It was left to Sir Frederick Pollock to appraise Mr Round's work in the pages of the _English Historical Review_. Maitland's researches, which were pushed to a conclusion with astonishing rapidity, appeared in 1896 in a volume entitled _Domesday Book and Beyond--Three Essays in the Early History of England_. The first essay was called "Domesday Book," the second "England before the Conquest," the third "The Hide." The title was chosen to indicate the fact that Maitland had followed the retrogressive method from the known to the unknown which Mr Seebohm had pursued with such admirable effect. "Domesday Book appears to me not as the known but as the knowable. The Beyond is still very dark: but the way to it lies through the Norman record. The result is given to us; the problem is to find cause and process." Identity of method, however, did not imply identical conclusions. Eight years before Maitland had revised the sheets of a remarkable study of _Villainage in England_, by Paul Vinogradoff, the conclusions of which were decidedly adverse to the Romanist hypothesis of servile origins; but whereas Vinogradoff had confined himself to the analysis of agrarian conditions as revealed by the post-Domesday evidence, Maitland made his assault upon the mysterious fortress of the great survey itself. "That in some sort I have been endeavouring to answer Mr Seebohm, I cannot conceal from myself or from others. A hearty admiration of his _English Village Community_ is one main source of this book. That the task of disputing his conclusions might have fallen to stronger hands than mine I well know. I had hoped that by this time Professor Vinogradoff's _Villainage in England_ would have had a sequel. When that sequel comes (and may it come soon) my provisional answer can be forgotten."