Note 31 — PART I TERRITORIAL STUDIES

Here the Inquisitio Eliensis version shows us that the estate had two divisions held by different tenures. Three virgates the sokemen were not free to sell; the other three they might sell, but if they did, 'predictus abbas semper socham habuit'.31 The two divisions of the estate are confused in the other versions. But all three of these correspond so exactly that we are driven to assign the error to the original returns themselves. In that case the compiler (or compilers) of the I.E. will have corrected the original return from his own knowledge of the facts, which knowledge, I shall show, he certainly possessed.