FEUDAL ENGLAND HISTORICAL STUDIES ON THE ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES BY J. H. ROUND FIRST PUBLISHED 1895 _Second impression 1909_ _Third impression 1909_ PREFACE The present work is the outcome of a wish expressed to me from more than one quarter that I would reprint in a collected form, for the convenience of historical students, some more results of my researches in the history of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. But to these I have added, especially on Domesday, so much which has not yet seen the light, that the greater portion of the work is new, while the rest has been in part re-written. The object I have set before myself throughout is either to add to or correct our existing knowledge of facts. And for this I have gone in the main to records, whether in manuscript or in print. It is my hope that the papers in this volume may further illustrate the value of such evidence as supplementing and checking the chroniclers for what is still, in many respects, an obscure period of our history. As a foreign scholar has felicitously observed: Je lis avec plaisir le chroniqueur qui nous raconte les événements de son époque. Les détails anecdotiques, les traits piquants dont son [oe]uvre est parsémée font mes délices. Mais comment saurai-je s'il dit la vérité si les pages qu'il me présente ne sont pas un roman de pure imagination? Dans les chartes, au contraire, tout est authentique, certain, précis, indubitable. Leur témoignage est contradictoirement établi, sous le contrôle de la partie adverse, avec l'approbation et la reconaissance de l'autorité souveraine, en présence d'une imposante assemblée de notables qui apposent leur signature. C'est la plus pure de toutes les sources où il soit possible de puiser un renseignement historique.[1] An instance in point will be found in the paper on 'Richard the First's change of seal'. A collective title for a series of studies covering the period 1050-1200, is not by any means easy to find. But dealing as they do so largely with the origins of 'Feudal England', I have ventured to give them this title, which may serve, I hope, to emphasize my point that the feudal element introduced at the Conquest had a greater influence on our national institutions than recent historians admit.[2] Even Domesday Book has its place in the study of feudalism, rearranging, as it does, the Hundred and the Vill under Fiefs and 'Manors'.