THE DOMESDAY SURVEY the foot of the first column on fo. 3 5^, and in the midst, apparently, of the fief of Richard de Tunbridge, there are found a few entries, occupying seven lines, which have no connection with that fief. They seem to have crept in from the return for Copthorne Hundred, from which the scribe was abstracting the entries relating to that fief. The process of rearrangement was a task of great difficulty, complicated by the fact that, for fiscal purposes, the Hundred was the recognized unit, while land which paid its ' geld ' as a portion of one Hundred, might, from the lord's standpoint, belong to a manor in another. This, as will be seen in the Surrey Survey, frequently involved a cross-reference, and even occasionally led to estates being overlooked, especially where there was a doubt as to which fief they belonged to. This is the explanation of the extra leaf inserted in the Surrey Survey to contain the entries of some lands belonging to Chertsey Abbey which had, in the first instance, been omitted. Other traces of the difficulties involved will be found on fo. 36, where the entry on Balham, which constituted the sole holding, in Surrey, of Geoffrey Orlateile, has been added, as an afterthought, in the margin, possibly because it had been held over on the ground that Geoffrey could not show by what right he held it. On the same folio an omitted manor of Walter Fitz Other has had to be inserted at the tail of Geoffrey de Mandeville's fief; Walter de Douai's land is entered without the usual heading ; and the third manor of Edward of Salisbury has had to be crowded in at the foot of the second column. The searching in- vestigation to which the Great Survey is now being subjected for the first time for the purpose of these County Histories, will doubtless reveal much that has hitherto remained obscure ; but there is no reason to suppose that even the keenest scrutiny will lessen our admir- ation for so vast an enterprise, or the gratitude we feel to those who have bequeathed us a unique possession. 293
