A Terrier of Fleet. Edited by Miss M. Neilson. (H.
Milford for the British Academy. 21s. net.)—This is the fourth volume in an important new series of hitherto unpublished records Illustrating English social and economic history. Miss Neilson,
a lecturer in a New England college, has edited with abundant care and knowledge a " terrier "—or record of the land-holdings and their tenants and rentals—of the vill of. Fleet in Lincolnehire in 1316, then held: by Thomas de hfultone. Miss Neilson devotes a long introduction, with an elaborate map, to an account of the system of intercaurmoning for pasture, turf and firewood which existed in the Fens at that time. The system had evolved from an unknown antiquity. Miss Neilson. thinks that she discerns traces of a primitive communal custom, antedating the feudal code into which the lawyers could not always fit the traditional usages of the fenmen. Her description of the Fens is clear and interesting. It reminds. us how much of modern Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire has been recovered: from the sea since the Stuart age. The volume contains another document, edited by the late Mr. Adolphus Ballard, which proves to be a copy of part of the original returns from which the Domesday Book. for Kent was compiled. It relates to the lands of St. Augustine's Abbey and contains important details, such as the names of lesser pre-Conquest tenants, which Domesday omits. Students of Domesday will find Mr. Ballard's introduction very stimu- lating.
Previous page
