The Inquisitio Eliensis is a document of the same kind with the Exeter Domesday; relating to the property of the Monastery of Ely recorded afterwards in the two volumes of the Domesday Survey (p. xiv).
From this it would seem that Ellis believed the Inquisitio, at any rate, to be previous to Domesday Book, but he practically left its origin altogether in doubt.
Sixty years later (1876) the Inquisitio was published anew, but without any further solution of the points in question being offered.[217] For this edition three MSS. were collated, with praiseworthy and infinite pains, by Mr N. E. S. A. Hamilton. Taking for his text, like Ellis, the Cottonian MS. Tib. A. VI, which he distinguished as A, he gave in footnotes the variants found in the MSS. at Trinity College, Cambridge, viz.: O. 2, 41 (which he termed B), and O. 2, 1 (which he distinguished as C). In Mr Hamilton's opinion (p. xiv) the 'C' text 'appears to have been derived from the "B" MS. rather than the Cottonian' ('A'). From this opinion, it will be seen, I differ wholly.
A careful analysis of the three texts has satisfied me beyond question that while C is the most accurate in detail, it is marred by a peculiar tendency to omission on the part of its scribe. This, indeed, is its distinctive feature. Now B cannot be derived from C, because it supplies the latter's omissions. On the other hand, C cannot be derived from B, because it corrects, throughout, B's inaccuracies. Consequently they are independent. More difficult to determine is the genesis of A, the worst of the three texts; but as it virtually reproduces all the inaccuracies found in B (besides containing many fresh ones), without correcting any, it can only be inferred that B was its source. Thus we have on the one hand C, and, on the other B (with its offspring A), derived independently from some common source. And this conclusion agrees well with the fact that a long catalogue of lands abstracted from the House of Ely is found in C, but not in A or B,[218] and with the circumstance that the famous rubric ('Hic subscribitur inquisitio'), which heads the inquisition in A and B, is placed by C at the end of the lists of jurors.[219]
Starting from this conclusion, let us now proceed to ask, what was the document from which B and C copied independently? Clearly, it was not Domesday Book, for outside the eastern counties they record the returns in full, like the Inq. Com. Cant. itself. Were they then taken from the original returns, or at least from the copy of those returns in the Inq. Com. Cant.? This point can only be determined by close analysis of the variants; if we find B and C containing occasionally the same errors and peculiarities, although copied independently, it follows that the document from which they both copied must have contained those same errors and peculiarities. Let us take the case of Papworth. The right reading, as given both in Domesday and the Inq. Com. Cant., I have placed on the left, and the wrong reading, in B and C, on the right:
| [tenet abbas] ii. hidas et iii. virgas et dim. [virgam]. I. hida et i. virga et dimidia [virga] in dominio. | [tenet abbas] ii. hidas et dim. virgam et[220] iii. virgas. I. hida et dimidia virga et una virga[221] in dominio. |
Here are some further illustrations of errors in the I.E.:
| D.B. and I.C.C. | I.E. |
|---|---|
| VIII. hidas et dimidiam et dimidiam virgam.... In dominio iii. hidæ et dimidia (p. 18). II. carruce in dominio. Et tercia potest fieri (p. 21). I. hida et dimidia et xii. acræ in dominio (p. 87). tenet Radulfus de Picot (p. 85). Johannes filius Waleranni (p. 27). | VIII. hidis et dimidia et dimidia virga ... iii. hidæ et dimidia et dimidia virga in dominio (p. 104). IIIIor. carruce ... in dominio. I. hida et xii. acræ in dominio (p. 110). Rod[bertus] tenet de vicecomite (p. 110). Johannem filium Walteri (p. 103). |
Again, the clause 'Tost[222] pro viii. hidis et xl. acris', which ought to head the Hardwick entries, is wrongly appended in the I.E. (p. 110) to a Kingston entry with which it had nothing to do. So too, 'hoc manerium pro x. hidis se defendit [sic] T.R.E. et modo pro viii. hidis', which belongs to Whaddon, is erroneously thrown back by the I.E. (p. 107), into Trumpington, a Manor in another Hundred. It is singular also that all the MSS. of the I.E. read 'iii. cotarii' (p. 101), where D.B. and the I.C.C. have 'iii. bordarii' (p. 3), and 'x. cotarii' (p. 101), where they have 'x. bordarii' (p. 6): conversely, the former, in one place, read 'xv. bordarii' (p. 107), where the latter have 'xv. cotarii' (p. 63).