Following the first of these paths, we note at once that while _Domesday Book_ arranges the Manors according to fiefs, the _Inq. Com. Cant._, on the contrary, arranges them by hundreds and townships. Its system is regular and simple. For every hundred it first enumerates the principal jurors who made the return, and then gives the return itself, arranged according to townships (_villæ_). These townships are thus the units of which the Manors they contain are merely the component fractions. This is precisely what we should expect to find in the original returns, but it only creates a presumption; it does not afford a proof. For instance, it might be reasonably urged that these copies may have omitted certain items in the returns, just as Domesday Book omitted others. To reply to this objection, we must turn to the second path; that is to say, we must collate the _Inquisitio Eliensis_ with the _Inq. Com. Cant._ I shall prove below that the latter cannot have been taken from the former, which only covers a portion of its field, and that, on the other hand, the former cannot have been taken from the latter, because the _Inquisitio Eliensis_ is accurate in places where the _Inq. Com. Cant._ is in error. Consequently they must both have been derived independently from some third document. This being so, if we should find that their versions agree closely, we may fairly infer that each is intended to be a faithful reproduction of the above 'third document'. In other words, if neither version omits items which are given in the other, we are entitled to assume that the copy is in each case exhaustive, for two scribes working independently are not likely to have systematically omitted the same items from the document before them. What then was the 'third document' from which they both copied? Obviously it was either the original returns of the Domesday jurors, or a copy (exhaustive or not) of these returns. Now we cannot suppose that two scribes, working, as I have said, independently, would both have worked, not from the original returns themselves, but from a copy, and that the same copy of these returns--a copy, moreover, of the existence of which we have no evidence whatever. Moreover, in this hypothetical copy, there would, we may safely assert, have been some clerical errors. These would have duly re-appeared in both the _Inquisitiones_, and collation with Domesday Book would enable us to detect them. Yet in no single instance, though each of them contains errors, have I found a clerical error common to both. We are thus driven to the conclusion that in both these _Inquisitiones_ we have copies of the actual returns made by the Domesday jurors. One of the postulates in the above argument is that the _Inq. Com. Cant._ and the _Inq. Eliensis_ 'agree closely' in their versions. Here is an instance in illustration:[10] _I.C.C._ _I.E._