THE LINDSEY SURVEY
(1115-18)
This 'invaluable Survey', as Mr Stevenson has termed it,[1]
might be described as a miniature Domesday for each of the Wapentakes in the three trithings into which Lindsey was divided. For although drawn up, Wapentake by Wapentake, as is the Leicestershire Survey, Hundred by Hundred, the lands within each Wapentake described are grouped under the names of the holders of fiefs, instead of being entered Vill by Vill. It was doubtless compiled, like other surveys, in connection with the assessment of the 'geld'.[2]
Remarkable from a palaeographic standpoint, as well as from the nature of its contents, the record, which is found in a Cottonian MS. (Claud. C. 5), has been singularly unfortunate in its editors. As Mr Greenstreet truly observed:
The indefatigable Hearne, seeing that the manuscript related to a very ancient period of our history, and recognizing its great importance, printed it in the Appendix to his 'Liber Niger', but he does not appear to have properly examined either the question of the date of the writing, or the internal evidence.... As a natural consequence of his superficial examination, he associates it wrongly with the reign of Henry II.
Stapleton, of course, knew better than this, and assigned the survey at one time to circ. 1108,[3] but in his Rotuli Scaccarii Normanniæ[4] to 1106-20. It was subsequently investigated and analysed with great care by Mr Eyton, whose note-books, now in the British Museum, show that he adopted the sound method of comparing it in detail with Domesday Book. After his death Mr Chester Waters issued (1883) an annotated translation of the text, with an introduction, analysis, etc., in which the place-names were carefully identified, and the same system of comparison with Domesday adopted.[5]
It is, unfortunately, necessary to explain that Mr Waters in the table of contents described his translation as 'from the Cotton MS., Claudius C. 5', and wrote on the opposite page: