Domesday Book

His main propositions are these. William the Conqueror did not commission Domesday Book. The threat of invasion and the strain on resources created by the need to billet a large mercenary army in England caused him to commission the Domesday inquest at Christmas in 1085. This inquest took place the following year and produced a survey of royal resources and a geld survey, and also a survey of the tenurial resources of tenants-in-chief and their tenants. Prior to 1086, the land which tenants-in-chief held in demesne had been exempt from the geld, and the purpose of the inquest was to identify this land with a view to taxing it. All the records from the inquest were brought to the king. There followed some hard bargaining between the king and his barons: in return for the loss of geld exemption on their demesne, the tenants-in-chief received certain concessions concerning the service they owed to the king, and their requirement to billet mercenaries was also lifted. The production of Domesday Book was an entirely separate and later exercise. Domesday Book was 'unrelated to the concerns which launched the inquest in 1085. It seems to have been compiled, probably under the supervision of Rannulf Flambard, from the records of the inquest after 1089 and is best interpreted as a response to the revolt, and consequent tenurial chaos, of 1088' (p. ix).

A decade of studying the topography/archaeology/history/geography of the Surrey parish I grew up in has left me with a clutch of discoveries of local and supra-local significance, as well as a host of questions to be answered in the future by myself and any more capable researchers who might be interested in taking up the challenge. The paper (like the extended and extensive research process behind it) takes what is very much a long view to the subjects in hand. So far as the medieval period is concerned, it sets out the evidence that suggests the landscape was recast during a "long twelfth century" which saw Puttenham emerge as a manor, village and parish, but within a more complex and heterogenous local context. Further research should show the degree to which the situation within the parish matched or was at odds with that from other parishes within Surrey and beyond.

***Follow link below to view paper***

Презентация доклада на 24-й международной научной конференцим студентов, аспирантов и молодых учёных «Ломоносов-2017».
В докладе рассматриваются историографический поиск и выделение высшего слоя нетитулованной англо-саксонской светской элиты накануне Нормандского Завоевания (1066 г.) по материалам XII века. Последовательно разбираются и критикуются попытки в рамках конституционной истории (Р. Рид и Д. Рофф) и аграрной истории (У. Стаббс и П. Кларк). Докладчик приходит к выводу, что данные гипотезы не подтверждаются известными источниками (Книга Страшного Суда и нормандские переводы англо-саксонского права XII в.) при непредвзятом анализе и требуют насильного прочтения известных текстов. В заключении делается предположение, что подобные построения – это отражение современных представлений об устройстве общества (в том числе и английского), где относительно чётко выделяются имущественные классы.

A PowerPoint presentation at the 24th international academic student and young researcher's conference "Lomonosov-2017".
The presentation analyses the historiographical search for an upper layer of the titleless Anglo-Saxon lay elite on the eve of the Norman Conquest (1066). The presentation's consecutive study reveals the flaws in the constitutional (by R. Reid and D. Roffe) and agrarian (W. Stubbs and P. Clarke) approaches to the problem. The author finds that such hypotheses do not find support from the extant sources (the Domesday Book and Norman translation of the Anglo-Saxon law) when reading without any preconceived notions. The conclusion supposes that this kind of search might be a reflection of the modern-day view of the society (including the English one) as composed of more or less clearly defined classes.

Meend is a common place-name or toponym in and around the Forest of Dean. It is a name that is familiar to most people in the locality, and the majority of these could probably describe the principal characteristics of a meend. These could usually include an open character, uncultivated and accessible for informal recreational use. The word is often used in association with “forest waste”. These areas lay outside the forest plantation inclosures and were historically exploited by local communities for grazing and as a source of bracken, gorse and brushwood. These practices have declined over the last half century. Most meends that still exist have one or more of these attributes. However, many more have been lost over the years, and exist only as distant memories, have had their names corrupted or absorbed, or appear only as forgotten names on modern maps. This paper seeks to shed some light on the origins of what is possibly the most important group of place and field names in and
around the Forest of Dean and points to areas of research that would yield dividends in uncovering the social and environmental origins of the forest.

A defining paradox of the late Anglo-Saxon state is that its strengths made it vulnerable. This paper identifies some of these strengths and paradoxical weaknesses, and considers how these affected the course of events during three critical phases of the Conquest: the crisis of 1065−1066, the campaigns of 1066, and the period between 1066 and 1071 when the Normans' victory at Hastings was consolidated.

