Domesday and the Making of
Norman England
Simon de Montfort Society, Cotswolds Conference Centre,
The first thing I hear in the morning when I
switch on my computer is ‘ping’. If I’m lucky, there’s only one email, but
every day there is at least one. Failing all else, there is always the Google Alert with the keyword ‘Domesday’. Day in day out
for the last five years there have been at least a dozen or so new references
to Domesday on the internet. Often the references are just nonsense. In early September
2010, for example, Domesday Book was used to buttress a rather poor story on
‘the most haunted house in
Others
are more interesting, if only as a comment on our modern society. No story
about the countryside is complete without mentioning that Little Twittering in
the Marsh ‘appears in the Domesday
Book’ (note the use of the definite article; all professionals omit it) and
estate agents, it seems, would be unable to sell a single heritage executive
home without a guarantee of inclusion in the great survey. Domesday Book
somehow defines our culture, or at least, how we would like to view it. A
couple of years ago it was declared a national treasure along with the pub,
cricket, and the mini skirt. It was also nominated as one of fifty book that
’changed the world’, along with the Bible, the Koran and The Joys of Sex. More bizarrely, in recent months Domesday Book has
been picked up by the BNP as a reference point for racial purity. Odd choice considering that it was compiled for a group of foreign
invaders and describes a society which was already multi-racial before they
came.
All this is peculiarly English.
What is the more surprising is that Domesday Book should be so regularly cited
elsewhere. In the last few years it has been held up in the Vietnam Daily News
as a notable turning point in history; in an Iraqi insurgents’ website as
evidence of the innate iniquity of the west; in
Well, what is the all fuss about,
then? The book itself is impressive enough. It comes in two volumes and is a
summary account of a survey or inquest of the lands of the king and his barons
in 1086. It covers all of England south of the Tees along with a little bit of
eastern Wales – that part that had already been conquered by the Normans in
1086 - and is arranged by landholder county by county. Volume ii, Little
Domesday Book (LDB) as it is known, consists of 900 or so single-column pages
and contains a description of estates in
Individual entries are not always an
exciting reading, but they do convey key facts about the estates in question. The
account of Broadway is typical:
The church [of Pershore]
itself holds BROADWAY. There are 30 hides paying geld. In demesne are 3
ploughs; and a priest and 42 villans with 20 ploughs.
There are 8 slaves. The whole TRE was worth £12 10s.;
now £14 10s.
The first thing to point out is that, of
course, the original is written in Latin and in shorthand at that. The entry starts
with the holder of the land in 1086, here Pershore
Abbey. Then is recorded the tax assessment of the estate in hides, the number
of ploughs in demesne (that is in the lord’s hands), the number of men there
and their ploughs, and then the value of the manor in 1066 and at the time of
the inquest. Turning the page, we
find in this instance a few more details of the estate:
Of this land 1 free man held TRE
2½ hides, and he bought them of Abbot Edmund. This land belonged to the
demesne. Now there are 2 ploughs in the abbot's demesne for his sustenance. It
was and is worth 30s. Urse claims this land by gift
of the king, and says that he himself exchanged it with the abbot for a manor
which belonged to the demesne.
The free man’s land was a separate, but
subordinate, holding in 1066. Urse was the infamous
Norman sheriff of Worcestershire.
There over 30,000 entries of this
type in GBD and LDB, referring to no less than 13,600 communities, give or take.
Almost 90% of existing settlements appear there in one form or another. It is,
in fact, rather difficult to live in a place in
It was a truly phenomenal
achievement and it’s perhaps not surprising that the production of the Book has
been seen as the sole aim of the inquest of 1086. The ‘Making of Domesday Book’
is usually represented in something like the following way. It started with existing
administrative documents and possibly a survey of the king’s lands. These
records were then brought together in the open sessions of the Domesday inquest
in regional centres where lords provided an account of their lands. Drafts,
already in the form of Domesday Book, were then produced and returned to
central government where Domesday Book was finally abbreviated from them.
