Note 4 — PART I TERRITORIAL STUDIES

It is certain, however, that Mr Freeman, most ardent of Domesday students, knew nothing of this precious evidence, and remained therefore virtually unacquainted with the modus operandi of the Great Survey. The pages, we shall find, of the Inquisitio afford information that no one would have welcomed more eagerly than himself. Perhaps, therefore, it is not surprising that Mr N. E. S. A. Hamilton, when editing this document for the Royal Society of Literature (1876), should have supposed that it had been overlooked till then, or that he was 'the first to bring its importance to light' (p. vi). It is, however, much to be regretted that Mr De Gray Birch should have strenuously insisted that Webb (whose paper he actually names) and Kelham 'appear to have been strangely ignorant of the true and important nature of this manuscript',4 and should have repeated this assertion5 after I had shown at the Domesday Commemoration (1886) that the honour of the discovery really belonged to Mr P. C. Webb. One may claim that Webb should have his due, while gladly expressing gratitude to Mr Hamilton for his noble edition of the Inquisitio, which has conferred on Domesday students an inestimable boon.6