The Domesday Texts

Abstract To All Appearances the Domesday process is remarkably well documented. There is a handful of more or less independent accounts of the purpose of the inquiry and the methods that it employed, and, in addition to the two volumes of Domesday Book, a mass of documentation that was collected in the course of the inquest itself The historian may wish for more, but in fact the volume of evidence is remarkable for the period. Comparison with the Hundred Roll inquiry of 1279 underlines the point. This was commissioned at the height of Edward I’s experiment in interventionist government and, if it was ever finished, amounted to the most comprehensive survey of land tenure, Domesday Book notwithstanding, that was undertaken anywhere in medieval Europe. And yet there is not a single reference to this momentous event in contemporary chronicles and only fragmentary verdicts survive from a dozen or so counties. Even the immensely popular inquest of 1274/5, that promised the restitution of lands and rights after the civil war of 1264–5, only merited a single reference and this only to note that ‘nothing came of it.’3 The Domesday inquest was different. It attained talismanic status at an early date, and in consequence the inquest was noticed and its records preserved.