History of England 1-6

If there is one signal reminder of William’s reign, it is that document originally called ‘The King’s Book’ but more popularly known as Domesday Book because its evidence could no more be evaded than the day of doom. It was a survey of the resources of the realm, unique in Europe but not unusual in England where various national and regional accounts had already been compiled. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle William had ‘deep speech’ with the men of his council and sent officials into every shire to find out ‘what or how much each landholder had in land and livestock, and what it was worth’. The subsequent work was in fact so copious and so detailed, in single columns and double columns of Latin, that it must have made use of earlier records. It comprises two books, one of 475 pages and the other of 413 pages, with some of the capital letters touched with red ink. It describes over 13,000 locations, the vast majority of which survive still. The authors of the Chronicle state that there was not ‘an ox nor a cow nor a pig that was overlooked and not included in the record’. The level of detail is evident in one entry. In Oakley, Buckinghamshire, it was reported that ‘Aelfgyth the maid had half a hide which Godric the sheriff granted her as long as he was sheriff, on condition of her teaching his daughter gold embroidery work. This land Robert FitzWalter holds now.’

The Domesday Book was commissioned by William at Christmas 1085, and was completed a year later; such speed was only possible within an existing administrative system. It was not a Norman, but an English, device. William could not have transferred English land to French magnates, after his invasion, without some existing record of English holdings that has long since been lost. It was in part compiled as documentation and evidence of that transfer, but it was also used as an instrument both for the more efficient raising of taxes and for the more accurate imposition of military service. It seems also to have been instrumental in a fairer distribution of the financial burdens William was placing on the country. He summoned his chief landholders to Salisbury where they swore loyalty to him once more; but now he knew both the extent of their possessions and their annual income. They were reminded that they held their lands directly or indirectly from the sovereign. He was their master. Domesday Book can now be seen in a glass case at the National Archives in Kew.

We learn from its pages that England consisted of arable land (35 per cent), woodland (15 per cent), pasture (30 per cent), and meadow (1 per cent); the rest was mountain and fen and heath and waste and wild. We learn also that the manor, inherited from the Danes and the Saxons, was the foundation of agrarian and economic life. In its essence it meant a dwelling, and in Domesday several manors are often listed in one village; but by this period it had generally come to mean an estate of land or lands in which the tenants were bound by fealty to one lord. The lord’s land was known as ‘demesne’ land; it might be adjacent to the manor house, or it might be scattered in strips among the fields.

The free tenants paid him rent for their acreage, and were obliged to help him at the busy times of harvest; the unfree tenants or villeins performed weekly labour service in work such as threshing and winnowing. The terms of this labour were maintained by tradition. Approximately 10 per cent of the population were deemed to be held in slavery, while 14 per cent were described as ‘free men’; the rest of the population were part of a variable range between the two.

The manor was itself established upon the ancient customs and obligations that bound together a small community. A manor might consist of a village with scattered hamlets, all the inhabitants of which did service to the lord. It might consist of several villages. Whatever its form, it was the linchpin of the social order of England. The local court of justice was the manor court, where every aspect of life was ordered and scrutinized. The paths and hedges had to be maintained, and the rights of cultivation or inheritance supported.

The origins of the manor are still a matter of debate. Was a manorial system imposed upon what was once a freer communal system of agriculture? It is more likely that there were always lords, and that their control over the centuries became more rigorous. Yet no certainty is possible. We must accustom our eyes to the twilight.

Domesday did not of course describe the conditions of actual life in late eleventh-century England. The summer of 1086 was the worst in living memory; the harvest failed and some malignant fever affected half of the English population. ‘The wretched victims had nearly perished by the fever,’ the Chronicle wrote of that year, ‘then came the sharp hunger, and destroyed them outright.’