Annulum aureum in investituræ signum ... qui statim simul cum privilegio _in archivis Wintoniae_ repositus fuerat.
Giraldus certainly must have looked on the Royal Treasury at Winchester as the only recognized repository for all such objects as these.
Mr Hall, indeed, has gradually modified his original position that 'Ingulphus saw the Domesday register, as it now exists, at Westminster', and that it was sent there for good from Winchester 'early in the reign of Henry I',[262] but he still places the establishment of 'the' Treasury at Westminster, in my opinion, too early. It is the gradual decay of Winchester as the capital and seat of administration that makes it difficult to say positively when or how the national records, Domesday Books among them, were transferred to Westminster. We have seen at least that, in its early days, the 'Liber de Wintonia', as it styles itself, had its home within the walls of the Royal castle of Winchester; and I cannot but think, now as at first, that it began by visiting Westminster for Exchequer sessions only.[263]
In any case, we have seen its witness appealed to on a far earlier occasion than had hitherto been known. In my paper on 'An Early Reference to Domesday',[264] I quoted an even earlier mention of the 'Descriptio Angliæ', but here again the reference seems to make rather to the Domesday Survey itself than to Domesday Book, the 'Liber de Thesauro'.
As an appendix to this paper, I give the pedigree of the Domesday MSS. according to the views I have expressed.[265]
Original Returns ________________________|_________________________ | | | | Domesday Domesday 'Inquisitio 'Inquisitio[266] Book, vol. II Book, vol. I Eliensis', Comitatus | _quoad_ Camb. Cantabrigiensis' | and Herts (Tib. A. VI.) | | | | 'Inquisitio ______|________ Eliensis', | | _quoad_ Essex, C text B text Norfolk, Suffolk | ______|______ A text | | (printed by C text B text Ellis) | A text (printed by Ellis)
[Footnote 1: _English Commonwealth_, II, ccccxliv.]
[Footnote 4: _Athenæum_, 1885, I, 472, 566-7; _Domesday Book_, 1887, p. 44.]
[Footnote 5: _Domesday Studies_ (1891), II, 488.]
[Footnote 6: _Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis._ Cura N. E. S. A. Hamilton, 1876.]