Afterword

Abstract The Avowed Aim of this study has been to examine afresh the relationship between the Domesday inquest and Domesday Book. Its assertion that the aims and objectives of the survey were manifold, on the one hand, and executed within a different context from that which produced LDB and GDB, on the other, are at variance with the consensus embodied in recent historiography. Following the publication of Galbraith’s article on the making of Domesday Book in 1942, and with increasing confidence after his more lengthy study of 1961, a generation of historians have argued that Domesday Book was the aim of the Domesday inquest. The argument was originally formulated as a radical reaction to what was seen as an earlier generation’s preoccupation with the geld. Round, it seems, was never entirely clear what Domesday Book was for. But he was in no doubt that the ‘original returns’ of the inquest were hundred rolls and that the aim of the survey was connected with the collection of the geld. It is ironic that the current consensus is largely founded on these, the terms of debate formulated by Round in 1895.