"I have been thinking of asking you to let me have a talk about Domesday. I have a great deal of stuff written. Some of it Round has forestalled, as I knew he would. At one time it was to have gone into the book that Pollock and I published. Then I did not wish to collide with Round and now I know that Vinogradoff is again at work, and there are many economic and social questions which I would rather leave to him. So I have not and shall not have enough that is new to make a book. On the other hand I have a few legal theories that I should like to put before the public in one form or another. What do you think? Would the _E. H. R._ bear a little Domesday--two or three articles? However I will stand out of Frederick Pollock's way if he has anything to say, so when you have ascertained his intentions will you tell me whether you would take some papers from me. I would begin with some talk about Round's work of which I think very highly. I hope that you will say first what you think; in no case shall I be disappointed." The publication of the _Domesday Inquest_ was begun in 1783 and completed in 1816 and in the whole range of English history there is no authority alike so crucial in importance and so difficult of interpretation. Of the value of this unique statistical record compiled from the returns of local jurors twenty years after the Norman Conquest there has never been any dispute. Long before the text was published it was the subject of antiquarian monographs and the established base of local histories and genealogical enquiries. Transcripts of parts of Domesday were scattered up and down the country in public and private collections, and its fame was spread by the testimony of John Selden, who pronounced that, so far as he knew, it was by several centuries the oldest official record extant in autograph in the whole Christian world. The enterprise of the Record Commission made the record accessible to the student, and a popular Introduction to Domesday, written by Sir Henry Ellis in 1833, provided a pleasant quarry for the general historian whose soul was not vexed by the fundamental problems of Anglo-Norman society and finance. But the survey was not understood. Even Freeman, who devoted to it a whole chapter in the fifth volume of the _Norman Conquest_, did not attack the central difficulties. He was a political historian, and appreciated the political interest of the record; but this is not the main interest. The survey owes its chief importance to the fact that it exhibits the social, economic and legal condition of the English people twenty years after the shock of the Norman Conquest.