Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/495

1922 By this time Ormerod had discovered at Oxford a third copy of Flower's notes from the original roll, namely, in Dodsworth MS. xxxi, but he does not state that he used or collated it. He had, however, compared his copy of the Grosvenor manuscript with the original at the Heralds' College, and had found some other entries on the roll from various sources. Full credit is due to him for his work and for being the first to appreciate the general nature of the roll. But the Calendar of Fragments (which was all he ever printed) is a most unsatisfactory compilation for purposes of study. It consists of very condensed and incomplete abstracts, in English only, of such entries on the roll as he had recovered. The formal parts of the documents, so important in this case, are not given, nor the witnesses' names. His object was, he says, to supply 'analytical titles of the entries', 'fragments useful to the genealogist and topographer', and his Memoir was 'without pretension to the character of a legal disquisition'. Within these limits his work was original and useful, but as his full copy of the herald's abstracts is not now available, we found it necessary to do the work over again and to make considerable further research before attempting to give any account of this roll from other points of view.

The materials which are now available for the consideration of this roll, so far as we have ascertained, are as follows:

1. The extracts made by the herald in 1580 'Ex rotulo antiquarum chartarum vocato Domesday': The original notes are on folios 208 to 216 of the College of Arms MS. I. D. 14, of which there are copies in the Grosvenor (Eaton) MS., no. 28 (old no. xxi. 5), and in Dodsworth MS., no. xxxi, fo. 85. Ormerod used the first two. The last is an inferior version. By permission of the College of Arms and the duke of Westminster, we have been able to collate all three manuscripts. The herald took accurate notes of some fifty-five entries on the roll, all relating to the thirteenth century. Some of them are also to be found in the Chartulary of Chester Abbey.

2. Documents contained in Shakerley (Vernon) MS., no. 4: We have seen that, according to Dr. Gower, writing in 1771, there was a transcript of the 'principal contents' of the 'Domesday' roll among the Vernon MSS. at Somerford. By permission of Sir Walter Shakerley, Bart., of Somerford Park, near Congleton, we have seen in the muniment room there fourteen manuscript