Note 11 — PART I TERRITORIAL STUDIES (continued 2)

After careful examination, I propound the solution that this survey was originally made under Henry I, and was subsequently corrected here and there, to bring the entries up to date, down to the days of Henry II. The late transcriber, to whom we owe the survey in its present form, has incorporated these additions and corrections in a single text with the most bewildering result. We trace exactly the same process in the Red Book of the Exchequer. In the Black Book the later additions that were made to the barons' cartae of 1166 are distinguished by the difference in handwriting. But in the Red Book these interpolations are found transcribed in the same hand as the genuine original returns. To the uninitiated this has been the cause of no small confusion. So, too, in the above list of Peterborough knights (p. 157), the very first entry, made temp. Hen. I, has been carried on by a later hand to the time of Henry III. But there Stapleton, who transcribed the list, carefully discriminated between the two.11 It is probable that the lists of Abingdon knights, published in the Abingdon cartulary, are rendered untrustworthy in places from the same cause of error.