Stephen Baxter, ‘The Limits of the Anglo–Saxon State’, in Der Frühmittelalterliche Staat – Europäische Perspektiven, ed. W. Pohl and V. Wieser (OAW: Vienna, 2009), pp. 503–13

This article --edited and published in SPECULUM 93/4 (2018): 1048-1101 -- examines the oldest surviving textual artifacts associated with the inquest of William the Conqueror. Most so-called “Domesday satellites” survive only in later manuscript compilations which do not preserve evidence of their original material formats and uses. However, two bodies of text do provide such information. The first, known as “Exeter Domesday” (Exeter, Cathedral Library, MS 3500) is an extraordinary trove of the inquest’s raw data digested into 103 individual parchment libelli, probably produced by a team of scribes working at Winchester. The second consists of two texts made at the Benedictine abbey of Burton-upon-Trent in Staffordshire between 1094 and 1114: a fragmentary roll of parchment constituting a working draft survey of the abbey’s lands  (Staffordshire Public Record Office D603/A/Add/1925) and an endorsed copy of its Anglo-Saxon foundation charter (Staffordshire PRO D603/A/Add/1), both of which preserve a list of manors that derived from an intermediary draft of the Domesday descriptio.

My analysis of these humble but invaluable artifacts makes several contributions to our knowledge of the textual scaffolding that undergirds Domesday Book. First, the Exeter libelli are material witnesses to the flexible yet exacting mechanisms of data collection and transcription that made the royal inquest possible. Second, the Burton texts shed new light on the near-immediate reception of those documentary techniques at a remote abbey. Third, evidence derived from all of these texts supports the hypothesis, advanced most notably by David Roffe, that Great Domesday was not the premeditated outcome of the inquest but a later project, possibly not initiated – and certainly not completed – until after the Conqueror’s death. But I go further, arguing that aspects of this evidence point to some further selective revision of Great Domesday at a still later stage, perhaps as late as the accession of Henry I in 1100. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, these texts provide material proof that the Conqueror’s motives for ordering the inquest, and the uses which he and his advisors envisioned for it, are not the only motives and uses that matter. Participation in this documentary initiative enabled hundreds of thousands of individuals and communities to air grievances and to make their own ideas of law and justice a matter of public record.  It also empowered them to manipulate the inquest’s documentation to serve their own needs.

1 Richard fitzNigel, Dialogus de Scaccario, ed. and trans. by Emilie Amt, The Dialogue of the Exchequer (Oxford, 2007), pp. 96 99. ' […] after taking counsel he [King William] sent very prudent men, his own companions, on circuit throughout the kingdom. By them a careful survey was then made of the whole land, of woods and pastures and meadows, and also of farming, and was collected in one book written in plain words, so that everyone should be content with his own

Stephen Baxter and C. P. Lewis, ‘Comment identifier les propriétaires fonciers du Domesday Book en Angleterre et en Normandie? Le cas d’Osbern fitzOsbern’, in Penser les mondes normands médiévaux, ed. D. Bates and P. Bauduin (Caen, 2016), pp. 207–44

In Charlemagne’s Survey of the Holy Land, Michael McCormick rehabilitates and reinterprets one of the most neglected and extraordinary sources from Charlemagne’s revival of the Roman empire: the report of a fact-finding mission to the Christian church of the Holy Land. The roll of documents translated and edited in this volume preserves the most detailed statistical portrait before the Domesday Book of the finances, monuments (including exact dimensions), and female and male personnel of any major Christian church.

Setting these documents in the context of economic trends, archaeological evidence, and a comparison of Holy Land churches and monasteries with their contemporaries west and east, this study shows that the Palestinian church was living in decline as its old financial links with Byzantium slackened. In recounting Charlemagne’s move to outflank the Byzantine emperor, McCormick constructs a microhistory of the Frankish king’s ambitions and formidable organizational talents for running an empire.

Supplementing McCormick’s major synthesis, The Origins of the European Economy, this volume will be indispensable reading for anyone interested in medieval rulership and economics, and in the history of the Holy Land, its Christian communities, and its late antique monuments.


