For these three counties the full, unabbreviated return sent in to Winchester by the commissioners is preserved in the second volume Little Domesday , which, for some reason, was never summarized and added to the larger volume.
Unlike their invasion of England, the Norman penetration into Wales took place very gradually after …. Margaret was born in and was a member of an ancient English royal family.
Hampstead is a pigsty… Residents of Hampstead might not be too pleased to learn that their exclusive London village once housed more pigs than people but this is just one of the fascinating insights to be gained from reading the Domesday Book. Related articles. A reeve was a type of farm manager.
The questions were designed to find out how much each manor owed the king in tax. It also told Williamwho owned what land and how much it was worth. The book lists each manor and its owner and the value of that manor. The book has three values in it for each manor :. How much it was worth before the invasion of How much it was worth during the invasion and How much it was worth after the invasion. This gives a clear indication of how badly the coastal area of Sussex between Pevensey Bay and Hastings was affected by the Norman invasion.
Other areas in East Sussex faired little better. It was the work of several clerks, perhaps as many as seven, and was neatly but hurriedly written, resulting again in minor errors.
Other versions of parts of the Domesday survey, which are not held by the Public Record Office, are the "Exon" Domesday Somerset, Cornwall and most of Devon , held by some to be written by the same scribe who worked on Great Domesday; the 'Ely Inquest' Ely Abbey estates and the Cambridgeshire Inquest parts of Cambridgeshire. It was only possible because England already had a sophisticated administrative system, built up by the Anglo-Saxons, with shire counties, whose boundaries survived with little change until , and a well-functioning tax system.
The traditional view is that all major landowners had to send in lists of their manors and tenants, which were compared to existing tax records. Commissioners were then sent out to assess the situation on the ground, questioning local juries in detail.
Each was assigned circuits containing two or more counties. Their methods of proceeding do seem to have varied from circuit to circuit so comparative analysis by historians can be misleading.
To avoid bias, the juries would have both Normans and native Anglo-Saxons sitting on them. William wanted everything to follow legal form to legitimise his title which he claimed, not simply by right of conquest but as King Edward the Confessor's legitimate heir. All this was to be recorded three times - as it was in the time of King Edward [before ], what it was when King William gave it and as it is now.
And it was also to be noted whether more [tax revenue] could be taken than is being taken now. Compiled at amazing speed for an age without computers or rapid means of communication, and where most of the population could neither read nor write, the returns were then summarized and re-shaped.
The scribes followed a set pattern in their organisation of the data. Each county section began with an entry describing all the boroughs, followed by a list of landholders and then a detailed description of their manors, beginning with those held by the king himself and followed by those of the tenants-in-chief, itemised in rank order.
Red ink was used for key headings. Most of the names that appear are those of landowners. The king and his family held about 17 per cent of the land, bishops and abbots about 26 per cent and around tenants-in-chief held about 54 per cent. Some holdings were huge, with some twelve barons controlling nearly a quarter of the country but it is not always easy to distinguish between individuals with the same names who may have held lands in the same county or across a number of different counties.
Anglo-Saxon names appear mainly as under-tenants of Norman lords. Some , entries relate to Anglo-Saxon lords, such as Aelfric, the pre-Conquest lord of March Gibbon in Buckinghamshire, who, Domesday records, paid his rent 'miserably and with a heavy heart'. Providing definitive proof of rights to land and obligations to tax and military service.
Some women's names appear in Domesday. One Aelgar was granted enough land to live on by the Sheriff of Trent in return for teaching his daughter the art of gold embroidery. A jury, which included the local important men such as the village priest and reeve who could understand the different languages, had to decide whether their neighbours were telling the truth. The results of this survey were written into Domesday Book. Great Domesday contains most of the counties of England and was written by one scribe and checked by a second.
Little Domesday, which contains the information for Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk, was probably written first and is the work of at least six scribes. Domesday Book describes almost all of England and more than 13, places are mentioned in it. Most of them still survive today. Most of the land originally owned by Saxons belonged to Norman barons in , showing just how powerful the Norman lords had become!
This lesson could be used in a scheme of work covering the development of Church, state and society in Medieval Britain which includes the Norman Conquest.
Students are introduced to a single extract from Domesday Book about a place called Patcham in Sussex. From the source, using the transcript they can find out who held the land, what animals were kept there, how it was used and what it was worth during the time of Edward the Confessor and later in time of William Conqueror.
Teachers could also discuss how did William I used Domesday Book to assert his control of England and why he wanted to carry out such a survey of the kingdom. Again is worth exploring how hard life was for medieval people in town and country and asking what can Domesday Book tell us about medieval society? What other sources could we use to find out about this period?
Illustration image: Page from Vol. Source 1: Extract of page from Vol.
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