The structure of Domesday Book does, however, make it an extraordinarily effective instrument of political control. Its tables of contents and numbered headings imply that all land was held either directly by the king or from him by tenants-in-chief. It both asserts that principle and made it manageable. Armed with Domesday Book, King William could threaten to dispossess a recalcitrant baron in a matter of minutes.
It is not hard to see how that would have brought comfort to a king who needed baronial loyalty more than ever. This form of political control was also potentially very profitable, for the king could also use his position as the source of all tenure to generate new streams of income. For example, if a baron died, the king could demand the payment of a relief, a kind of death duty paid by an heir to enter into their inheritance; or he could auction off the right to marry the widows or heiresses of deceased barons, with their lands, to the highest bidder; or if a bishop or abbot died, they could choose to delay the appointment of their successors and rake in the profits of their estates during the resulting vacancy.
So was the Domesday survey and Domesday Book intended to improve yields from the land-tax, or from feudal incidents? There is a solution to this problem which embraces both possibilities. Here it is essential to register a distinction between the survey and Domesday Book itself. It is known that the survey did generate information set out in ways that were useful for the management of taxation.
For example, Exon Domesday is bound up with tax lists, which were updated in , and other texts in the collection demonstrate that the Domesday survey for the south-western shires generated documents laid out in geographic order, one hundred at a time — the format most useful for collecting the land tax. The commissioners from other circuits are known to have done the same thing.
The structure of Domesday Book, however, organised within each shire by tenants-in-chief, would have made the management of feudal incidents more efficient.
So by extracting information in different formats at each stage of the process, the king could achieve several objectives: creating a more secure land-tax base, and a formidable instrument of political and financial control over his barons. The Domesday survey was completed with astonishing speed — within six months of the Gloucester council. This could not have been achieved without the active co-operation of the nobility.
So what was in it for them? Something that they had yearned for throughout the long period during which England had been colonised was security of title. The Domesday inquest created a great public stage on which to act out the ritual completion of the process of colonisation, and the records of the inquest constituted unassailable title to those loyal to the king.
In other words, the Domesday survey was a hard-nosed deal between the king and his barons. That deal was sealed at Old Sarum. This extraordinary event was most likely the climax to the Domesday survey. Exon Domesday was written at Old Sarum, and it was almost certainly there that all the records of the survey were delivered to the king.
That was enough to persuade them to swear allegiance and pay homage to the king. They did so in return for the land that William had granted them — with those rights now enshrined in the greatest charter of confirmation ever made in the medieval world. It is the earliest English document preserved by the government that created it.
But its importance extends well beyond the origins of English red tape. Domesday Book is the most complete survey of a pre-industrial society anywhere in the world.
It enables us to reconstruct the politics, government, society and economy of 11th-century England with greater precision than is possible for almost any other pre-modern polity. It certainly proves that pre-Conquest England was rich and effectively administered.
Loyal supporters were rewarded with land rather than cash but by the Norman land owners were beginning to argue over who held what piece of land. William had spent nearly twenty years imposing Norman control over all of England and he did not want his work to be undone by disunity amongst his own followers. In December , William met his Great Council in Gloucester to discuss how to solve these problems.
Pay for research Consider paying for research. Contents 1. Why use this guide? What is Domesday Book? Great Domesday, Little Domesday and the areas covered 4. The information recorded in Domesday 5. How the original Domesday Book is arranged 6. Accessing Domesday online 7. Accessing printed editions of Domesday 8.
Citing references from Domesday 9. Related documents held elsewhere Further reading. Great Domesday, Little Domesday and the areas covered The survey does not cover London city , Winchester, Northumberland and Durham or much of north-west England; the only parts of Wales included are certain border areas. The information recorded in Domesday The Domesday survey was carried out by commissioners holding sworn inquests in local courts, where they asked fixed questions of local men.
The commissioners asked how land had been held: as it had been on the last day of the reign of Edward the Confessor 5 January — this is abbreviated in Domesday as TRE as it had been when it was granted by King William as it was in when the survey was taken The questions included: What is the manor called?
Who held it in the time of King Edward? Who holds it now? How many hides a land measurement? How much has been added or taken away from the manor? How much has or had each freeman and each sokeman? How many plough teams?
How many freemen, sokemen, villans, cottars and slaves? How much wood, meadow and pasture? How many mills and fisheries? How much was the whole worth in , and how much now ? How the original Domesday Book is arranged Both Great and Little Domesday are arranged by county, and within each county, by landholder.
Accessing Domesday online 6. Name, modern place name, Domesday place name or folio number. 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 saw the need for 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 black and red ink only red used for the county titles atop each page, and corrections and alterations. There are 13, places listed in the Domesday Book. Back to top What areas of Britain did the Domesday survey cover?
The Domesday survey covered all of England as it existed in , which included a small part of what is now Wales, some of Cumbria, but excluded the present day Northumbria. The entries for some major towns at the time like the important 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 owing 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 2 volumes: 'Great Domesday' - most of the counties, abridged, and 'Little Domesday' - the 3 counties missing from Great Domesday, in their unabridged form.
See more about the two books here. There are pages in Great Domesday see above and pages in Little Domesday which shows how much detail was cut out to compile Great Domesday. How many places listed in the Domesday Book still exist? Amazingly almost all of the places mentioned in the Domesday Book can be found on a present day map of England and Wales , though many of their names have been altered over time from their 11th century versions.
Back to top Where can I see the Domesday Book? The original Domesday Book is deemed too valuable and fragile to be exhibited in public and so is kept in private at the National Archives - formerly the Public Records Office - in Kew, London though it is still used on occasions by students and academics interested in its study. A copy of the document has been made and can be seen in a special exhibition area at the National Archives.
For details of how and when to visit see the National Archives website. When William and his army invaded in they continued their conquest campaign towards western and northern England, leaving a fair amount 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 during their conquest, although the term was also used sometimes for manors simply not paying geld for one reason or another.
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