tenants in chief, by reason of the great holdings of the Church and the huge grants to Odo bishop of Bayeux, there were few in Kent..
   In the order in which the hundreds are entered there may be evidence of a general progress of the inquiry from west to east. Where any land was held by a lordship in Axton hundred, the enumeration of tenements begins therein, and tenements in the other hundreds of Sutton lest or lathe follow. Next to be entered are the tenements in the lest of Aylesford, beginning with those in Larkfield hundred, and thereafter those in Middleton lest and hundred. The progress in East Kent is less easy to determine: in general the hundreds lying in ‘Borowarlest,’ ‘Wiwarlest,’ ‘ Limowartlest,’ and ‘Eastrylest’ follow one another in some semblance of order. As in the case of tenements in the vills of a given hundred, however, there is a good deal of repetition, as if the material had not been thoroughly classified by the Exchequer scribes before beginning the enumeration. Sometimes there is even the omission of the usual hundredal heading so that the vill appears as in a quite different hundred from the one in which a study of the map shows that it must have belonged.⁴
   Before proceeding to a study of the content of the Survey there should be described also the material of a nature allied to the Domesday account which is still in existence. As Dr. Round pointed out the relationship of the ‘Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis’⁵  to Domesday Book, so Dr. Ballard has shown a similar relationship⁶ of two other documents. The first is known as the ‘Excerpts (‘Excerpta de compoto solingorum comitatus Cancie,’ etc.) and relates especially to lands of several categories—namely, those held by St. Augustine, lands over which that abbey had some claim, the boroughs of Canterbury, Fordwich, Sandwich and Dover, the lands of Holy Trinity, and the prebends of St. Martin, and includes also the so-called laws of Kent—I follow Dr. Ballard’s summing-up of the contents. The second, the ’Domesday Monachorum,’ is a Canterbury document containing a description of the Canterbury estates. Both are considered by Dr. Ballard to be copies more or less direct of the original returns from which Domesday Book was later compiled by the Exchequer scribes, the ‘ Excerpts’ being ‘a copy made in the i₃th century, of a copy made between 1100 and 1154, or possibly 1124, of an independent compilation, made in or before 1087, from the original returns of the hundreds from which Domesday Book was compiled ‘⁷; while the ‘Domesday Monachorum’ is derived from a document which ‘was compiled in the year after the Domesday commissioners visited Kent,’⁸  this date being established by internal evidence.⁹  Both were written by men who had greater knowledge of East Kent than the Domesday commissioners; and their evidence is therefore of utmost importance in supplementing, and even. occasionally of correcting, the Domesday material. They are of especial
   ⁴  In this connection should be mentioned the curious reference to Sumerdene hundred with no clear tenement within it, in the midst of an account of Eastry hundred (p. 241a). Larking notices some of these irregularities.                                      ⁵ Feudal England, p. 3 et seq.
   ⁶  Rec. of Soc. and Econ. Hist. (Brit. Acad.), vol. iv, pp. iii et seq. Dr. Ballard gives the text of the ’Excerpts,’ and, for purposes of comparison, part of the text of the ‘Domesday Monachorum.’ The whole text of the latter will be found on p. 255 et seq. of this volume. An older version is printed in Somner, Antiq. of Canterbury, pt. 1, app. 40, and portions of it in Dugdale, Mon. Angl. vol. i, p. 100 et seq. Compare also Hist. MSS. Com., 8th Report, p. 315.
   ⁷  Ballard, op. cit. p. xii.                  ⁸  Ibid. p. xx.
   ⁹  ‘Dom. Monach.’ under Sandwich; ‘in preterito anno . . . et in isto anno’ (see p. 261b).