Several years ago there were discovered at the Public Record Office a number of parchment scraps relating to East Anglia, evidently belonging to some group, and of singularly early date. My friend, the late Mr. Walford Selby, showed them to me at the time, and asked me what I thought they were. As was announced at the time in the columns of the ‘Athenæum,’[319] I pronounced them to be nothing less than fragments of original returns to the great ‘Inquest of Sheriffs’ in 1170. Dr. Stubbs, when editing the text of that document for his well-known ‘Select Charters,’ declared that “the report, if ever it was made, must have been a record of the most interesting kind conceivable.” It was believed, however, that no trace of the returns could be found. Mr. Selby intended to publish these fragments as an interesting appendix to the ‘Liber Rubeus’; and when Mr. Hall succeeded him as editor, he printed them as Appendix A.[320] Having studied for himself these fragments, he rejects their connection with the ‘Inquest of Sheriffs,’ although, as he frankly observes, he has only ventured to do so “with considerable hesitation.” An entire section of the preface (pp. cc.-ccxi.) is devoted to his reasons for rejecting the above view and for advancing a wholly different explanation.

Approaching the question with an open mind, we find the facts to be as follows: These records relate to an Inquest held, so far as we can date them, in 1170, and covering the doings of the four years 1166–1170. Moreover, they describe that period as “postquam dominus Rex transfretavit” (with slight variations in the phrase), which is precisely the starting-point prescribed for the ‘Inquest of Sheriffs.’ In all this they answer to the Inquest; and all this Mr. Hall admits. But he raises curiously vague difficulties, which resolve themselves at last into the assertion—upon which, we read, he must insist—“that there is nothing more than a superficial resemblance, and certainly nothing to correspond to the articles of inquiry as they are alone known to us.” Here at least we have a definite issue. Let us then adopt the simple plan of printing side by side the second article of enquiry, from Dr. Stubbs’ text, and the very first of the returns on Mr. Hall’s list.

I have slightly altered Mr. Hall’s punctuation, which seems to me erroneous; but this in no way affects the argument. It is to the enquiry I have printed above that these interesting documents are undoubtedly the returns. Their common feature is that they record payments made by vills, or by individuals to their lords, that they record them “separatim,” and that they specially record their “causas et occasiones.” We may go further. The very phrase in the above article—“per judicium”[321]—occurs no less than eleven times in the return for the Valoines barony, being duly appended, as prescribed, to the several payments and their “causes.”

The correspondence of Inquest and returns being thus close and indeed obvious, one is led to wonder how their editor can have committed himself to so unfortunate an assertion. He would seem, instead of studying the articles, to have started with a preconceived and erroneous view of their character, and then rejected my own view because the returns “are not specially connected with the alleged maladministration of the fiscal officers which was the subject of the above inquiry, but ... with the private feudal relations of the same (i.e. individual barons) with their subtenants.” He cannot have read the second article, which is specially concerned with the latter relations, and which stands in every way on a level with the first (concerning the fiscal officers). Moreover, by a lucky chance, there is preserved among these documents at least one fragment of the return to the enquiry as to the king’s officers. For we read that the men on one manor “nil dederunt Vicecomiti neque prepositis Regis præter xvi d. quos dederunt ad castellum firmandum de Oreford,” etc., etc. Nay more, we can identify at least two of these returns as having been made in reply to the third article of the Inquest:

The returns numbered 55, 56 (p. cclxxx.) are classed by Mr. Hall among “Baroniæ incertæ.” They relate, however, to the barony or “honour” of William Fitz Alan, which had been for many years in the king’s hands. It was ‘farmed’ in 1170, as it had been for ten years, by Guy l’Estrange (“Wido Extraneus.”) Guy had a brother John,[322] who appears in these returns as in charge of the Norfolk portion of the honour. Since Michaelmas, 1165, a part of William Fitz Alan’s land had been granted out to Geoffrey de Vere, and we accordingly find, at the end of the second return, one of William Fitz Alan’s knights,[323] William de Pagrave, making him a payment. Now all this might have been explained by an intelligent editor. Mr. Hall has elaborated, instead, a series of fantastic errors.

