Domesday Book (1086): William the Conqueror's Great Survey

The Domesday Book is the record of a great survey of England carried out in 1086 on the orders of William the Conqueror. Twenty years after the Norman Conquest, royal commissioners travelled the country asking who held each piece of land, how many people worked it and what it was worth. The resulting volumes are the most detailed description of any European kingdom from the eleventh century, and historians still use them to study medieval society, the economy and the history of thousands of English places.

Background: why William wanted a survey

William, Duke of Normandy, had won the English crown at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. In the years that followed, he crushed rebellions, built castles such as the White Tower in London, and replaced almost all of the English nobility with his own followers. By the 1080s land had changed hands on a vast scale, often in confused and disputed ways.

In 1085 a new danger appeared. King Cnut IV of Denmark, allied with the Count of Flanders, prepared to invade England. William brought a large army of mercenaries from the Continent and quartered the soldiers on his barons across the country. The threat faded when Cnut was murdered in 1086, but the episode showed how much the king needed accurate information about the resources of his kingdom.

According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, William held his court at Gloucester at Christmas 1085 and had “very deep speech” with his councillors about the land, how it was occupied and by what sort of men. He then sent his men into every shire to find out how much land and livestock each landholder had, and what it was worth.

How the survey worked

The work was organised with remarkable speed. England was divided into perhaps seven circuits, each covering several counties and visited by a team of commissioners. The commissioners were senior churchmen and nobles, chosen where possible from outside the circuit so that they had no local interests.

Their questions were put to formal gatherings in each shire and hundred (a subdivision of a county). According to a related document from Ely, juries made up of the sheriff, the barons and their Frenchmen, the priest and reeve of each village and six villagers were asked about each estate. Landholders also seem to have submitted written returns.

The questions covered:

• the name of the estate (manor) and who held it in the time of King Edward, before 1066, and who held it in 1086;
• its assessment in hides or carucates, the units used for tax;
• the number of ploughs and plough teams;
• the numbers of free men, villagers, smallholders and slaves;
• woodland, meadow, pasture, mills and fisheries;
• the value of the estate in 1066, when the new lord received it, and in 1086.

The Chronicle complained bitterly about the thoroughness of the inquiry, saying that not a single hide of land was left out, nor “one ox nor one cow nor one pig”. The survey was largely complete by the late summer of 1086. On 1 August that year, William received oaths of loyalty from the leading landholders of England at Salisbury.

Great Domesday and Little Domesday

The information gathered on the circuits was condensed and rewritten into a final record. There are two main volumes.

Great Domesday covers most English counties. It is written in a compressed, heavily abbreviated Latin, almost entirely by one scribe, possibly with a single corrector. Its 413 parchment leaves summarise each county in a fixed order: the king’s land first, then the land of the Church, then that of the barons and lesser tenants.

Little Domesday covers Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk in much fuller detail, with 475 smaller leaves. It appears to be a circuit summary that was never condensed into the main volume, perhaps because work stopped when William died in September 1087.

Other related documents survive, including the Exon Domesday, a preliminary record for the south-west kept at Exeter Cathedral, which shows how the information was assembled.

What the Domesday Book reveals

The survey records about 13,000 places across England. Many villages, towns and farms find their first written mention in its pages, and countless local histories begin with the Domesday entry.

It shows how thoroughly the Conquest had transformed English society. By 1086 the king held around a fifth of the land by value, the Church about a quarter, and a small group of Norman and other continental barons most of the rest. English landholders of any importance had almost disappeared; historians often estimate that they held only around 5 percent of the land.

It also describes the rural economy. More than 6,000 mills are recorded, along with fisheries, salt-works, vineyards and markets. About one in ten of the people listed were slaves, though slavery was in decline and disappeared within a few generations.

In some areas the record shows destruction. Large parts of Yorkshire and neighbouring districts are described as “waste” or sharply reduced in value, a likely result of William’s Harrying of the North in 1069-1070 and of later raids.

How historians use it

Reading Domesday is not straightforward. Its Latin is terse and full of abbreviations, its units of measurement differ from region to region, and its categories of people do not match modern ideas of social class. Entries for the same estate sometimes disagree between the circuit returns and the final book.

Historians have nevertheless used it to answer a wide range of questions. Economic historians have estimated the amount of land under the plough and the value of estates. Others have traced how individual Norman lords built up their holdings, or how the boundaries of counties and parishes had already formed by the eleventh century. Place-name scholars use its spellings to understand the origins of English town and village names.

The survey is also important for what it leaves out. Northern England beyond the River Tees was not covered, nor were the cities of London and Winchester, whose entries were left blank in the finished book. Because the record looks back to 1066 for every estate, it is also one of the best sources for the late Anglo-Saxon kingdom that the Normans conquered.

Key people

William the Conqueror (c. 1028-1087) ordered the survey and may never have seen the finished book. He died at Rouen on 9 September 1087.

The commissioners included bishops and leading barons; the names of those who visited the West Midlands circuit, including Remigius, Bishop of Lincoln, are known from a later record.

The main scribe of Great Domesday is unknown. Some historians have suggested Samson, later Bishop of Worcester, as the organiser of the project, but this remains uncertain.

Myths and facts

Myth: the Domesday Book was meant only as a tax register. Taxation was certainly one purpose, but historians debate the main aim. The book also served as a record of who held land and of royal rights, which could be used to settle disputes and to manage the king’s barons.

Myth: Domesday counts the whole population. It lists mostly heads of households and certain kinds of tenant. Wives, children and many dependants are not recorded, so population totals must be estimated.

Myth: it was called the Domesday Book from the start. Early references call it the “description” or the book of Winchester, where it was kept in the royal treasury. The name “Domesday”, meaning “day of judgement”, is first recorded in the twelfth century.

By the numbers

Legacy

The Domesday Book quickly became a work of reference for royal government. It was consulted in legal disputes for centuries, and as late as the twentieth century it was occasionally cited in cases concerning ancient rights.

It was printed in full by Abraham Farley in 1783 and has since been translated, mapped and analysed in great detail. For its 900th anniversary in 1986 the volumes were rebound, and the BBC produced a modern “Domesday Project” recording life in Britain. The original volumes are kept at The National Archives in Kew.

Together with the Bayeux Tapestry, Domesday is one of the two great records of Norman England: the tapestry shows the Conquest as a story, while the survey shows the kingdom the Conquest created.

Timeline

• 1066, 14 October: William defeats Harold II at Hastings.
• 1069-1070: The Harrying of the North devastates much of northern England.
• 1085: Cnut IV of Denmark threatens to invade; William brings a large army to England.
• 1085, Christmas: At Gloucester, William orders the survey of England.
• 1086: Commissioners hold inquiries across the country.
• 1086, 1 August: Landholders swear loyalty to William at Salisbury.
• 1087, 9 September: William dies at Rouen; work on the final book probably stops.
• c. 1179: Richard FitzNeal explains the name “Domesday”.
• 1783: Abraham Farley publishes the full text.
• 1986: The 900th anniversary of the survey is marked.

Why it matters

The Domesday Book is a unique snapshot of a medieval kingdom at a single moment. It shows the scale of the Norman takeover, the shape of the English countryside and the reach of royal government in the eleventh century. For historians, genealogists and local communities, it remains the starting point for understanding England after 1066.