"At its worst, microhistory is merely antiquarian button counting. But at its best, as exemplified here, small things serve as touchstones for studies of wider-ranging significance. McCormick examines the Basel Roll, a ninth-century manuscript relating the information gathered by envoys of Charlemagne, who inquired into the financial needs of churches in and around Jerusalem. The roll preserves three documents that provide personnel numbers and sizes of building roofs in area churches and monasteries, as well as partial annual expenditures for the patriarch of Jerusalem...McCormick shows that the Jerusalem church had shrunk since late antiquity; that contemporary Frankish houses were larger and richer; and that Einhard did not exaggerate Charlemagne's interest in faraway Christian communities. Among the many strengths of the book is the full-size facsimile of the Basel Roll included as a stand-alone poster. (C. J. Chandler Choice 2012-11-01)"

The consensus regarding the entry for the borough of Southwark in Domesday is that it is partial and incomplete. The author demonstrates that by using strict textual analysis and forensic techniques utilising a themed grid and cross referencing this abstract wth a topographic aide against a close attention to discreet Statements within the entry allows far more to be explicated than previously realised. A review of the later history of the religious establishments and lay territorial ownership along side the key physical and riverine features of the area clarifies certain confusions arising from the Statements which appear at first repetitive and/ or contradictory. The author also gives a strict attention to the Latinised forms representing Middle English to demonstrate that there is a unitary narrative and this can be referenced to Anglo-Norman legal and administrative arrangements in Domesday as a whole and in relation to the borough of Southwark.  Also a palaeographic treatment of the entry within the Book can also clarify some of the misapprehensions, repeated by scholars as eminent as Maitland, Tait and Round.

Woodbridge, 1979 etc.); cited by volume number and conference year ASC Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Text edited in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, general eds D. N. Dumville and S. D. Keynes (Woodbridge, 9 vols published, 1983-present). Unless otherwise noted, translations are cited from D. Whitelock, D. C. Douglas and S. I. Tucker, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: a Revised Translation (London, 1961; rev. 1965); entries are cited by MS where versions differ substantially and, unless otherwise noted, the corrected annal year assigned by Whitelock et al. ASE Anglo-Saxon England; cited by volume and year Asser Asser's Life of King Alfred Together with the Annals of Saint Neots Erreoneously Ascribed to Asser, ed. W. H. Stevenson (Oxford, 1906); cited by chapter and page ASSAH Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History; cited by volume and year BAR British Archaeological Reports Bede, HE Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum: Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969); cited by book, chapter and page BL British Library CG Continental Germanic DB Domesday Book Phillimore county edition (J. Morris [general ed.], Chichester, 1975-86); referred to by county volume and cited by entry number EETS Early English Text Society EHR English Historical Review EMC Corpus of Early Medieval Coin Finds; Sylloge of Coins of the British Isles, hosted by the Department of Coins and Medals, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge <http://www-cm. fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/emc/>

Stephen Baxter, ‘The Death of Burgheard son of Ælfgar and its Context’, in Frankland: The Franks and the World of Early Medieval Europe: Essays in Honour of Dame Jinty Nelson, ed. P. Fouracre and D. Ganz (Manchester University Press: Manchester, 2008), pp. 266–84

‘Lordship and Justice in the Early English Kingdom: the Judicial Functions of Soke and Commendation Revisited’, in Early Medieval Studies in Memory of Patrick Wormald, ed. Stephen Baxter, Catherine Karkov, Janet Nelson and David Pelteret, Studies in Early Medieval Britain, general editor Nicholas Brooks (Ashgate: Farnham, 2009), pp. 383–419

This article interrogates certain historiographical trends of constructing self-sufficient models of explanation for essentially unrelated data in the primary sources. For a case study the essay spotlights the protracted examination of the early medieval social group of thegns (OE/ON þegn). Attention is drawn to the influential articles by Svend Aakjær, Rachel R. Reid, and David Roffe. Aakjær’s main thesis was that Viking-Age thegns and drengs (ON drengr) known from the Scandinavian runic inscriptions used to be members of royal retinue(s), just like they were strata of landed nobility in England. Rachel Reid drew an institutional parallel between the Anglo-Saxon king’s thegns and medieval barons, and David Roffe augmented this later view by suggesting a continuity in 11th-century landholding patterns. The author hypothesises that the inherent flaw of such models lies in an unconscious confirmation bias when dealing with the source material. By addressing the primary sources directly, the author seeks to demonstrate that some of these views suffered from a lack of empirical data already at the inception. Though contextualising his polemics in modern historiography, in his criticism the author relies on the ad fontes method rather than the wisdom of hindsight. The article also aims to tackle the circulation of the self-sufficient models of this sort in subsequent historiography, as well as to identify plausible origins of prominence and consequences. The author hopes to relate this individual case study to a broader context of medieval research, thereby offering a feasible model of its application to further topics.