I have dwelt on the point at some length, because, apart from the intrinsic interest of these curious returns—which have thus come to light after more than seven centuries—they establish the fact that this great enquiry extended to private landowners, a fact which even Dr. Stubbs, I fear, seems to have overlooked in the analysis he gives of the ‘Inquest.’ And further, they corroborate the articles of enquiry, where we can apply the test, and thus confirm the authenticity of the document in which those articles are found.

We must not, however, ignore Mr. Hall’s own hypothesis, for the Rolls edition in which it is enshrined gives it an official cachet; and there may be those who think that arguments of this character require an answer.

So far as it is possible to understand it, this hypothesis would connect these Inquests with the scutage of Ireland (p. ccx.), which was duly accounted for (annotatum) in 1172, the expedition falling within the financial year Mich., 1171–Mich., 1172.[324] In that case these inquests, on Mr. Hall’s own showing, could not have been held earlier than 1172, at “the conclusion of the campaign” (p. clxxxvi.). But they must have been held in 1170, for, as he observes (pp. ccxi.), one of the fragments speaks of “istos iiij annos” (p. cclxviii.) reckoned from March, 1166.

But we have much stronger evidence than this. We read, at the outset, of these documents, that “it will be evident that they are connected with some Inquest of military service during the reign of Henry II.” This is an extraordinary assertion from one who is himself their editor. For we have only to turn to the second on the list to find in it nothing but a detailed record of the sums given individually by some forty burgesses of (Castle) Rising towards paying off the mortgages of their lord the earl of Arundel, who was clearly in the hands of the Jews. And the long and most curious return from the barony of Robert de Valoines deals with a humble reeve who neglected his master’s hay; a shepherd who had charge of his lord’s fold; Brian, who looked after the wood; Gilbert, who kept the bees; and other dependents fined for negligence. We may even say, most confidently, that the idea of an Inquest of military service could never occur to any one who perused the whole of these documents with an unbiassed mind. They are simply the result of an enquiry into the payment of moneys, and the reasons for such payment. But Mr. Hall has a theory to advance, and can only see these records in its light. Briefly stated, that theory is that these documents “answer very nearly to the description of such an Inquest” on knight service as is referred to in the return for the Honour of Arundel assigned to 1166. That these documents are later in date; that they do not suggest an Inquest on knight service; that, even if they did, they have no concern with an Inquest restricted to a Sussex Honour—all these objections are as nothing to Mr. Hall. He is as ready to “hazard the supposition” that conflicts with all the evidence as he was loth to accept a solution that fits in every way the facts of the case. May one not raise a strong protest against the sacrifice of a dozen pages, within a strictly limited space, to the enunciation of wildly conjectural and absolutely erroneous theories, not in the book of a private author, but in a Government publication, intended to form for all time the standard edition of a famous work?

Let us now turn to the Pipe Roll of 1172 (18 Hen. II.), which plays an important part in Mr. Hall’s arguments. He tells us that

We refer, as invited, to the roll itself, only to find that, on the contrary, it first records the “assessments for the scutage of Ireland,” and then heads the lists which follow: “De his qui cartas non miserunt.”[325] It is this very sequence that is responsible for the error of Madox, who held, as Mr. Hall observes, “that the charters in question must have been returned for the purpose of the Scutage of Ireland in 1171.”[326] Swereford, on the other hand, wrote of the 1172 roll:

He is wrong, of course, in stating that the charters were returned in the “13th year” (an error which his editor carefully ignores), but perfectly right in his explanation, if we substitute “12th” for his “13th” year. Yet, having thus rightly shown that Swereford’s explanation is the true one, his editor closes the paragraph thus:

Really, this wanton confusion is enough to make Swereford turn in his grave. The entry which has caused the difficulty refers, not to “the tenants who were in debt for the aid” of 1168, but to those who had made no returns (“cartas non miserunt”) in 1166.

