Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/434

 426 REVIEWS OF BOOKS July and the difficulty of accounting for the admitted variations in a due which had only- been levied for half a century, the theory seems to involve a misapprehension of the nature of the Domesday valet. It was probably a jough estimate of the yearly value of profits which might vary from year to year. A fixed money payment such as Dr. Boehmer assumes generally appears in Domesday as a redditus or render. That Dr. Boehmer is not so familiar with Domesday Book as with materials bearing more directly on ecclesiastical history is shown by his unquestioning acceptance of Ellis's extraordinary statement 1 that no churches can be found in the return for Lancashire (between the Kibble and Mersey), which, as a matter of fact, records eight. His own con- jecture that, in Gloucestershire and five other counties which he names, local churches were only mentioned when they belonged to some other than the lord of the manor in which they lay is certainly not true of all. 2 A short article of five pages on ' The Anglo-Saxon Style in Medieval Painting ', by Dr. Adolph Goldschmidt, completes the volume. This article is illustrated by two plates, and a very characteristic portrait of Dr. Liebermann forms the frontispiece of a tribute which will, have a per- manent value for students of Old English philology, history, and literature. JAMES TAIT. Final Concords of the County of Lincoln. Vol. ii. Edited by Canon C. W. FOSTER. (Lincoln Kecord Society : issued for the society, 1920.) IT is a hopeful sign for the future of local historical research in England that even the general impoverishment following on the great war has failed to arrest the work of those meritorious societies which are striving to publish, on sound lines, the materials needed for writing or, in some cases, writing anew the history of our ancient counties. Unfortunately, the most valuable of such records for the scholar are also, as a rule, the least attractive to the average member of such societies, on whose pecuniary support they are dependent for their existence. In spite of this difficulty and of the almost prohibitive cost of producing their volumes at the present time, they have hitherto contrived to carry on their work and have even increased in number. Oxfordshire has had its record society since 1919, Lincolnshire since 1910, Sussex since 1901 ; the Bedfordshire society has already done excellent work, and in Warwickshire the Dugdale Society has made a successful start. The great county of Lincolnshire is still destitute of a history, although its peculiarly ' Danish ' characteristics invest it with special interest. The late Mr. Eyton was attracted by its wealth in medieval records, as is shown by his collections from them which are now among the manu- scripts in the British Museum. So far back as 1896 an indefatigable local 1 Introduction to Domesday, i. 287. 2 Dr. Boehmer can hardly be blamed for regarding (p. 305) the interesting record of the property of Christchurch in London c. 1100 in Cotton MS. Faustina B. vi, 100 as imprinted. Mr. John Brownbill printed a translation in Pax, the Caldy Abbey Magazine, no. 59, May 1920.