This, of course, is a modern
reconstruction of events. Earlier writers had no need to finesse it in this
way. However, the notion that Domesday Book was the aim of the inquest is an
old one. It first surfaces in an anonymous chronicle written at
That was an agenda – I use the
word advisedly - that has run and run ever since. In the mid thirteenth century
Matthew Paris opined that the production of Domesday Book was where ’the
manifest oppression of the English began’. The ‘
The [BSE] inquiry joins a long English tradition of detailed government-commissioned reports compiled with state-of-the-art technology. The Domesday Book was the first and BSE might be thought of as a tardy riposte to that Norman intrusion - the disease, after all, has crossed the Channel in the opposite direction.
Domesday Book as political control and
propaganda remains a leitmotif of modern historical discourse.
All of this may appear to come
from The University of the Bloody Obvious. Of course such a major source as
Domesday Book must have been the product of concerted policy and, of course, it
indicates strong decisive government. But, as you have no doubt already
divined, I am going to take issue with the notion. It seems to me that it owes
more to 1066 and All That
- the world of strong and weak kings, good and bad things - than critical
history.
We can start with the most
important characteristic of Domesday Book: it was an abbreviation,
it missed out a lot of the information that was collected. Most obviously, GDB
omitted all mention of livestock, an item of major interest in the inquest. More
importantly, both GDB and LDB fail to record the names of the jurors who
provided the information, information we know from other sources was freely available
to the Domesday scribes. If later practice from the early twelfth century onwards
is any guide, the fact at once indicates that Domesday Book cannot originally
have had any legal force.
Evidence to be admissible had to
be vouchsafed by jurors. In later centuries they did so by appending their
seals; what mark they use in the eleventh is unknown. The fact remains that
their witness is conspicuous by its absence. Original returns were essential to
all legal processes. Summaries of inquests were an entirely different beast
with a different purpose. They were generally compiled after the surveys,
sometimes as much as 20 years after the event, for purely administrative
purposes.
Domesday Book displays all of
these latter characteristics. Although many historians confidently assert that
it was compiled in 1086/7, it is in fact undated. (The colophon at the end of
LDB refers to the inquest not the book). The earliest unambiguous reference to ‘the
king’s book’ comes in 1101 and internal evidence indicates that it must have
been compiled after 1088. The decisive evidence is found in the account of
Huntingdonshire, the fifth county to
be entered in GDB, where William de Warenne is styled
‘earl’. He was so elevated by William Rufus, William the Conqueror’s son, some
time between late 1087 and mid 1088.
Written for William the Conqueror
it wasn’t. Neither was it a Magna Carta bruited
throughout the realm. In the first fifty years of its existence, Domesday Book
seems to have been largely unknown outside royal circles. It remains
unmentioned in charters and, significantly, extracts do not appear in all the
cartularies that were compiled before 1130, apart from a postscriptal
addition of unknown date relating to the
Domesday Book was also evidently
not a public document. For myself, I have suggested that it was most likely
compiled c.1090 by Rannulf Flambard after the revolt
against Rufus in 1088 as an administrative aid. Royal estates had been widely
plundered and the book was designed as a guide to royal rights for use in the
Exchequer. Having said that, however, it is possible that the
book was compiled at any time up to the early years of the reign of Henry I.
I would argue, then, that Domesday
Book was not a grand political statement by William the Conqueror, but the
jottings of a quill-pusher in the reign of one or other of the two sons who
succeeded him. It made no greater contribution to the making of Norman England
than any other administrative document of the period.
What, then, was the Domesday inquest
about if not the production of Domesday Book? There are a lot of documents that
survive from the process, but they have usually been interpreted as
‘satellites’, that is, they were stages in the production of the book. Once we
dispose of that shibboleth, however, we can see them for what they are. They
point to not one aim but several.
The starting point must be the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle account of the inquest. It states that there was first a survey of what
can be broadly characterized as the income of the king:
The king had much thought and deep
discussion with his council at
The account of
Vestiges of the audit in these
terms are found throughout the Domesday corpus. It is most apparent as a
separate enterprise in the survey of the king’s demesne manors in the
countryside. Throughout the Domesday corpus the account of the king’s land is
noticeably different from the rest of the text. It includes all sorts of
renders in kind and the profits from courts, divers
customs, and the like not found elsewhere. Less obviously, there was also a survey of
royal churches. It is not evidenced in the
The reference to hundreds in the
account of
Those
written below have not paid the king's geld as they ought:
The
The Abbot of Peterborough has not
paid geld in respect of 1 house and of 3 tofts.
