Nineteen years after the Conquest, King William I of England (William the Conqueror) decided that he needed a detailed survey of the wealth of England. The purpose of the survey was not declared but his contemporaries were in no doubt that it was to enable the king to more effectively levy geld (land-tax) upon them, although it also became a record of the introduction of feudal law in England.The survey was commissioned at the king's council at Gloucester, held during the Christmas festival, in 1085. It was completed in the astonishingly short time of eight months. The difficulties were immense, not the least being poor or non-existent roads and primitive methods of recording - quill pens on parchment (stretched sheepskin). The entire population of England at that time was about one and three quarter million, spread out over the whole country and most in rural districts. Domesday (from Old English [Anglo-Saxon] dom 'judgement'), as it came to be known, is in fact a survey of the whole of rural England held by the king and his tenants-in-chief, but some detail about towns was also recorded. London and Winchester were excluded but probably were subject to a separate survey of royal revenues.
Domesday is a unique document, recording the names and honours (honour 'the whole of a landholder's estate wherever situated') of every one of William's tenants-in-chief, together with exact measurements of the lands he held and a detailed assessment of his assets in farm implements, buildings, animal livestock, and serfs (slaves) both male and female. The holdings of under-tenants were also included in the survey, which recorded the value of each manor or estate at the time of Edward the Confessor (1066) and the value as it stood in 1085.
One example at random will serve to indicate the infinite detail of the survey: 'These are the lands of Bath Abbey. The Abbot of Bath has a manor called Weston. In the time of King Edward, it was assessed at 15 hides (to the geld), which required 10 ploughs. Of those hides, the Abbot has 8½ on the demesne there, and his men have 6. There, the Abbott has 7 villagers, 10 cottars and 7 slaves; 1 riding-horse and 204 sheep; 1 mill which renders 10 shillings each year; 20 acres of meadow, and pasture measuring a league in length and as much in breadth. And when the Abbot received this manor, it was worth £7, it is now worth £8.'
(A hide consisted of land considered sufficient to maintain a free family and dependants; a demesne is land whose produce is devoted to the lord (of the manor) rather than to his tenants; geld is land-tax; a league is twelve furlongs or one and a half miles; a cottar, or 'cottager', is a peasant of inferior status to a villain or bordar.)
There are in fact two Domesday Books, still carefully preserved in the Public Record Office in London. Great Domesday contains the entries for thirty counties of England, while the Lesser Domesday records the entries for East Anglia, that is, Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex. They were compiled in abbreviated Latin (Norman shorthand) by scribes in Winchester, then the capital of England, from the returns sent in by royal commissioners, each of whom had a prescribed circuit to survey.
Curiously, Winchester was omitted from the otherwise all-embracing survey. This was remedied by Henry I, William's youngest son, who succeeded to the throne on the death of his brother Rufus. Henry instituted a survey on Winchester in 1125, recording the names of all Winchester citizens and their assets as they had stood in 1066, doubtless using English (Anglo-Saxon) tax records, which had obviously survived, and also recording similar details as they existed in the year of the survey. This third book is known as Winton Domesday.
Apart from its other historical value, such as providing evidence for the settlement of land disputes in earlier centuries in England, Domesday is an invaluable record of the names of both Anglo-Saxons and Normans in the 11th century, from which many Australian and New Zealand family names are derived.
