A little bit of Domesday Book

Great Domesday Book

Domesday Book is a vast bound book that contains a survey of the whole of England in a single year - 1086.  It is in fact, two volumes, Great Domesday which contains the vast majority of the survey, arranged by county, and Little Domesday which contains only those for East Anglia.  Little Domesday isn't actually all that little and is almost the same physical size as Great Domesday. 

Domesday Book was the brainchild of King William I, better known as William the Conqueror, or even William the Bastard of Normandy.  Having ruled England for nearly twenty years he decided for some unrecorded reason, at his Christmas court of 1085, to order a survey of the entire country to be undertaken.  All these findings, county by county, were to be brought to him at Salisbury in September 1086.  He was quite specific and his list of questions was comprehensive.  These questions survive in one document only, the Inquisitio Eliensis, one of the many so-called 'Domesday Satellites', documents that formed a part of the survey before Great Domesday (have a look here for some of the kind of information that was available to those undertaking the survey), and it records that:

               "Here follows the inquest of land, as the king's barons made it, to wit: by the oath of the sheriff of the shire and of all the barons and their frenchmen and of the while Hundred of the priest, the reeve, six villagers of each village, in order, what is the manor called? Who held it in the time of King Edward?  Who holds it now? How many hides? How many ploughs on the demesne? How many men? How many villagers?  How many cottars?  How many   slaves?  How many freemen?  How many sokemen? How much wood?  How much meadow? How much pasture?  How many mills?  How many fishponds?  How much has been added or taken away?  How much taken together it was worth and how much now.  How much each  freeman or sokeman had or has.  All this at three dates, to wit, in the time of King Edward and when King William gave it and as it is now.  And if it is possible for more to be had than is had."

A page from Exon Domesday

J H Round, writing in the nineteenth century, hypothesised that Domesday Book was a tax book, probably based on that last line '...if it is possible for more to be had than is had'.  But why would a tax book want to know detail such as the number of mills without their specific values?  The only values are demanded for each manor in question as a whole, not piecemeal.  If you wanted to wring as much as you could from a piece of land, you'd want the detail, not just an overview.

And the actual book does not record all the details demanded in Exon Domesday anyway.  That last line was dropped from the survey.  Let's have a look at an entry made for Lovington in the West Country.  Fortunately, for a student of Domesday Book, there is a satellite called Exon Domesday which is held at Exeter.  It was probably, once, the full returns presented to King William at Salisbury and then submitted to the scribe to write up in Great Domesday.  By the late fourteenth century, when it was bound, it had lost most of its contents and little now survives.  But what does survive is fascinating as it gives a direct comparison between the information that was collected for the Domesday survey and what actually made it into the main text, what Domesday Book actually wanted.

From Exon Domesday:

               "Serlo has a manor which is called Lovington and which three thegns Aelmanus and Siricus and a woman Alfilla held in parage on the day King Edward was alive and dead.  It rendered geld for 6 hides.  Those can be cultivated by 8 ploughs.  Of the aforesaid hides Alemanus had 4 hides and Siricus 1 and Alfilla another hide.  These lands Serlo holds as a manor.  Of   them Serlo has 3 hides minus 5 acres, and 2 ploughs in demesne, and the villeins have 2 hides and 5 acres and 6 ploughs.  And there are 8 villeins and 9 bordars and 2 slaves; and 16 beasts and 1 riding horse and 11 swine and 80 sheep; and a wood 4 furlongs in length and 2 in breadth; and 40 acres of meadow.  And it is worth 100s annually and when Serlo received it 61s."

And the same entry from Great Domesday:

               "Serlo holds Lovington. 3 thegns held it TRE* as 3 manors and it gelded for 6 hides.  There is land for 8 ploughs.  In demesne there are 2 ploughs and 2 slaves, and 8 villeins and 9 bordars with 6 ploughs.  In it a mill renders 10s and [there are] 40 acres of meadow, a wood 4 furlongs in length, 2 furlongs in breadth.  Previously [it was worth] 61s, now 100s."

So much was removed because, once the entry was written up following what must have been very strict guidelines, detail such as the names of Alfilla and Siricus was not needed; and the entire entry has been brutally abbreviated.  This allowed only what was deemed necessary to be retained, and also made life a lot easier for the scribe who had to write it all up by hand!  And there was only the one scribe who wrote the entirety of Great Domesday.

The rubrication is clear

So what was needed?  And why?  Well, Great Domesday is not just abbreviated, but it is rubricated, and certain words are struck through in red making them stand out to the reader, and these are the names of the manor and the names of the tenants.  Not the values.  One's eye is not drawn to the values.  Land values are not treated with any particular deference.  These are not what Domesday believes is the most important aspect of itself.

Which does beg the question - what is?  That will be the names, but why?  To be honest, we don’t know.  Did William want to know what was not parcelled off to his followers after Hastings to grant to newcomers to his court?  Did he want to know where to billet soldiers in the event of war with France, or Scandinavia?  Was he merely curious and had the extraordinary authority that was required to ensure such a vast undertaking was not just done but completed?  There are many theories, but sadly William did not leave a record of his inner thoughts and the reason he woke up one morning and decided that he wanted every cow and sheep and mill and cottar and villein and slave in his English realm counted and recorded. 

William I the 'Conqueror'

He did not do this for Normandy - that raises more questions.  England was larger, far larger than Normandy - did he just not know quite how to govern such a large territory?  He had managed quite well, even his detractors have to admit that, but is this what he felt?  And was he looking to hand over all this to his heir, William Rufus, to help him rule, a vast directory of the land holders of England?  Was that on his mind?  He died before the survey was fully written up, in September 1087, at the age of around sixty, so maybe he had an idea of his own mortality.  It is presumed his death is why Little Domesday exists in its form, a long-winded, unabbreviated version of the returns for East Anglia - that the will and the authority was gone with William and the writing up of the survey was abandoned.

There are many aspects to Domesday Book and what at first appears to be a dry document, ancient and dull, becomes a living, breathing piece of history stuffed full of human interest.  I wrote my dissertation for my degree on it and my tutor, Dr David P Kirby, commented that it was obviously a labour of love.  Come back in the next weeks and I will look at these other aspects and hopefully you'll like it as much as I do.

*tempore regis Edwardi - in the time of King Edward (Edward the Confessor).