Kent Past
The History of Kent
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Domesday Book
The Domesday Book is the record of the great survey of much of England and parts
of Wales completed in 1086, executed for William I of England, or William the Conqueror.
'While spending the Christmas of 1085 in Gloucester, William had deep speech with
his counsellors and sent men all over England to each shire to find out what or how
much each landholder had in land and livestock, and what it was worth' (Anglo-
One of the main purposes of the survey was to determine who held what
and what taxes had been liable under Edward the Confessor; the judgment of the Domesday
assessors was final,whatever the book said about who held the material wealth or
what it was worth, was the law, and there was no appeal. It was written in Latin,
although there were some vernacular words inserted for native terms with no previous
Latin equivalent, and the text was highly abbreviated.
Richard FitzNigel, writing
c. 1179, stated that the book was known by the English as 'Domesday', that is the
Day of Judgement 'for as the sentence of that strict and terrible last account cannot
be evaded by any skilful subterfuge, so when this book is appealed to ... its sentence
cannot be put quashed or set aside with impunity. That is why we have called the
book 'the Book of Judgement...because its decisions, like those of the Last Judgement,
are unalterable'.
In August 2006 a complete online version of Domesday Book was made
available for the first time by the United Kingdom's National Archives
The Domesday
Book is really two independent works. One, known as Little Domesday, covers Norfolk,
Suffolk and Essex. The other, Great Domesday, covers much of the remainder of England
and parts of Wales, except for lands in the north that would later become Westmorland,
Cumberland, Northumberland and County Durham. There are also no surveys of London,
Winchester and some other towns. The omission of these two major cities is probably
due to their size and complexity. Most of Cumberland and Westmorland are missing
because they were not conquered until after the survey, and County Durham is lacking
as the Bishop of Durham (William de St-
Despite its name, Little Domesday was actually larger
as it is far more detailed, down to numbers of livestock. It has been suggested that
Little Domesday represents a first attempt, and that it was found impossible, or
at least inconvenient, to complete the work on the same scale for Great Domesday.
For
both volumes, the contents of the returns were entirely rearranged and classified
according to fiefs, rather than geographically. Instead of appearing under the Hundreds
and townships, holdings appear under the names of the landholders i.e. those who
held the lands directly of the crown in fee.
In each county, the list opened with
the holdings of the king himself (which had possibly formed the subject of separate
inquiry); then came those of the churchmen and religious houses in order of status
(for example, the Archbishop of Canterbury is always listed before other bishops);
next were entered those of the lay tenants-
In some counties, one or more principal towns formed the subject of
a separate section; in some the clamores (disputed titles to land) were similarly
treated separately. This principle applies more specially to the larger volume; in
the smaller one the system is more confused, the execution less perfect.
Domesday
names a total of 13,418 places. 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.
These include fragments of custumal (older customary agreements), records of the
military service due, of markets, mints, and so forth. From the towns, from the counties
as wholes, and from many of its ancient Lordships, the crown was entitled to archaic
dues in kind, such as honey.
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. Much of this was used by E.
A. Freeman for his work on the Norman Conquest.
From the Anglo-
Most shires were
visited by a group of royal officers (legati), who held a public inquiry, probably
in the great assembly known as the shire court, which was attended by representatives
of every township as well as of the local lords. The unit of inquiry was the Hundred
(a subdivision of the county, which then was an administrative entity), and the return
for each Hundred was sworn to by twelve local jurors, half of them English and half
of them Normans.
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 is a record of the lands of Ely Abbey; and the
Exon Domesday (so called from the preservation of the volume at Exeter), which covers
Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Wiltshire (however only one manor of Wiltshire
is included and parts of Devon, Dorset and Somerset are also wanting) also all contain
the full details supplied by the original returns.
Through comparison of what details
are recorded in which counties, six "circuits" can be determined (plus a seventh
circuit for the Little Domesday shires).
1. Berkshire, Hampshire, Kent, Surrey, Sussex
2.
Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Wiltshire (Exeter Domesday)
3. Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire,
Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Middlesex
4. Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire,
Staffordshire, Warwickshire
5. Cheshire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire,
Worcestershire � the Marches
6. Derbyshire, Huntingdonshire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire,
Yorkshire
For the object of the survey, there are three sources of information:
The
passage in the Anglo-
'After this
had the king a large meeting, and very deep consultation with his council, about
this land; how it was occupied, and by what sort of men. Then sent he his men over
all England into each shire; 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; or, what dues he ought to have by the year from the shire.' 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.' So very narrowly, indeed, did he commission
them to trace it out, that there was not one single hide, nor a yard of land, nay,
moreover (it is shameful to tell, though he thought it no shame to do it), not even
an ox, nor a cow, nor a swine was there left, that was not set down in his writ.