Earl Hugh has not paid geld in
respect of any of his land, nor [has] Turold of 'Greetwell', nor Losuard, nor Ketilbert.
Hugh fitzBaldric
has not paid geld in respect of 2 tofts, nor Geoffrey Alselin likewise in respect of 2 tofts. Nor has Gilbert
paid geld in respect of 3 houses, nor Peter de Valognes
in respect of his house, nor Countess Judith in respect of her house, nor Ralph
Paynel in respect of 1 house, nor Ralph de Bapaume in respect of his house, nor Ertald
in respect of his house.
This house, in respect of which
the Abbot of Peterborough has not, as has been said, paid geld on a regular
basis, Norman Crassus claims as of the king's fief,
for
Guthrothr his predecessor had this in
pledge for 3 ½ marks of silver.
However, the most extensive records of the
process were probably something like the Yorkshire Summary, a list of holdings,
their assessments, and the lords who held them, which is entered at the end of
GDB.
We know from a contemporary letter
written by Robert, bishop of
Also he
had a record made of how much land his archbishops had, and his bishops and his
abbots and his earls - and though I relate it at too greater a length - what or
how much everyone had who was occupying land in England, in land or cattle, and
how much money it was worth. So very narrowly did he have it investigated, that
there was no single hide nor virgate of land, nor
indeed (it is a shame to relate but it seemed no shame for him to do) one ox
nor one cow nor one pig which was there left out, and not put down in his
record; and all these records were brought to him afterwards.
Notice how this annal
carefully distinguishes the process from what went before with that initial ‘also’.
This stage of the inquest, as is again clear from Robert of Hereford’s letter, took place is
regional assemblies over which commissioners presided. There were seven groups
in all and they were sent to areas in which they held no land themselves to
ensure the accuracy of the survey.
Something of the terms of
reference perhaps survives in the Inquisitio Eliensis and the procedure can be reconstructed from the
forms of the GDB and LDB texts. Lists of holdings were drawn up from the
records of the geld inquest and each lord was required to furnish an account of
the resources of all those he held. A day and place was appointed for his ‘inbreviation’, the official writing down of the details of
his estates. Exon contains many of the inbreviations of the south-west counties. In most areas the
results were then drawn up by village and sworn by hundred juries. A document
know as the Inquisitio Comitatus
Cantabrigiensis is the best surviving witness of this
stage of the process, but geographically arranged sources of a similar kind are
embedded in the Rutland, Lincolnshire, and Yorkshire folios of GDB.
Finally, in some areas, there was
a third stage in which disputes were determined. We have the results in the GDB
accounts of Huntingdonshire,
Records of all of these activities
appear to have been returned to central government.
That, in outline, is what happened
in 1086. Can we explain what it was all about? It is the events of 1085 that put
it all into context. It was a time of crisis; invasion was in the air. King Cnut of
went to
This begins to make sense. William’s most
pressing need in 1085 must have been cash. Within that context the first stage
of the Domesday inquest makes immediate sense: the audit of the issues of the
royal estates and the geld was designed to raise money to pay the wages of his
mercenaries.
An aim of the second
stage, the survey of the lands of the tenants-in-chief, seems to have been to
raise more. Much of the income of the geld was enjoyed by the barons in 1085.
Their own demesnes were exempt and they pocketed the surplus that was generated
by their estates. Returns show that both sources of income were targeted by the
king. Statistical summaries of the holdings of each baron, preserved in several
inquest records, focus on the number of ploughlands
in each fee and the increase in value since the land was granted by William. Both
statistics were of immediate use. The increase in value was a straightforward
measure of cash in hand; the ploughlands an index of
tax capacity: juxtaposed with assessment to the geld the ploughland
contrasted how much land was there with how much actually paid the geld.
