Page:VCH Northamptonshire 1.djvu/435

 THE NORTHAMPTONSHIRE SURVEY All Saints was added to the fief held by the house of Ferrers, while the Dudley fief was increased by land being granted at Boddington to Pay- nel. Of fresh families brought into the county, one may mention that of Balliol (from Picardy), which obtained Crown demesne at Faxton and at Moulton, probably from William Rufus, and that of Hasculf de St. James(-sur-Beuvron), on the borders of Normandy and Britanny, who held, probably under Henry I., the Crown manor of Tansor. How this Survey assumed the form in which it has reached us cannot be stated with certainty. But although we find, here and there, the name of an actual Domesday tenant, the document, as a whole, gives the impression that a Survey made under Henry I. was corrected, more or less, by alterations and additions, to bring the entries up to date, down to the days of Henry II. The late transcriber, to whom is due the existing text, failed altogether to understand the Survey, and incorporated in a single text all the additions and corrections, with the most be- wildering result. This hypothesis is supported by the cases of other manuscripts. We trace, for instance, the same process in The Red Book of the Exchequer. In The Black Book the later additions that were made to the barons' returns of their fees in 1166 are distinguished by the difference in handwriting ; but in The Red Book these interpolations are found transcribed in the same hand as the genuine original returns. To the uninitiated this has been the cause of no small confusion. In Northamptonshire alone there are such entries for the tenure of Nassing- ton and Yarwell by Earl David of Huntingdon (i 184-12 19), for that of Gretton by Walter de Preston, and for that of Higham Ferrers, New- bottle, and Blisworth by Ferrers earl of Derby. It is remarkable that, quite recently, in a learned dissertation on the heirship of Ferrers to the fref of Peverel, this last entry is cited from The Red Book as proof that Ferrers held these manors in 11 66,' though they were not obtained by the Ferrers family till the reign of John. Again, in the Peterborough list of the abbey's knights, the very first entry, made temp. Henry I., has been carried on by a later hand to the time of Henry III. But there Stapleton, who transcribed the list, carefully discriminated between the two hands. ^ It is probable that the lists of Abingdon knights, published in the Abingdon Cartulary, are rendered untrustworthy in places by the cause of error described above. So also the Lindsey Survey {temp. Henry I.) illustrates how some errors made their way into our Survey. In that Survey, above the entry ' Comes Odo [tenet] in Aldobi,' a later hand has interlined ' De feodo Comitis Albemerle.' It is by incorporat- ing such additions that our Survey has produced the phrases ' Willelmus Meschin de feodo Willelmi de Curcy,' 'Robertus filius Regis de feodo Glovernie,' ' Brien filius Comitis de feodo de Wallinford,' and ' Odo dapifer de feodo de Colcestra.' These phrases do not mean, as they would be naturally supposed to mean, that the tenants named held their ' See Complete Peerage, VIII. 369-70. ' Chronicon Petrohurgenu (Camden Society), pp. 1 68-9. 361