these fasciculi were bound to- gether to form the volume, the list of their contents would become use- less and would therefore be deleted. But it was soon found that this plan would not work in practice, as the fiefs could not be adjusted to fasciculi of 8 folios. The idea was consequently abandoned, and reliance placed only on the list for the whole county which covers the recto of the first folio in the case of all three of the eastern counties. It would be imagined from this list on the opening page of the volume that the survey of Essex closes with what it terms ' Invasiones.' But these, on the contrary, are followed by a long separate survey of what is styled ' The Hundred of Colchester.' The position here assigned to Colchester is well worthy of notice, for it contrasts with that accorded to Ipswich and to Norwich. The latter, followed by Yarmouth and Thetford, is surveyed at the end of the first division of the king's land in Norfolk (fos. 116-8), while Ipswich is found at the end of all the king's land in Suffolk (fo. 290). But the three towns have this in com- mon ; they are all accorded separate treatment. I shall now therefore add a short separate introduction to that survey of Colchester which stands altogether apart from that of the rest of the county. COLCHESTER Speaking at the Colchester Congress of the Archaeological Institute, in 1876, Professor Freeman called attention to the rich field of study presented by the lengthy survey of Colchester in Domesday Book. 1 To this survey I subsequently devoted a series of papers in the Antiquary (1882), and it is also referred to more than once in Professor Maitland's volume, Domesday Book and Beyond. It is hardly possible, indeed, to accord it adequate treatment in the space here available, more especially as the text is corrupt and some of the entries extremely difficult. A glance at the Domesday map will show that the ' Hundred of Colchester,' if coterminous, as it doubtless was, with the present borough, comprised a considerable area. Three terms are used in the survey for what it calls Colchester hundret, civitas and burgus. One must not linger over these terms, tempting though it be to do so ; but I will briefly state that I hold the burgus to represent the walled enclosure, 108 acres in area, the ' burh ' repaired by Edward the Elder, where it ' tobroken was,' in 92 1* Civitas, on the other hand, is a difficult term, one of those to which Domesday students have been apt to attach, in my opinion, too definite a meaning. Mr. Freeman, who was always eager to discover an exactness and a significance in a terminology which re- joiced in being free from both, spoke of Domesday as a document ' in 1 Archttohgical Journal, vol. xxxiv. 67-70. z For the ' due domus in burgo ' appurtenant to Greenstead and the ' ii domus in burgo ' which formed part of the endowment of St. Peter's must have been within the walls. 414
