The Jarrow inscription, _In hoc singulari anno vita redditur mundo_, had always been taken as a hopeless puzzle. Mr. Browne showed that the stone on which it is cut had formed part of the wall of the original building, in which also was a stone setting forth that the church was dedicated in the fifteenth year of King Ecfrid (A.D. 684) and the fourth year of Abbat Ceolfrid. This would give a year to which the inscription might refer, if it could be shown that any very remarkable restoration took place in that year. Mr. Browne showed from passages in Bede that it was the year in which the Abbot of Monkwearmouth and many of his monks died of a pestilence which ravaged the district, and especially Jarrow, which is not heard of after that year. Hence the reference was to the cessation of the plague in the year 684. Mr. O. C. Pell, after stating the strong grounds for supposing that there were many “libere tenentes” in existence at the time of Domesday Survey, and that they appear in the “Inquisitio Eliensis” as _villani_ holding acres of demesne land, argued--from (among other examples) an entry in the “Inquisitio Eliensis” respecting Chatteris Manor--that the _carucæ_ of the “lords” and the associated _carucæ_ of the “homines” were of one and the same uniform standard for rating purposes and for measuring areas of _terræ ad carucam_, and showed thereby that this standard was the capacity of a plough drawn by eight oxen. The necessary consequence appeared to be that there must have been at least 324 “homines” holding virgates in villenage in the Isle of Ely alone. This theory was proved to be correct by a comparison of Domesday Survey with the surveys of certain manors contained in old MSS. of 1221 and 1277.