The texts in the Version A and Cotton Otho B.xi are sufficiently similar to show that ultimately they do derive from one source. The historian David Hill shows how all of the recensions can be used to correct each other or at least help us understand how errors, especially in the hidage numbers, were mistranscribed in the copying process. Hill argues that these errors are not conflicts of facts or derive from differing lists, but simply errors in copying from a common source; it is possible to see that this was because lines of the text were being missed. However, as noted above, the ‘B’ recensions do not list Burpham, Wareham and Bridport, it is likely that their common archetype must have missed them also. Yet it too must have contained the ‘grand total’ sentence at the end which is flatly contradicted by the hidages enumerated.