for re-printing',[1] and by Mr. H. B. Wheatley in his 'Domesday Bibliography.'[2] Exactly what bearing it could have on the subject of the survey is not explained by either of them. Finally we find Dr. Holdsworth in his History of English Law (1900) adding further confusion by classing the Cheshire 'Domesday' with surveys and extents like the Boldon Book and Domesday of St. Paul's.[3]
Dr. James Tait, in his edition of the Domesday Survey of Cheshire,[4] after mentioning the lack, in the case of Cheshire, of the help afforded in other counties from inquests of service, feudal aids, &c., proceeds:
The so-called 'Domesday Roll' of the palatinate which to some extent provides similar assistance, is unfortunately only extant in part. … All or nearly all, the light that can be thrown upon the Domesday survey from this roll … is digested in Ormerod and Helsby's history. …
Probably Dr. Tait had not then noticed Ormerod's special investigations.
We must now turn back to Ormerod, who, when working at his History of Cheshire early in the nineteenth century, obtained access to the manuscripts of Earl Grosvenor at Eaton Hall, near Chester, in which he discovered a clue to the missing roll. He states:
The library of Eaton … contains … (among other Cheshire MSS.) one volume of Collections, marked xxi. 5 [now 28], containing a transcript of a large portion of the celebrated and lost record, distinguished by the name of the Cheshire Domesday … no other regular transcript of any portion has been hitherto discovered. … The contents are of a description very different from that of the Domesday Book. …[5]
In the preface, dated 1819, to his History, Ormerod gives further information of his discoveries:
[The palatinate] has a record of its own (on the nature of which, previous to the author's late discovery of a considerable portion thereof, many vague surmises have been indulged), the Rotulus qui vocatur Domesday, so called not from any similarity in its nature to that of the celebrated Survey, but from its equal importance as decisive and irrefragable evidence. It is described at full in another part of the work,[6] and was simply a roll, or series of rolls, in which grants, fines, quitclaims, compositions, &c., were entered at the time when they were made,[7] and the original roll was kept in the custody of the Clericus Com. Cest. or the secretary of the local
- ↑ Domesday Studies (1888), ii. 510–11.
- ↑ Ibid. p. 672.
- ↑ Hist. of Eng. Law, ii. 127 n.
- ↑ Cheth. Soc. lxxv. 2. Dr. Tait refers only to Helsby's edition of Ormerod's Cheshire and does not mention the Memoir.
- ↑ Hist. of Cheshire, 2nd ed., ii. 838 n. Further details are given.
- ↑ This is not so.
- ↑ This is by no means true, as old charters were often read and enrolled years after they had been granted.
