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DOMESDAY SURVEY FOR the study and illustration of the Northamptonshire portion of the Conqueror's great survey, we possess some peculiar advan- tages. A Peterborough Abbey manuscript in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries contains a list of the county Hun- dreds, with the number of hides in each, these being severally classified. In a paper devoted to this document, which, so far as is at present known, is absolutely unique, I showed that it was really a ' geld '-roll older than the Domesday Survey, drawn up in connection with that land-tax commonly known as the Danegeld, but in Domesday almost in- variably styled ' geld ' simply.^ To the same manuscript we are in- debted for a list of the knights of Peterborough, that is, of the abbey's tenants who held by knight-service, together with the lands they held. This ' descriptio ' is of much service for the illustration of Domesday.^ Lastly, in what I have styled ' the Northamptonshire Survey,' we have a corrupt, but important document, which gives us the tenure of estates in the county about the middle of the twelfth century, and, being drawn up Hundred by Hundred, enables us to trace clearly enough the Hun- dreds existing at the time of the Conquest, which we could not have done without it, as the names of the Hundreds in Domesday are, for the Northamptonshire portion, untrustworthy and misleading. Although the object of this survey was, doubtless, the right assessment of the ' geld,' its entries throw a welcome light on the descent of the local fiefs in a period of peculiar darkness.' The features of interest in the Domesday Survey differ widely according to the county. In Northamptonshire there is a marked absence of those incidental entries bearing on personal, political, or legal history, in which some portions of the great survey are comparatively rich. On the other hand, thanks to the auxiliary information afforded by the sources mentioned above, it is possible to obtain important results from the Domesday assessments of the manors, and to identify the tenants and undertenants named in the famous record in more cases and with more precision than is feasible in some counties. There is much ' See * The Northamptonshire Geld-roU ' {Feudal England, pp. 147-156). ^ See 'The Knights of Peterborough' {Ibid., pp. 156-168). ' 'The Northamptonshire Survey' {Ibid., pp. 215-224), and pp. 357-389 below). 257