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The Domesday Book is a great
land survey which was compiled
in 1086. It was commissioned by
William the Conqueror to assess
the extent of the land and
resources being owned in England
at the time – and therefore the
extent of the taxes he could
raise.
The information collected was
recorded by hand in two huge
books, in the space of around a
year. William died before it was
fully completed.
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An observer of the survey wrote that "there was
no single hide nor a yard of land, nor indeed one ox
nor one cow nor one pig which was left out".
The grand and comprehensive scale on which the
Domesday survey took place and the nature of the
information collected led people to compare it to
the Last Judgement, or 'Doomsday', described in the
Bible, when the deeds of Christians, written in the
Book of Life, were to be placed before God for
judgement. The name was adopted in the late 12th
Century.
The Domesday Book provides extensive records of
landholders, their tenants, the amount of land they
owned, how many people occupied the land (villagers,
smallholders, free men, slaves, etc.), the amounts
of woodland, meadows, animals, fish and ploughs on
the land (if there were any) and other resources,
any buildings present (churches, castles, mills,
salthouses, etc.) The whole purpose of the survey
was to discover the value of the land and its
assets, before the Norman Conquest, after it, and at
the time of Domesday. Some entries also chronicle
disputes over who held land, and some mention
customary dues that had to be paid to the King.
Entries for major towns include records of traders
and the number of houses. However, the Domesday
Book does not provide an accurate indication of the
population of England towards the end of the 11th
century
Royal commissioners were sent out around England to
record the information from thousands of
settlements. The country was split up into 7
regions, or 'circuits' of the country, with 3 or 4
commissioners being assigned to each. They carried
with them a set of questions and put these to a jury
of representatives - made up of barons and villagers
from each county. They wrote down all of the
information in Latin, as with the final Domesday
document itself. Once they returned to London the
information was combined with earlier records, from
both before and after the Norman Conquest, and was
then, circuit by circuit, entered into the final
Domesday Book.
The information was collected in the first few
months of 1086, and then this, together with
existing information was amalgamated into two
lengthy drafts, and then abbreviated into the Great
Domesday. By the time of King William’s death in
1087, work had stopped. The Great Domesday Book was
left incomplete, but the draft of the remaining
unabbreviated work remains as the Little Domesday
Book.
Incredibly the final version of the main Domesday
Book, all 413 pages of it, was handwritten by one
unnamed official scribe, and checked by one other.
Despite the speed at which the Book was compiled the
text was very carefully written in a short form of
Latin.
The reason why the book was made was as follows.
With the need to defend England from possible
invasion threats from Scandinavia, and costly
campaigns being fought in northern France, the vast
army William amassed required substantial funding.
The power to raise Danegeld - a uniform tax to pay
for the defence of the country - had been inherited
from the Anglo-Saxons, and William needed the
Domesday Book as a thorough assessment of the
potential amount of tax he could raise from his
subjects and their assets. The survey also served as
a gauge of the country's economic and social state
in the aftermath of the Conquest and the unrest that
followed it.
The main volume, Great Domesday, is written on
sheep-skin parchment using only black and red ink.
Red ink was used for the county titles a the top of
each page, and for alterations and corrections.
There are 13,418 places listed in the Domesday Book.
The Domesday survey covered all of England as it
existed in 1086, which included a small part of what
is now Wales, and some of Cumbria, but it excluded
the present day Northumbria. However, some major
towns (like Winchester and London) failed to make it
into the book.
The survey was intended to be compiled into one
complete volume, but the compilation was never fully
completed, probably due to King William's death
before the sole scribe could finish his work.
However, the information collected from the whole
survey was retained and still exists today in two
volumes: 'Great Domesday' – containing most of the
counties, abridged, and 'Little Domesday' -
containing the 3 counties missing from Great
Domesday, in their unabridged form.
There are 413 pages in Great Domesday, and 475 pages
in Little Domesday. This shows how much detail was
cut out to compile Great Domesday.
Amazingly almost all of the places mentioned in the
Domesday Book can still be found on a modern day map
of England (and Wales), though many of their names
have been altered over time from their 11th century
versions.
When William and his army invaded in 1066 they
continued their conquest campaign towards western
and northern England, leaving a good deal of
destruction in their wake. The term 'waste' or
'wasted' appears many times in the Domesday Book,
most often describing settlements the army had
passed through and left their mark on. However the
term was also sometimes used for manors simply not
paying geld for some reason.
The Domesday Book provides an invaluable insight
into the society and economy of 11th century Norman
England. Historians can use it, amongst other
things, to discover the wealth of England at the
time, information about the feudal system which
existed in society, the social hierarchy (from the
King down to villagers and slaves), and information
about the geography and demographic situation of the
country. For local historians it can reveal the
history of a local settlement and its population and
surroundings, whilst for genealogists it provides a
useful and fascinating resource for tracing family
lines. Through the centuries the Domesday Book has
also been used as evidence in disputes over ancient
land and property rights, though the last case of
this was in the 1960’s.
The original Domesday Book is too valuable and
fragile to be exhibited in public. It is kept at
the National Archives - formerly the Public Records
Office - in Kew, London. A copy of the document has
been made and this reproduction can be viewed at the
National Archives.
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