been attached to another membrane at the foot, and possibly also at the head, and although the indications of this as regards no. 1 are less distinct, this membrane may have been cut down at some date. These two fragments are not portions of a Plea Roll, the entries on which do not take this form. The style of enrolment is similar to many of those undoubtedly extracted from the 'Domesday' Roll by the herald in 1580, and we believe that they both once formed a portion of the lost roll.
The number of enrolments which we can trace with fair certainty from all these sources to the 'Domesday' Roll is not far short of 150.
The theory we have come to is that the roll was perhaps more or less intact in 1580, but that the earlier portions of it had become detached before 1638. This would account for the Shakerley collector copying nothing from it of an earlier date than about 1269. He did, however, see these two still extant membranes (part of the earlier portion), one or both of which had got among the bundles of fines and, there remaining, escaped the fate between 1638 and 1647 of what was left of the roll. Helsby suggests that the original may have been lent to the heralds and so perished in the fire of London,[1] but it was known to have disappeared earlier than that, as Dugdale had heard of the loss of the document from William Vernon, to whom he writes, on 23 February 1647/8:
It is great pitty that the Roll wch. was called Domesday for Cheshire is imbecilled. Is that abstract of it wch. you mention only of part or of all of it? For had you but a short touch of the particulars wch. were in it by way of abstract, it would give you much light. Mr. Cambden[2] in Cheshire, speaking of the Barons of Malpas, mentions it in the margin.[3]
Vernon's letter to Dugdale is not available, but we find a note by him that 'this booke of Domesdaie was imbezilled in the tyme of Birkenhead, recorder of Chester, as it is commonly affirmed',[4] and we can gather that he had repeated this to Dugdale when referring to the abstracts in his possession.
Sir Peter Leycester, in his Historical Antiquities, book 2, Cheshire, published in 1672, but dealing with documents collected by him over a long period of years, has three references. In his account of Barterton,[5] he quotes an extract from an entry in 'the roll of the ancient chartes called Doomesday, anciently remaining among the records at Chester but now lost and taken away'. Under Mobberley[6] he quotes an enrolment 'a copy of
- ↑ Ormerod, Hist, of Cheshire, 2nd ed., i. xli n.
- ↑ See, for instance, Cough's ed., ii. 422. But, like the others, Dugdale misapprehends the roll, as Camden's reference is to Domesday Book proper.
- ↑ Hamper, Life of Dugdale, p. 211.
- ↑ Dodsworth MS. lxxv, fo. 67.
- ↑ Loc. cit. p. 220.
- ↑ Loc. cit. p. 316.