Mr. Hall assigns Madox’s error to his finding no “corresponding entries,” under Sussex, in 1168 (14 Hen. II.) for those in 1172 (18 Hen. II.). And yet all three entries, in the latter year, of the earl of Arundel’s tenants[327] have their corresponding entries in 1168.[328] The real cause of Madox’s error has been explained above.

It is, we read, “significant” that in 1168 the earl’s “assessment actually does not correspond with that recorded in the existing charter of 1166” (p. cciv.); for it only “gives 84½ fees for the Earl’s Sussex barony,” while the Inquest referred to in his charter had the result that “13 more were acknowledged by the Earl as chargeable upon his demesne, raising the total to 97½.” Therefore, “we are almost tempted to suspect that the Earl’s charter was not returned in 1166 at all, but only after an interval of several years.” On which, of course, a theory is built.

Ingenious enough, is it not? Yet, as usual, a house of cards. For we find the “barony” charged only with 84½ fees in 1194,[329] in 1196, and in 1211 (13 John),[330] precisely as in 1168. The total had not been raised at all; and the house of cards topples over.

The same unhappy paragraph closes with these words:

We turn to the rolls, and find, as usual, that not two, but three, tenants (ut supra) were recalcitrant in the 18th year, and that the Earl, in the 21st (1175), did not pay a penny of his assessment (84½ fees), but was forgiven the whole of it.[331]

Not content with his own confusion, Mr. Hall proceeds to assign to others errors which they neither have made, nor would dream of making. He even asserts that Mr. Eyton and I “maintain that the honour of Arundel was granted to William de Albini by Henry I.” (p. ccvii.), an assertion for which there is not the faintest shadow of foundation. Such a view would imply an absolute ignorance of all the facts of the case; and it was as foreign to Mr. Eyton[332] as it is to myself.[333]

One cannot be expected to waste time over his theory that the baronies mentioned in these fragments were specially involved in debt, which is a mere phantasy; but we may note, as the date is of importance, that “Avelina de Ria” was “compelled to atone” for her offence, in making her son a knight, by a heavy fine, not “in the 15th year,” but in the 14th.[334] In the same paragraph (p. ccx.) we are told that “this barony, like the honour of Arundel, was still unable to contribute towards the next Scutage, of 1171.”[335] As a matter of fact, it paid at once £30, out of £35, the total for which it was liable,[336] a very creditable proportion; while the honour of Arundel was not even charged with any payment for this Scutage, which was only assessed on those “qui nec abierunt in Hybernia,” etc.

But enough of this error and confusion. If the reader is tempted to grow weary, what must be the feelings of the writer, who has thus to remove, brick by brick, this vast edifice of error, so perversely and wantonly erected, before the simple facts can be brought to the light of day. It is weary, it is thankless work; and yet it has to be accomplished. I am tempted to quote these apposite remarks from the critical articles by Mr. Thomas Bond on a no less misleading work:

We have, in the Red Book Preface, the very same features. It is, perhaps, in his treatment of these interesting fragments (1170) that we detect most vividly Mr. Hall’s strange capacity of inventing difficulties that do not exist, and of dismissing those that do. In the teeth of the clearest possible facts, we are given such vague probabilities, or possibilities, as these:

The fact is that, as I have said, this preface is really the fruit of a habit of mind, a mental twist, which distorts the writer’s vision, and seems to impel him, irresistibly, to arrive at the wrong conclusion.[338] We trace this singular tendency throughout, but its effect has nowhere proved more disastrous than in his treatment of these returns to the great “Inquest of Sheriffs.” That these records should have been so treated in the first work that gives them to the world is a really lamentable matter.