Worcester', and 'Wulfstan II, Bishop of Worcester and Saint', contributed by Jonathan Herold to Early Peoples of Britain and Ireland: an Encyclopedia, ed. C. A. Snyder (Oxford: Greenwood, 2008). (Note: several errors, introduced in the course of final editing of cross-references and headwords, appear in the final published version of these entries. The following pages contain the texts of the entries as I originally submitted them. I have inserted page number references for each entry as it appears in the final publication. -J. H.) Jonathan Herold, entry for 'Domesday Book', from Early Peoples of Great Britain and Ireland: an Encyclopedia (Oxford: Greenwood, 2008), 187 -8. DOMESDAY BOOK is arguably the most famous public record produced during the Middle Ages. Compiled from records gathered for a survey of property ordered by King William I at his Christmas Court in 1085, Domesday Book's two volumes preserve some of the earliest evidences of landholding for approximately 15,000 places throughout thirty-five English counties south of the River Tees. The earliest recorded use of Domesday Book's ominous name appears in a twelfth-century administrative manual, The Dialogue of the Exchequer, whose author declared that the records entered in it "like those of the Last Judgment, are unalterable" (Johnson 1950: 64). The survey on which Domesday Book's records were based was completed with remarkable speed and efficiency. Teams of royal commissioners were appointed to inquire what lands and rights were held by the king in each county and establish their level of taxation, as well as to determine what lands and privileges were held by the various other individuals and institutions throughout the kingdom. Each group of commissioners traveled throughout one of seven regional circuits conducting inquests, likely in conjunction with meetings of the various shire courts. At these inquests, local officials presented reports to the commissioners, who then recorded their information. The entire survey was completed by 1 August 1086, when the records of the inquests were presented to the king at Salisbury. Two of what appear to be original circuit returns are preserved: the volume known as Little Domesday, which records information from the counties of Essex, Sussex and Norfolk; and the Exon Domesday, which records information regarding the southwestern counties. Several other local "satellite" records related to the inquests survive, including the Inquisitio Eliensis, which appears to have Jonathan Herold, entry for 'Worcester', from Early Peoples of Great Britain and Ireland: an Encyclopedia (Oxford: Greenwood, 2008), 545 -6. demolished is unknown, but in 1084 Bishop Wulfstan II ordered construction of a new monastic cathedral church dedicated to St. Mary on the site. Although subsequent construction replaced much of Wulfstan's cathedral, the crypt still survives. A notable early bishop of Worcester was Werferth (872 -915) who, together with Ealdorman AEthelred of Mercia and his wife AEthelflaed, established a fortified burh at Worcester as part of King Alfred's defence against the Danes. Other important bishops of Worcester include Oswald (959 -992); Wulfstan (I) (1002 -1016), the Homilist; and Wulfstan (II) (1062 -1095), the last English bishop to retain his office following the Norman Conquest. The cartularies of Worcester Cathedral are among the most important early records in England, and preserve the earliest and most extensive pre-Conquest collection of Anglo-Saxon charter texts.

A long time in production, this paper examines the evidence relevant to the origins of two undated - but most probably early medieval - earthen causeways across the floodplain of the River Wey in Surrey. Although it does not reach a conclusion as to the exact age of the causeways, it does support previously-advanced arguments for their construction to have taken place at some point between the tenth and twelfth centuries. Along the way consideration is given to ritual deposition practices, the acquisition of estates by the saintly Archbishop Dunstan on behalf of religious houses with which he did not always have a strong connection (at least not one which is evident through the documentary sources), and the varying status and character of landlords in the Anglo-Norman period.

At present there is no intention to seek out an avenue by means of which this essay can be published in print. I am on the cusp of commencing a related essay concentrating on (St) Dunstan's many purchases of land in the third quarter of the tenth century, with a particular focus on Send in Surrey, whose purchase around the year 968 is recorded in an Old English memorandum preserved in the archive of Westminster Abbey (= Sawyer 1447), but which was almost certainly bestowed upon another religious institution. Provided I can get copy to the editor by the end of April, this second essay may be printed in abbreviated form in next year's edition of the journal Surrey History.

