Note 35 — PART I TERRITORIAL STUDIES

The first of these conclusions has a special bearing on the theories propounded by Mr Pell with so much ingenuity and learning.35 I have shown, in an essay criticizing these theories,36 that the case of Clifton, to which Mr Pell attached so much importance,37 is nothing, in all probability, but one of Domesday's blunders, of which I gave, in that essay, other instances. So, too, in the case of his own Manor of Wilburton, Mr Pell accepted without question the reading 'six ploughlands', as representing the 'primary return',38 although that reading is only found in the most corrupt of the three versions of the Inquisitio Eliensis, while the two better versions (B and C texts) agree with Domesday Book, and with the abbreviated return at the end of the A text itself (Tib. A. VI fo. 67, b, 1), in giving the ploughlands as seven. Really it is nothing but waste of time to argue from a reading which is only found in one out of five MSS., and that one the most corrupt.