HERTFORDSHIRE
(version 1a)

INTRODUCTION

HUNDREDS
The hundreds changed little after 1086; see 5,1 Tring note, 5,2 'Danish' note, 5,3 St Alban's note. But Domesday suggests earlier changes. Odsey (TL2938, in Cambridgeshire) must originally have lain well within its own hundred, perhaps bounded by the River Cam and the Roman road north-west from Royston. The deeply indented north-western border excludes places exceptionally described as both in Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire where boundary changes were still easily effected after 1066 (see BDF 1,4-5) and where Edward the Elder had purchased strategic pagan sites: Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum, no. 659 [= Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 396]. The shire emerged from the territory of Edward's army of Hertford, whose border is likely to have followed recognizable features, perhaps a more or less regular line along and between the rivers Cam, Flit and Thame to Tring (JRM).

The forms of the hundred names used in the Phillimore printed edition have been revised for the present edition. The different names that some hundreds later bore have been eliminated and the Domesday name or its descendant has been used. Names in single inverted commas survived, but represent names or sites that are now lost. 

Phillimore printed edition	This edition	

Braughing
Broadwater
Cashio
Dacorum
Edwinstree
Hertford
Hitchin
Odsey
Tring

Braughing
Broadwater
St Albans
'Danish'
'Edwinstree'
Hertford
Hitchin
Odsey
Tring

THE DOMESDAY FORMAT
The Manuscript
The manuscript is written on leaves, or folios, of parchment (sheep-skin), measuring about 15 inches by 11 inches (38 centimetres by 28 centimetres), on both sides. On each side, or page, are two columns, making four to each folio. The folios were numbered in the seventeenth century, and the four columns of each are here lettered a, b, c, d. The manuscript emphasises words and usually distinguishes chapters and sections by the use of red ink. Underlining indicates deletion (JRM).

RELATED OR 'SATELLITE' TEXTS
The Inquisitio Eliensis ('Ely Enquiry') is a draft of the returns that concern the Abbey's holdings. It survives in three transcripts, probably made two or three generations after the Domesday Survey, edited and published with the Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis ('Cambridgeshire Enquiry' ) by N.E.S.A. Hamilton in 1876. The principal manuscript (British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius A. vi) was also published by Ellis in Libri Censualis, pp. 497-528, but without the Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis. References are here given to the column of the Cottonian manuscript and to the page of Hamilton's edition.
	Variant readings, and information that normally falls within the scope of Domesday, are given in the notes to HRT 8. Additional information, chiefly concerned with livestock and with the representatives who gave evidence on oath on behalf of each hundred, is in HRT {Appendix}(JRM).

EDITORIAL
State of Revision
Hertfordshire was published in the Phillimore series in 1976. It was edited by John Morris, the originator of the series, from a draft translation prepared by Margaret Newman and Sara Wood. The map was drawn by Jim Hardy. In his Introduction, John Morris, who lived at Ashwell, near Baldock, wrote: 'The notes are more extensive than usual. In Hertfordshire it has been possible to combine study of the text with local knowledge. The opportunity has therefore been taken to raise tentatively a few examples of the kind of questions, local and national, that may deserve closer enquiry as more county texts become available to local historians and others'.
	The present edition is part of a project to convert the annotation of the Phillimore printed volumes to electronic form and to revise them. For Hertfordshire, this small-scale revision is essentially an interim edition until time is available for a full-scale re-edition. For the present purpose only a limited number of changes have been made to the printed notes:
•	The translation of some terms has been brought into line with those of the series as a whole.
•	 The bibliographical and other conventions have been changed to align them with the other counties that have been revised for the current project.
•	Certain changes have been necessary in the conversion of the notes to a searchable electronic version, such as to the lead words for the notes, to cross-references and to punctuation. 
•	The form of the hundred names has been standardized so as to distinguish between those units that are named from places still extant and those that are not.
•	A number of the forms of personal names have been changed as part of an ongoing process to bring more consistency to the entire name stock of Domesday Book.
•	Some of the people have been further identified. When the identification comes from the person's occurrence in other documents or in other Domesday counties, this is shown in the translation between asterisks within square brackets. Where there is no documentary evidence for the identity of an individual, but it seems likely that a number of persons with the same first name are one and the same, this has been indicated in the translation by putting the name of one of the estates held by that person between < >. In this county the notes to justify both these forms of identification have largely been written by John Palmer and these have been attributed to him as (JP) put at the end of his paragraph  
•	Obvious typographical errors in the Phillimore printed notes have been corrected.

John Morris' original notes have been retained and are assigned to him (JRM). Notes that are unsigned are by the present editors; where significant material has been added by them within a JRM note it has been placed within square brackets.

Caroline Thorn
Frank Thorn
December 2006
June 2007