Inside the Exon Office

Abstract This chapter draws together the principal conclusions of Part I about the content of Exon Domesday, the conduct of the Domesday survey, and the making of Domesday Book. It does so not in conventional form but through an imagined conversation, called The Dialogue of the King’s Treasury, inspired by the real Dialogue of the Exchequer from a century later. The Dialogue of the King’s Treasury takes place very early in William II’s reign. The conceit is that the king has given Bishop Giso of Wells, assiduous in documenting his see’s possessions in Somerset, permission to borrow the circuit return for the south-western shires, that is, Exon Domesday. One of the principal Exon scribes, Alpha, takes a young and rather green assistant, Discipulus, into the secure storeroom at the treasury in Winchester where the records of the Domesday survey have been placed, no longer needed now that Great Domesday Book has been completed and a fair copy of the circuit return for the eastern shires has been repurposed as Little Domesday Book. The scenario allows Alpha to explain to his eager pupil all the processes that went into the making of Exon and Domesday Book. The conversation goes beyond the solid conclusions and hypotheses of Part I with informed leaps into the unknown. Footnotes guide the reader to the detailed analysis in earlier chapters and mark out the boundaries between observable fact, plausible deduction, and the imagined.