Chapter II - LINCOLNSHIRE

Summary

Even a brief examination of the folios relating to Lincolnshire reveals many of the imperfections of the Domesday record. Some of these obscurities or omissions are probably the result of clerical errors, and a few of the more obvious examples will perhaps be more illuminating than any general statement about them. For five groups of villages, the Lincolnshire folios include a summary relating to each group as a whole. The five groups are the villages comprising the sokelands of (i) Kirton, (ii) Caistor and Hundon, (iii) Gayton le Wold, (iv) Horncastle, (v) Greetham. But the totals recorded in each of these summaries do not always agree with the sum of the entries. The two groups of statistics are brought together in the table on p. 28. Sometimes there is agreement; sometimes there is a difference; and there is a very big difference over the sokemen of Greetham.

In the case of the Kirton group of villages, for example, we can almost see the Domesday clerks making mistakes. First of all, a list of villages is given with the number of carucates in each; then follows, in the same order, a more detailed account of each village—sokemen, villeins, bordars, teams, meadow and so on; finally, the totals for the group as a whole are given. When the first list was written, the village of Morton was left out, but the omission was discovered and a reference to Morton was added in the margin.