The Domesday Survey1

Abstract

HistoryVolume 21, Issue 83 p. 249-257 The Domesday Survey1 David Douglas, David DouglasSearch for more papers by this author David Douglas, David DouglasSearch for more papers by this author First published: December 1936 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-229X.1936.tb00700.x 1 The sole indispensable printed text of Domesday is still that issued by the Record Commission in 1783. Translations of Domesday are included in the Victoria County Histories, and the introductions which precede them, though of unequal merit, are often (as in the case of Essex and Worcestershire) of the greatest value: they form perhaps the best means by which the student can in the first instance be made familiar with the scope and with the method of Domesday Book. Among the older works on Domesday, some are still of great value. The Appendix and Glossary which form the conclusion of Robert Brady's Introduction to the Old English History (1684) contain information not easily obtained elsewhere. P. C. Webb's two tracts on Domesday (1756) are more than antiquarian curiosities, and Robert Kelham's Domesday Book Illustrated (1788) was a notable publication. The indices contained in Henry Ellis's General Introduction to Domesday Book (1833) are indispensable to the researcher. In the latter years of the nineteenth century a number of outstanding works on Domesday appeared. The edition of the Inquisilio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis produced by N. E. S. A. Hamilton for the Royal Society of Literature in 1876 is of the greatest importance; Maitland's Domesday Book and Beyond (1897) is a classic which should be read in connection with James Tait's review thereof in Eng. Hist. Rev. vol. XIV. p. 768; while Vinogradoff's English Society in the Eleventh Century (1908) is a monument of patient research into the evidence of Domesday. But of all the works produced about this time J. H. Round's Feudal England (1895) has best stood the test of modern criticism. Among more recent works on Domesday, F. M. Stenton's William the Conqueror (1908) contains in its concluding chapter what is still probably the best introduction to Domesday for the general reader. In his edition of Danelaw Charters (1920) the same writer showed how best the evidence of Domesday could be collated with that derived from other sources, whilst in his English Feudalism (1932) he appraised the value of Domesday as a source of English feudal history. W. J. Corbett in Comb. Med. Hist. (vol. v. pp. 506–516) gives an admirable general account. Feudal Documents from the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, edited by me for the British Academy in 1932, contains a critical edition of Abbot Baldwin's Feudal Book, together with an introduction which seeks to show the extent to which general Domesday criticism is affected by the evidence of that text. My essay “Odo Lanfranc and the Domesday Survey” in Hiitorical Essays Presented to James Tait (1933) attempts to appraise the relation of the Domesday inquest to contemporary litigation. The edition of A. Ballard's The Domesday Inquest, published in 1923, gives “A Bibliography of Matter relating to Domesday Book published between the years 1906 and 1923.” And the following among recent special studies may be mentioned as bearing either on the process by which Domesday Book was constructed or on the methods by which its evidence may be interpreted:—H. C. Darby, Chapter V of Historical Geography of England (1936); H. M. Cam, “Manerium cum Hundredo”(Eng. Hist. Rev. XLVII. 353–376); D. C. Douglas, “Fragments of an Anglo-Saxon Survey from Bury St. Edmunds” (Eng. Hist. Rev. XLIII. 376–383); D. C. Douglas, “Some Early Surveys of the Abbey of Abingdon” (Eng. Hist. Rev. XXIV. 618–625); J. E. A. Jolliffe, “Hidation of Kent” (Eng. Hist. Rev. XLIV. 612–618); F. M. Stenton, Introduction to “The Lincolnshire Domesday and the Lindsey Survey” (Line. Rec. Soc, vol. XIX); F. M. Stenton, “St. Benet of Holme and the Norman Conquest”(Eng. Hist. Rev. XXXVII. 225–235; W. H. Stevenson “A Contemporary Description of the Domesday Survey”(Eng. Hist. Rev. XXII. 72–84). Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume21, Issue83December 1936Pages 249-257 RelatedInformation