Principles governing sound medieval pedigrees

I am puzzled about how one can establish a continuous medieval
pedigree over 300 or 400 years.

I have looked at most of the main sources including Domesday, Pipe
and other Rolls, Inquisitions and so on for a period of about 300 years.

At best, any one source may give a three or four generation tree.
Mostly its just two generations.

The problem is continuity in any one series of records.

Are there any principles for resolving problems of establishing
identity. Or could members of the list suggest such principles?

Tim Powys-Lybbe...

I can't match your scholarship as I can't read the source documents and
have limited access to transcriptions or abstracts.

One or two thoughts though. I do follow certain scholars. C T Clay
for instance. K Keats-Rohan is another. If they have, as we know they
have, actually looked at the real surviving documents or even at
photocopies of them, then I would respect their judgement about who is
related to whom.

Another aspect is doing it all over again. The first time through
something like Complete Peerage turned up quite a few families I was
interested in. Some of them linked together, a lot even with the habit
of closed societies inter-marrying rather too much. Then I moved on to
another source, say Keats-Rohan's Domesday pair and Sanders' Baronies.
Each (secondary I agree but the principle is the same) source added some
more and made more links. Then you go back to the beginning and people
you were not interested in first time round suddenly have a relevance and
a connection. And so you go on, adding, wondering and occasionally
deleting.

PS: Anyone got a spare copy of Vol 7 of Early Yorkshire Charters for
sale? After 5 years of searching, it is now the only one of Clay's
volumes that I am missing.

Robert H