[20] 'Soca tantum hominis abbatis de Ely remansit æcclesiæ' (D.B.); 'sine socha' (I.E.).
[21] The latter is the reading of D.B., and is the right one because confirmed by I.E.
[22] This, like the similar cases where D.B. is given as the authority for the second reading, is proved arithmetically (vide infra).
[23] The I.C.C. enumerates only three, which is the number given in D.B.
[24] The words 'quendam ortum' had occurred just before, and are here wrongly repeated.
[25] 'Inter totum valent et valuerunt xii. den.' This was exclusive of the value of the Manor, which by the way the I.C.C. gives as sixteen pounds and D.B. at six pounds, one of those cases of discrepancy which have to be left in doubt, though D.B. is probably right.
[26] Mr Eyton, in his Notes on Domesday (p. 16), called attention to this. 'The result,' he wrote (of the Lincolnshire Domesday), 'as to arrangement, is in certain instances just what might have been expected from some haste of process.... The hurried clerks were perpetually overlooking entries which they ought to have seen.'
[27] Mr Eyton (Ibid., pp. 17, 18), while ignoring this valuable and most important feature, notes the employment of a similar device in Domesday Book itself in the case of Yorkshire. 'Against such errors and redundancies a very simple but effective precaution seems to have been adopted by some clerk or clerks employed on the Yorkshire notes. Before transcription was commenced an index was made of the loose notes of that county. This index gave the contents of each Wapentac or Liberty in abstract under the appropriate title; then the measure in carucates and bovates of each item of estate; and lastly (interlined) some hint or indication to whose Honour or fief each item belonged. This most clerkly device will have saved the subsequent transcribers much trouble of roll-searching and a world of confusion in their actual work.'
[28] 'Warra jacet in trompintona, et terra in grantebrigga.'
[29] To say that the sokeman 'non potuerunt recedere sed soca remanebat abbati', is nonsense, because if they were not able 'recedere', the question of 'soca' could not arise. The formula 'sed soca', etc., is only used in cases where there was a right 'recedere'.