Domesday Book

The Domesday Book was commissioned by William in December 1085. The first complete draft was finished in August 1086, but the final finished and complete edition of the survey was not completed until after William’s death in 1087. It recorded information about 13,418 settlements south of the Rivers Ribble and Tees, which marked the border with Scotland. There were 413 pages in the final complete edition. The name ‘The Domesday Book’ was not officially taken up until the twelfth century. It came about as people made comparisons between William’s survey and the ‘Book of Life’ in the Bible, which was presented to God for judgement.

The purpose of the survey was to assess the extent of the land and the resources of the country that William had conquered, and to see where William could be getting more taxes from. The Normans took the idea of taxing the land from the Anglo-Saxon system of Danegeld. These taxes were desperately needed to fund William’s costly Battles in back in France, and to pay for the installation of protection in case of invasion from Scandinavian armies.

The information in the book was collected by Royal Commissioners, who were sent around England with a set of questions. In order to lessen the scale of the task, the country was divided into seven circuits, and 3 to 4 commissioners were sent to each circuit. The information collected by the commissioners was then presented to a jury of Barons and Villagers from the local county, before being sent to London and added into the one main book.

In the Domesday Book, there are records of

·         Land Owners

·         Their tenants

·         The amount of land owned

·         How many men occupied the land (villagers, small holders, free men, slaves etc)

·         Amount of woodland, meadow, animals, fish and ploughs on the land (if any)

·         Any buildings on the land (churches castles, mills, salt houses, etc)

·         The value of the land and its assets before conquest, after conquest, and at the time of Domesday

·         Some entries chronicled ownership disputes, and customary dues. Town entries include traders and number of houses.

The Domesday Book is now held in a special box in the National Archives in London.