Domesday Book

Domesday Book was the result of the great survey commissioned by William the Conqueror at Gloucester at Christmas 1085. The main manuscript, so-called Great Domesday, written by a single scribe, contains the final version of the surveys of all English counties south of the rivers Ribble and Tees, with the exception of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex. These three counties make up Little Domesday, a more detailed, unedited draft text which, for reasons which remain unknown, was not reduced to the final Great Domesday form. Domesday Book's name, given to it in the generations immediately after the survey, shows that it was a source of awe and wonder. During the Middle Ages it continued to be consulted on numerous legal and tenurial matters. It is a fundamental source for all types of historical enquiry and is of importance for geographers, lawyers, and linguists. It is primarily a record of landholders, both in 1086 and in the time of Edward the Confessor, and of the manors and other estates which they held. The detail given for each estate usually consists of geld assessment, numbers of peasantry, ploughs, ploughlands, and some categories of livestock, and estimated value in King Edward's day, in 1086, and sometimes at an intermediate point. Information is often (but not consistently) given about whether title to a particular manor was in dispute and about churches, mills, and woodland. Major towns were supposed to be entered at the start of each county survey, but some important ones, such as London and Winchester, were omitted. The survey's purpose and the method of its compilation are subjects of debate. The current emphasis is on a financial purpose, since it seems to be primarily concerned with resources and assessments. However, its value as a register of title must not be overlooked, even if the disputes which it records were often not resolved. It is clear from chronicle references that the preliminary results were brought to William, perhaps by 1 August 1086 in preparation for the famous Salisbury Oath, and certainly before he left for Normandy in the autumn. The production of the final Great Domesday text, however, took much longer and was probably not concluded until early 1088. Sets of commissioners toured the kingdom and heard evidence from juries representing shire and hundred courts. The kingdom was divided into circuits, of which there were probably seven. The basic order in which the material was to be set out was predetermined. The most complex modern discussions concern the methods by which this material was collected. While it is clear that some was in existence before the survey was made, the emphasis in recent discussion is on an intense editing process at local level, involving documents of various kinds and the participation of the local representatives. Computer-based studies of Domesday Book's contents are starting to yield impressive results on all kinds of subjects, but the complexities of its terminology and its statistics still baffle investigators.

David Richard Bates