be evident that though (in the printed text at least) the ‘Testa’ is not perfect, the ‘Red Book’ list, for Northumberland, is, when compared with it, worthless. Indeed, the marvellously elaborate returns for Somerset and Dorset, Lincolnshire, Lancashire, etc., printed in the ‘Testa de Nevill,’ with which the meagre lists in the ‘Liber Rubeus’ cannot be compared for an instant, make one read with absolute amazement Mr. Hall’s statement, when comparing the two, that one or the other is in its present form lamentably incomplete. This deficiency chiefly exists on the side of the _Testa_, for it will be evident at once that the isolated and fragmentary membranes which formed the sole surviving contents of Nevill’s _Testa_ in the reign of Edward I. cannot be satisfactorily compared with the relatively complete returns preserved in the Red Book (p. ccxxiv.). It is evident that the editor has no conception how many and how long are the returns in the ‘Testa’ relating to this great Inquest.[542] This may be due to his conception that they are there headed “De Testa de Nevill” (p. ccxxv.), an idea which he repeated in a lengthy communication to the ‘Athenæum’ (10th Sept., 1898) on the “Testa de Nevill.” Mr. Hall wrote: The really important point about the whole matter is one which seems to have been entirely overlooked, namely that not only does the title ‘Testa de Nevill’ refer to certain antique lists alone, which, indeed, form but a small percentage of the whole register, but that the greater part of the lists thus headed appear to have been made at a certain date in the fourteenth year of John.... ‘_De_ Testa de Nevill’ is the invariable heading of these lists (p. 354). The very point of the matter is that, on the contrary, the greater portion of these lists have no such heading, but are hidden away among later returns, from which they can only be disentangled by careful and patient labour.[543] The result of my researches is that I believe the printed ‘Testa’ to contain no fewer than a hundred columns (amounting to nearly an eighth of its contents) representing returns to this Inquest. At the close of this paper I append a list of these columns, of which only thirty-eight are headed (or included in the portion headed) “De testa de Nevill.” To resume. For the great Inquest of 1212 (14 John) we have (1) mention in a chronicle, (2) the writ directing it to be made, (3) the record of a sworn verdict of jurors who made it. For the alleged Inquests of 1210–12 (12 and 13 John) we have nothing at all.[544] We have, further, the fact that, when collated, the returns said to belong to these “independent” Inquests are found to be clearly derived from a single original. In spite, therefore, of the ‘Red Book’ and its editor, it may safely be asserted that there was but one Inquest, that of the 14th year, the returns to which were handed in on 25th June (1212).