Taxation was clearly a
major concern, but it was not the only matter at issue. The lord’s demesne was
exempt because he owed personal services to the king: where his men paid tax,
he fought. Such service was also part of the equation. The summaries again
supply the crucial information. In addition to ploughland
and value, they carefully record the number of manors held by each baron, both
in demesne and by his men. This is telling. Throughout the Domesday texts the
manor is a leitmotif. Estates are constantly said to be held ‘for a manor’ or
sometimes two or more; land that was added or taken away was consistently
noted; the extent of fees was measured in the numbers of manors. Size mattered;
so did number. The manor was evidently a measure of service. The servitium debitum, the
number of knights that each baron owed him, was evidently at issue.
What happened next? In
the 1066 and All That
school of history William the Conqueror clicked his fingers, tax was increased
to full capacity, knight service was doubled, and everyone went home grumbling
what a bastard King William was. Life is not like that now and it was not then.
Politics has always been the art of the possible. What in fact William did was to
convene a conference at
There is no more. However,
we can reconstruct what happened from later events. A hard bargain was struck: William
did not demand that tax was raised to its full capacity but the barons agreed
to pay the geld due from their demesnes. In addition, as Orderic
Vitalis pointed out in the early twelfth century,
knight service was re-negotiated. In return the barons, and apparently their
tenants and more substantial free men, were confirmed in their lands.
We can see at last
that the Domesday inquest was not a matter of William throwing his weight
about. It was a communal matter. The system of taxation and service had proved unequal to the demands
made upon it for the defence of the realm in 1085. William had had to hire
mercenaries; there was evidently much discontent among those who had to pay and
billet them. Something had to be done. The inquest was the means. It recorded
the obligations of each free man and the resources that underpinned them and,
on the basis of the data collected, more adequate arrangements were then
agreed. Far from indicating a strong king imposing his will, the Domesday
inquest attests a king consulting his subjects in the face of a threat to the
commonweal. It was all about collecting information to inform subsequent
negotiation.
: In
introducing the idea of negotiation into royal government I have been
criticized for my ‘socialist’ sensibilities. Nowadays that is as much a hanging
offence in academia as it is in public life. But I am not going to shy away
from the concept. The upshot of the meeting at
Far more important was the reform
in service. Billeting of mercenaries thereafter was never an issue. It is not
specified in relations between king and baron in later centuries. Moreover, it
is explicitly prohibited in charters of liberties granted to towns by successive kings. In
other words, billeting of mercenaries was abolished. Henceforward, barons were
expected to bring their quota of knights to defend the realm. The numbers
agreed in 1086 dictated military service for the following century or so. From
the late twelfth century, the king preferred to take a monetary payment, that
is scutage, in lieu, but the figures continued to
inform its collection as well as the other feudal dues of wardship,
marriage, relief, and the like, well into the fifteenth century.
The agreement, however, was not
just between king and barons. Remember that all those who held freely also
swore allegiance to the king. The tenants of the barons were also involved and here
profound changes in society ensured. Up to 1086, the ordinary knight had no
security of tenure: at best he held his land only for his life – he did not
have the right to pass it on to his heirs. For the first time the oath created a direct
relationship with the king, and, under the English law in which these matters
were framed, that conferred hereditablity. By the
early twelfth century the barons’ tenants had established their families and
put down firm roots in the countryside. A new squirarchy
was born and a social order came into existence that was to dominate local
society almost into the modern day.
Now of course not all of this
happened over night. Rights to land had to be challenged before the full
effects of the oath of fealty could be seen to have force. Even more so,
hereditability could be tested only on the death of the Domesday tenant. Nevertheless,
the meeting at
If Norman society of the twelfth
century is characterized by its feudal structure (again, I use the term
advisedly), then it was the Domesday inquest that created it. Negotiation was
at the core of the process and it was a mechanism of government that has
informed our polity ever since. The Oath of Salisbury reinforced the crown’s
right to the primary allegiance of its subjects and the fact enabled successive
kings to use the instrument of the inquest to consult until it was superseded
by parliaments in the late thirteenth century. Far from being the start of the
manifest oppression of the English, the Domesday inquest lies at the very root
of our democratic society.
©David Roffe 2010