The issue concerning the origin of the attachment of urban tenements to rural properties shown in Domesday Book and in other sources, which has generated controversy for more than a century, is examined in a new way.  The spatial attributes of these connections in sample areas of five shires in Wessex and the west Midlands are examined to develop a historical model which is explanatory of these connections in both temporal and functional terms.  It is concluded that these were developed as an integral part of the process of the setting up of burghal and other royal sites by the king, in partnership with the tenants-in-chief of the time, in the mid and late Saxon period.

While never the capital it is often claimed to have been, Tamworth was a major centre of royal power in Mercia throughout the Anglo-Saxon period. More’s the pity, then, that no comprehensive account of the settlement is to be found in Domesday Book to provide the clues to its society, economy, and topography that the survey so richly affords elsewhere. The omission is be greatly regretted; it is, nevertheless, no reason to despair. Something of the Tamworth in 1086 can be reconstructed from the Domesday account of the surrounding settlements and from the later history of the town itself. This study argues that the borough was more or less co-extensive with the later parish of Tamworth, that is, it took in surrounding settlements, notably the cult centre of Polesworth, that are also omitted from Domesday Book. It identifies properties that belonged to a tainus regis, an urban liberty, and four rural manors, suggests the identity of the reeve of Tamworth in 1066, and speculates on size of the town. What emerges is that Tamworth was characterized by its modest size and relative lack of tenurial heterogeneity in comparison with many county boroughs. It is concluded that it was perhaps less an urban centre than a military and administrative one in the pre-Conquest period and that this may have been a factor in its failure to become a county town.

This paper offers a methodology for assessing variations in the spelling of personal names recorded in Domesday Book by evaluating their orthographic, scribal, historical and prosopographical contexts.  By way of example it considers the potential confusion between certain Domesday forms for the Old English name Wulfnoð (Wulfnoth) and the Old Danish name Olaf and its variants.  It also provides new insights into a policy of standardizing name-forms on the part of the main scribe of Great Domesday Book.  [Published in Nomina 35 (2012), 1-19.]

Feodal sistem temelde yönetenle yönetilenler arasındaki ilişkiyi düzenleyen bir sistemin adıdır. Bu sistemin IX. yüzyılda Fransa’da, Merovenj Hanedanlığı zamanında ortaya çıktığı ve hızlı bir şekilde Kıta Avrupası’nda yayıldığı sanılmaktadır. Temeli kölelik sistemine benzeyen, şato etrafında toplanmış hiyerarşik bir düzen içinde ilişkiler sistemini belirlemiş olan Feodalite İngiltere’ye XI. yüzyılda, Normandiya Dükü II. William’ın önderliğinde, Norman istilaları sonucunda gelebilmiştir. İngiltere ada ülkesi olduğundan, yaşanan yaklaşık iki yüzyıllık gecikme çok olmasa gerek. Bu çalışmamızda Avrupa’da Orta Çağ’a damgasını vuran ve dünya çapında pek çok araştırmanın konusunu oluşturan feodalitenin İngiltere’ye nasıl geldiğini ve bölgede nasıl uygulandığını anlatmaya çalıştık.

This comprises the text and slides of a paper presented to the SNSBI at Athenry.  It offers brief discussions of various personal and place-names to illustrate the methodological problems (and some prospographical solutions) faced by onomasts when using the Domesday data.

Доклад на 24-й международной научной конференцим студентов, аспирантов и молодых учёных «Ломоносов-2017».
В докладе рассматриваются историографический поиск и выделение высшего слоя нетитулованной англо-саксонской светской элиты накануне Нормандского Завоевания (1066 г.) по материалам XII века. Последовательно разбираются и критикуются попытки в рамках конституционной истории (Р. Рид и Д. Рофф) и аграрной истории (У. Стаббс и П. Кларк). Докладчик приходит к выводу, что данные гипотезы не подтверждаются известными источниками (Книга Страшного Суда и нормандские переводы англо-саксонского права XII в.) при непредвзятом анализе и требуют насильного прочтения известных текстов. В заключении делается предположение, что подобные построения – это отражение современных представлений об устройстве общества (в том числе и английского), где относительно чётко выделяются имущественные классы.

