Some historians have seen the immediate cause lying in an invasion threat from Denmark and Norway and William's urgent need for accurate information about the military and other resources at his disposal.
The first general population census of had a similar requirement behind it at a time when England was threatened with invasion from Revolutionary France.
Twenty years after King William's successful invasion of England, and the mass re-distribution of land amongst his followers, it was time to consolidate and define. This survey and audit would clearly establish who held what, in the wake of the Norman Conquest itself; it would also clarify what rights and dues were owed to the King, and would settle the liability of his great barons to provide military resources, in soldiers or cash, for a monarch whose campaigning season never ended.
The Domesday Book does not cover certain important cities, such as London, Winchester, Bristol and the borough of Tamworth; nor Northumberland and Durham or much of north-west England. For Wales, only parts of certain border areas are included.
Neither was it ever fully completed, being abandoned at some stage early in the reign of William Rufus, who succeeded to the throne in Not every place that existed in appears in the Domesday Book. We know this from other evidence - such as Anglo-Saxon charters, architectural evidence or the origins of the place-name itself.
The place-names found in the Domesday Book are township and estate names, and may include other villages and hamlets that receive no specific mention in the text; for example, the Domesday entry for Shepshed, near Loughborough, includes the settlements of Long Watton, Lockington and Hemington, but they are not specifically mentioned.
Domesday was never a single volume but originally two books, Great Domesday and Little Domesday which was a longer version, covering the counties of Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk, which was never written up into the main volume.
It is now contained within five volumes, having been re-bound in to improve the prospects for its preservation for another millennium. Great Domesday was mostly written by a single scribe, with the hand of a second clerk appearing, checking his work and adding some notes and further entries. Minor errors were inevitable and led to some inconsistencies for later scholars to worry over.
The counties of Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk appear in a more detailed version known as Little Domesday. Domesday Suffolk, for example, records goats and 2 donkeys. 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. All buildings such as castles, churches or mills were to be recorded. The Domesday Book was designed to perform three key functions. Raising taxes could always cause anger amongst the people so William had to be careful not to demand too much.
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