It is certain, however, that Mr Freeman, most ardent of Domesday students, knew nothing of this precious evidence, and remained therefore virtually unacquainted with the _modus operandi_ of the Great Survey. The pages, we shall find, of the _Inquisitio_ afford information that no one would have welcomed more eagerly than himself. Perhaps, therefore, it is not surprising that Mr N. E. S. A. Hamilton, when editing this document for the Royal Society of Literature (1876), should have supposed that it had been overlooked till then, or that he was 'the first to bring its importance to light' (p. vi). It is, however, much to be regretted that Mr De Gray Birch should have strenuously insisted that Webb (whose paper he actually names) and Kelham 'appear to have been strangely ignorant of the true and important nature of this manuscript',[4] and should have repeated this assertion[5] after I had shown at the Domesday Commemoration (1886) that the honour of the discovery really belonged to Mr P. C. Webb. One may claim that Webb should have his due, while gladly expressing gratitude to Mr Hamilton for his noble edition of the _Inquisitio_, which has conferred on Domesday students an inestimable boon.[6] The printing of the document in record type, the collation throughout with Domesday Book, and the appending of the _Inquisitio Eliensis_, edited from three different texts, represent an extraordinary amount of minute and wearisome labour. The result is a volume as helpful as it is indispensable to the scholar. I propose in this paper to take up anew the subject, at the point where Mr Hamilton has left it, to submit the text to scientific criticism, to assign it its weight in the scale of authority, and to explain its glossarial and its illustrative value for the construction and the contents of Domesday Book. I. NATURE OF THE 'INQ. COM. CANT.' Exact definition is needful at the outset in dealing with this document. The _Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis_, which is entered on fos. 76-113 of Tib. A. VI, must be carefully distinguished from the _Inquisitio Eliensis_ on fos. 38-68. Mr Hamilton doubted whether any one before him 'had distinguished between' the two, but this, we have seen, was a mistake. The distinction however is all-important, the two documents differing altogether in character. One would not think it necessary to distinguish them also from the so-called _Liber Eliensis_ (which is not a survey at all) had not Mr Eyton inadvertently stated that our document has been printed under the title of _Liber Eliensis_.[7]