DOMESDAY SURVEY H ERTFORDSHIRE is one of a group of counties which are surveyed at considerable length in Domesday Book. With the surveys of Bedfordshire and of Cambridgeshire to the north, and of Middlesex to the south, its own has certain points in common, which render it desirable to keep them in view while engaged upon its study. Essex, to the east, is surveyed in that other volume of Domesday which is compiled on a different system, and affords there- fore little facility for comparison. It must be remembered that in Domesday Book we have only a compilation from the original returns for Hertfordshire, not the actual returns themselves. These returns were more extensive than those which are preserved in our great record, and were drawn up on a system altogether different. A separate return was made for each Hundred of the county, at the head of which were placed the names of the sworn residents by whom it was made. And the vills within the Hundred were surveyed one by one. With these returns the compilers of our record dealt in drastic fashion. They left out the names of the jurors ; they cut down the contents of the returns by omitting certain classes of information ; and they then arranged all that was left under the names of tenants-in-chief, breaking up the geographical arrangement and considering only the tenure of the estates. 1 For Hertfordshire we are fortunately afforded a glimpse of these original returns quite exceptional in its nature. In response, as I hold, to a writ of the king, the abbey of Ely made use of these returns, which were still in existence at the time, to draw up a list of its possessions which gave their contents in full. 2 As the abbey happened to possess three manors in Hertfordshire Hatfield, Hadham, and Kelshall we obtain for these manors the full contents of the returns, 3 and are able to compare them with the information given in Domesday Book. I print below, to illustrate the difference, a translation of the full return for Hatfield in the Inquisitio Eliensis by the side of Mr. Ragg's translation of the Domesday entry for the manor : 1 For fuller details of this process see the paper on ' Domesday Book ' in my Feudal England.
- Ibid.
- They are printed in the ' Additamenta ' volume of the Record Commission's Domesday Book
(iii. 50910), and in Hamilton's Inqmsitio Comifatus Cantabrigiensis, pp. 124-5. 263
