Note 6 — PART I TERRITORIAL STUDIES (continued 2)

Knowing the high opinion entertained of Mr Waters' works,6 I accepted his translation in all good faith as 'from the Cotton MS.' and was, I confess, not a little startled to discover from Mr Greenstreet's facsimiles that it was made not from the Cotton MS., but from that inaccurate edition by Hearne, which Mr Waters had mentioned only to denounce. On fo. 4b a whole line, containing three entries, was accidentally omitted by Hearne, and is, consequently, absent also from Mr Waters' version. On collating the two, however, I found, to my great surprise, that matters were even worse than this, and that Hearne's text was far less inaccurate than Mr Waters' own, the erroneous figures found in the latter being almost always correctly given by the 'uncritical' Hearne. As for the version given by Mr Waters, even in the very first Wapentake, there are three serious errors, five carucates being given as three, nine as seven, and eleven as two! And for Bradley Wapentake (p. 27), his figures are so erroneous that, according to him, 'Radulf Meschin alone had 42 cars. 6 bovs. in this Wapentake', though his real holding was only fifteen cars. three bovs. With another class of resultant errors I shall have to deal below.