A presentation at the 24th international academic student and young researcher's conference "Lomonosov-2017".
The presentation analyses the historiographical search for an upper layer of the titleless Anglo-Saxon lay elite on the eve of the Norman Conquest (1066). The presentation's consecutive study reveals the flaws in the constitutional (by R. Reid and D. Roffe) and agrarian (W. Stubbs and P. Clarke) approaches to the problem. The author finds that such hypotheses do not find support from the extant sources (the Domesday Book and Norman translation of the Anglo-Saxon law) when reading without any preconceived notions. The conclusion supposes that this kind of search might be a reflection of the modern-day view of the society (including the English one) as composed of more or less clearly defined classes.

This comprises the text and slides of a paper presented to the 20th Symposium of the Joint Anglo-Saxon Charters Committee and is a much-shortened version of a paper that will be appearing elsewhere.  It uses and illustrates a prospographical analysis of the S 1026 witness-list to argue for this charter’s authenticity.

Finds distributions plotted over landscapes and continents, once the mainstay of archaeological cultural mapping, went into a lengthy period of decline when it was realised that many were artefacts of modern recovery rather than patterns of their own day. What price then, the rich harvest of finds being collected by modern routine procedures of rescue work and by metal-detectorists? The author shows how distribution patterns can be validated, and sample bias minimised, through comparison with maps of known populations and by presenting the distributions more sharply by risk surface analysis. This not only endorses the routine recording of surface finds currently undertaken in every country, but opens the door to new social and economic interpretations through methods of singular power.

The boundary clauses of two Anglo-Saxon charters granting land in South Devon are re-evaluated and linked to the distribution of selected place-name elements. Using data from Domesday Book, the pattern of pre-Conquest estates is outlined and examined. A basis is proposed for the development of settlement in the area between the ninth and eleventh centuries, and the establishment of fortified places at Kingsbridge, Halwell and Totnes is considered.

The introductory pages of a history of the village of Christleton, near Chester, Cheshire, published in celebration of the year 2000. In this section, the village's Roman, 'Dark Age' and Anglo-Saxon evidence and Domesday records are briefly discussed. Of particular interest in the vicinity are the Roman camps, located 3 miles from the Chester fortress - and also the evidence for early Christianity in this eponymous 'enclosure, farm or village of the Christians.'

Domesday Book is the collective name attached to two different bodies of text. Colloquially known as "Great" and "Little" Domesday, they represent successive documentary phases of the inquest undertaken by agents of William the Conqueror in 1086. 1 The more famous (also known as "Exchequer Domesday") is a condensed edition of the inquest's results. The other is an earlier artifact, a "circuit survey" (in the parlance of Domesday historiography) comprising more detailed information gathered from the East Anglian shires of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex. 2 In the past decade or so, a growing body of scholarship has established that analogous surveys of England's other regions were also prepared, and eventually became the exemplars abbreviated and anthologized by Great Domesday's chief scribe. Thereafter, however, only the surveys contained in Little Domesday were preserved-perhaps to make up for these specific counties' absence from Great Domesday. 3 I gratefully acknowledge the detailed comments supplied by anonymous reviewers, the insights of colleagues and students at the Universities of Illinois and Stockholm, the help of the individuals and institutions named below, and the expertise of Speculum's editorial team. This article is dedicated to the memories of three influential teachers: Malcolm Parkes and Patrick Wormald, who sparked my interest in the textual history of Domesday Book a long time ago; and the late James Campbell, whose advice and warm support are keenly missed.

Exeter Cathedral possesses one of the most important manuscripts from medieval England: Exon Domesday was almost certainly presented to William 'the Conqueror' at a meeting of his barons at Old Sarum on 1 August 1086. Its core is the immediate source of that magnificent abbreviation 'the Domesday Book' (Great Domesday), for the five-south-western counties. It also contains lists, summaries, tax accounts and details of changes to the structure and obligations of manors. It gives more personal and place-names than its successor and it counts animals. Now a large fragment but offering significant proof of the reach and sophistication of the early English state. Its booklets were written at speed by two dozen Francophone scribes whose erasures and corrections together with its content and arrangement provide key evidence for the 'Domesday Process'.