And all the recorded particulars were afterwards brought to him.'
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 recognised that the primary
object of the survey was to ascertain and record the fiscal rights of the king. These
were mainly:
the national land-
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 was in William's interest to make sure that the rights of the crown, which he
claimed to have inherited, had not suffered in the process. More especially was this
the case as his Norman followers were disposed to evade the liabilities of their
English predecessors. The successful trial of Odo de Bayeux at Penenden Heath less
than a decade after the conquest was one example of the growing discontent at the
Norman land-
The Domesday
survey therefore recorded the names of the new holders of lands and the assessments
on which their tax was to be paid. But it did more than this; 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. It is evident that William desired to know
the financial resources of his kingdom, and it is probable that he wished to compare
them with the existing assessment, which was one of considerable antiquity, though
there are traces that it had been occasionally modified. 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; then the river-
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; but it also had the effect of showing how far he had engaged
under-
To a large extent, it comes down to the king's knowing where he should look when
he needed to raise money. It therefore includes sources of income but not sinks of
expenditure such as castles, unless their mention is needed to explain discrepancies
between pre-
Domesday
Book was originally preserved in the royal treasury at Winchester (the Norman kings'
capital). It was originally referred to as the Book of Winchester, and refers to
itself as such in a late edition. When the treasury moved to Westminster, probably
under Henry II, the book went with it. In the Dialogus de scaccario (temp. Hen. II.)
it is spoken of as a record from the arbitrament of which there was no appeal (from
which its popular name of Domesday is said to be derived). In the middle ages, its
evidence was frequently invoked in the law-
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
photo zincographic reproduction. Domesday Book was eventually placed in the Public
Record Office, London; it can be now seen in a glass case in the museum at The National
Archives, Kew, which is in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames in South West
London. In 1869, it received a modern binding. Most recently, the two books were
rebound for its 9th centenary in 1986, when Great Domesday was divided into two volumes
and Little Domesday was divided into three volumes. The ancient Domesday chest, in
which it used to be kept, is also preserved in the building at Kew.
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 indexes
was added, and in 1816 a supplementary volume, separately indexed, containing
1. The
Exon Domesday�for the south-
2. The Inquisitio Eliensis
3. The Liber
Winton�surveys of Winchester late in the 12th century.
4. 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-
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. In August 2006 the contents of Domesday
went on-
The importance
of Domesday Book for understanding the period in which it was written is difficult
to overstate. As H.C. Darby noted, anyone who uses it 'can have nothing but admiration
for what is the oldest 'public record' in England and probably the most remarkable
statistical document in the history of Europe. The continent has no document to compare
with this detailed description covering so great a stretch of territory. And the
geographer, as he turns over the folios, with their details of population and of
arable, woodland, meadow and other resources, cannot but be excited at the vast amount
of information that passes before his eyes'.
Or, as the author of the eleventh edition
of the Encyclopaedia Britannica article noted, '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, a clue to its subsequent
descent'.
On the other hand, Darby points out 'when this great wealth of data is examined
more closely, perplexities and difficulties arise'. One problem is that the clerks
who compiled this document 'were but human; they were frequently forgetful or confused'.
The use of roman numerals also led to countless mistakes. Darby states, 'Anyone who
attempts an arithmetical exercise in Roman numerals soon sees something of the difficulties
that faced the clerks'. But more importantly are the numerous obvious omissions,
and ambiguities in the presentation of the material. Darby first cites F.W. Maitland's
comment following his compilation of a table of statistics from material taken from
the Domesday Book survey, 'it will be remembered that, as matters now stand, two
men not unskilled in Domesday might add up the number of hides in a county and arrive
at very different results because they would hold different opinions as to the meanings
of certain formulas which are not uncommon', then after adding that 'each county
presents its own problems' Darby concedes that 'it would be more correct to speak
not of 'the Domesday geography of England', but of 'the geography of Domesday Book'.
The two may not be quite the same thing, and how near the record was to reality we
can never know'.
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