The great survey of England S of the Ribble and Tees rivers (London and Winchester excepted), compiled in 1086 on the orders of William the Conqueror; sometimes spelled Doomsday Book (though the dome refers to houses, not to doom). Information is arranged by county and, within each county, according to tenure by major landholders; each manor is described according to value and resources. Domesday is one of the greatest administrative achievements of the Middle Ages, yet its central purpose remains unclear. Most probably, it was to assist the royal exploitation of crown lands and feudal rights, and to provide the new nobility with a formal record and confirmation of their lands, thus putting a final seal on the Norman occupation.
Domesday Book (also known as Domesday, or Book of Winchester), was the record of the great survey of England completed in 1086, executed for William the Conqueror. One of the main purposes of the survey was to find out who owned what so they could be taxed on it, and the judgment of the assessors was final — whatever the book said about who owned the property, or what it was worth, was the law, and there was no appeal.
In August 2006, a complete online version of Domesday Book was made available for the first time by the The National Archives.
Domesday Book
Domesday Book is really two independent works. The other, Great Domesday covers the rest of England, except for lands in the north that would later become Westmorland, Cumberland, Northumberland and County Durham (partly because some of these lands were under Scottish control at the time). The omission of these two major cities is probably due to their size and complexity, Cumberland is missing because it was not conquered until some time after the survey and the Prince-Bishop William of St. Carilef had the exclusive right to tax Durham;
Despite its name, Little Domesday is actually larger — as it is far more detailed, down to numbers of livestock.
For both volumes, the contents of the returns were entirely rearranged and classified according to fiefs, rather than geographically.
In each county, the list opened with the holdings of the king himself (which had possibly formed the subject of separate inquiry); and last of all those of women, of the king's serjeants (servientes), of the few English thegns who retained land, and so forth.
In some counties, one or more principal towns formed the subject of a separate section;
Apart from the wholly rural portions, which constitute its bulk, Domesday contains entries of interest concerning most of the towns, which were probably made because of their bearing on the fiscal rights of the crown therein.
The information of most general interest found in the great record is that on political, personal, ecclesiastical and social history, which only occurs sporadically and, as it were, by accident.
The survey
From the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, it is known that the planning for the survey was conducted in 1085, and from the colophon of the book it is known that the survey was completed in 1086.
Each county was visited by a group of royal officers (legati), who held a public inquiry, probably in the great assembly known as the county court, which was attended by representatives of every township as well as of the local lords.
What is believed to be a full transcript of these original returns is preserved for several of the Cambridgeshire Hundreds, and is of great illustrative importance. The Inquisitio Eliensis, the Exon Domesday (so called from the preservation of the volume at Exeter), which covers Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Wiltshire, and the second volume of Domesday Book, also all contain the full details which the original returns supplied.
Through comparison of what details are recorded in which counties, six "circuits" can be determined.
Berkshire, Hampshire, Kent, Surrey, Sussex Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Wiltshire (Exeter Domesday) Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Middlesex Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire Cheshire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire — the Marches Derbyshire, Huntingdonshire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, YorkshirePurpose
For the object of the survey, we have three sources of information:
The passage in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which tells us why it was ordered: "After this had the king a large meeting, and very deep consultation with his council, about this land; commissioning them to find out "How many hundreds of hides were in the shire, what land the king himself had, and what stock upon the land; Also he commissioned them to record in writing, "How much land his archbishops had, and his diocesan bishops, and his abbots, and his earls;" and though I may be prolix and tedious, "What, or how much, each man had, who was an occupier of land in England, either in land or in stock, and how much money it were worth." The list of questions which the jurors were asked, as preserved in the Inquisitio Eliensis The contents of Domesday Book and the allied records mentioned above.Although these can by no means be reconciled in every detail, it is now generally recognized that the primary object of the survey was to ascertain and record the fiscal rights of the king. These were mainly
The national land-tax (geldum), paid on a fixed assessment, Certain miscellaneous dues, and The proceeds of the crown lands.After a great political convulsion such as the Norman conquest, and the wholesale confiscation of landed estates which followed it, it was William's interest to make sure that the rights of the crown, which he claimed to have inherited, had not suffered in the process.
The Domesday survey therefore recorded the names of the new holders of lands and the assessments on which their tax was to be paid. by the king's instructions it endeavoured to make a national valuation list, estimating the annual value of all the land in the country, (1) at the time of Edward the Confessor's death, (2) when the new owners received it, (3) at the time of the survey, and further, it reckoned, by command, the potential value as well. The great bulk of Domesday Book is devoted to the somewhat arid details of the assessment and valuation of rural estates, which were as yet the only important source of national wealth. After stating the assessment of the manor, the record sets forth the amount of arable land, and the number of plough teams (each reckoned at eight oxen) available for working it, with the additional number (if any) that might be employed;
It is obvious that, both in its values and in its measurements, the survey's reckoning is very crude.
The rearrangement, on a feudal basis, of the original returns enabled the Conqueror and his officers to see with ease the extent of a baron's possessions; As Domesday Book normally records only the Christian name of an under-tenant, it is not possible to search for the surnames of families claiming a Norman origin;
To a large extent, it comes down to the king's knowing where he should look when he needed to raise money.
Subsequent history
Domesday Book was originally preserved in the royal treasury at Winchester (the Norman kings' capital).
It remained in Westminster until the days of Queen Victoria, being preserved from 1696 onwards in the Chapter House, and only removed in special circumstances, such as when it was sent to Southampton for photozincographic reproduction. Domesday Book was eventually placed in the Public Record Office, London; Most recently, the two books were rebound for its ninth centenary in 1986, when Great Domesday was divided into two volumes and Little Domesday was divided into three volumes.
The printing of Domesday, in "record type", was begun by the government in 1773, and the book was published, in two volumes, in 1783; in 1811 a volume of indices was added, and in 1816 a supplementary volume, separately indexed, containing:
The Exon Domesday — for the south-western counties The Inquisitio Eliensis The Liber Winton — surveys of Winchester early in the 12th century The Boldon Buke — a survey of the bishopric of Durham a century later than Domesday.Photographic facsimiles of Domesday Book, for each county separately, were published in 1861-1863, also by the government. Today, Domesday Book is available in numerous editions, usually based per county and available with other local history resources.
Although unique in character and invaluable to the student, scholars are unable to explain portions of its language and of its system.
To the topographer, as to the genealogist, its evidence is of primary importance, as it not only contains the earliest survey of each township or manor, but affords, in the majority of cases, the clue to its subsequent descent.
In August 2006 the contents of Domesday went on-line, with an English translation of the book's Latin.
In 1986, the BBC released the BBC Domesday Project, the results of a project to create a survey to mark the 900th anniversary of the original Domesday Book.
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