But this uncertainty does not seem to have attached itself to the mind of Sir William Blackstone; for in the third section of the Introduction prefixed to his _Commentaries on the Laws of England_, he informs us that our antiquaries "tell us that in the time of Alfred, the local customs of the several provinces of the kingdom were grown so various, that he found it expedient to compile his _Dome Book_, or _Liber Judicialis_, for the general use of the whole kingdom." This book is said to have been extant so late as the reign of King Edward IV., but is now unfortunately lost. It contained, we may probably suppose, the principal maxims of the common law, the penalties for misdemeanors, and the forms of judicial proceedings. Thus much may be at least collected from that injunction to observe it, which we find in the Laws of King Edward the Elder, the son of Alfred.--"_Omnibus qui reipublicae praesunt etiam atque etiam mando, ut omnibus aequos se praebeant judices, perinde ac in judiciali libro_ (Saxonice, [Old English: dom bec]) _scriptum habetur: nec quidquid formident quin jus commune_ (Saxonice, [Old English: folcrihte]) _audactes libereque dicant._" But notwithstanding this, it appears to me by no means conclusive, that the _Dombec_ referred to in the Laws of Edward the Elder and the _Liber Judicialis_ of Alfred are the same; on the contrary, Alfred's _Liber Judicialis_ seems to have been known not under the name of _Dombec_, but under that of the _Winchester Roll_, from the circumstance of its having been principally kept at Winchester: and Sir Henry Spelman says, the Domesday Book of William the Conqueror was sometimes called _Rotulus Wintoniae, a similitudine antiquoris_, from its resemblance to an older document preserved at Winchester. And he quotes Ingulphus Abbot of Croyland, who says, "Iste rotulus (i.e. the Domesday Book of William) vocatus est Rotulus Wintoniae, et ab Anglicis pro sua generalitate, omnia tenementa totius terrae integre continente _Domesday_ cognominatur." And the he proceeds, "Talem rotulum et multum similem; ediderat quondam Rex Alfredus, in quo totam terram Angliae per comitatus, centurias, et decurias descripserat, sicut praenotatur. Qui quidem Rotulus Wintoniae vocatus est, quia deponebatur apud Wintoniam conservandus," &c. Here is nothing said of this work being called [Old English: dom bec]: neither does Spelman, in his enumeration of the works of Alfred, give the least intimation that any one of his collections of laws was called [Old English: dom bec].