Domesday Book: Cambridgeshire. By the Rev. C. H. Evelyn- White
and H. G. Evelyn-White. (Elliot Stock. 5s. net.)-- Messrs. Evelyn-White have done well in bringing out this portion of Domesday Book. The details of the great survey have to be studied in sections, and these are not easily accessible. What the editors have done is to print the Latin original and, facing it, a translation into English executed by tho late Rev. W. Bowden, which his hitherto remained in manuscript. They have prefixed an Introduction in which the object of the survey, the information which it gives, the land measures used, and the inferences which may be drawn from its statements are dealt with. Incidentally, the question of the immediate result of the Conquest is discussed. Did England suffer on the whole ? Some classes certainly did.
The " sokemen," who numbered "in the time of King Edward" some 900, are now reduced to 213. In other words, where there had been freemen there were now "villeins." Cambridge town shows some fifty waste measures out of a total of about 380. Doubtless it had suffered in the Hereward revolt. One little detail strikes us as we read—the great importance of eels in the diet of our ancestors. One fisherman in Wisbech renders five thousand eels to the Abbot of St. Edmunds ; the Abbot of Ramsay received three thousand from Chatteris ; the Abbot of Croyland four thousand from Wisbech every year. A fresh-water eel is now an uncommon sight. Of course, the marshes which yielded them are turned to better uses.
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