a group of royal officers (_legati_),
who held a public inquiry, probably in the great assembly known as the
county court, which was attended by representatives of every township as
well as of the local lords. The unit of inquiry was the Hundred (a
subdivision of the county which had then an administrative entity), and
the return for each Hundred was sworn to by twelve local jurors, half of
them English and half Normans. What is believed to be a full transcript
of these original returns is preserved for several of the Cambridgeshire
Hundreds, and is of great illustrative importance. The _Inquisitio
Eliensis_, the "Exon Domesday" (so called from the preservation of the
volume at Exeter), and the second volume of Domesday Book, also all
contain the full details which the original returns supplied.

The original MS. of Domesday Book consists of two volumes, of which the
second is devoted to the three eastern counties, while the first, which
is of much larger size, comprises the rest of England except the most
northerly counties. Of these the north-westerly portion, which had
Carlisle for its head, was not conquered till some years after the
survey was made; but the omission of Northumberland and Durham has not
been satisfactorily explained. There are also no surveys of London,
Winchester and some other towns. For both volumes the contents of the
returns were entirely rearranged and classified according to fiefs.
Instead of appearing under the Hundreds and townships they now appeared
under the names of the local "barons," i.e. those who held the lands
directly of the crown in fee. In each county the list opened with the
holding of the king himself (which had possibly formed the subject of
separate inquiry); then came those of the churchmen and religious
houses; next were entered those of the lay tenants-in-chief (_barones_);
and last of all those of women, of the king's serjeants (_servientes_),
of the few English "thegns" who retained land, and so forth. In some
counties one or more principal towns formed the subject of a separate
section; in some the _clamores_ (disputed titles to land) were similarly
treated apart. But this description applies more specially to the larger
and principal volume; in the smaller one the system is more confused,
the execution less perfect. The two volumes are distinguished even more
sharply by the exclusion, in the larger one, of certain details, such as
the enumeration of the live stock, whi