Domesday : Book of Judgement / Sally Harvey.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Harvey, Sally (Historian), author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Domesday book.

Public records.

History.

Great Britain--History--Norman period, 1066-1154--Sources.

Great Britain.

Public records--Great Britain--History.

Physical Description:

xx, 335 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2014.

Summary:

In Domesday: Book of Judgement, Sally Harvey provides a thematic study of the extraordinary eleventh-century survey, Domesday-Book. She depicts Domesday Book as the written evidence of a potentially insecure conquest successfully transforming itself, by a combination of administrative insight and military might, into a permanent new establishment. William I launched the Domesday Inquiry to consolidate that establishment and contain its landholding revolution within a strict fiscal and tenurial framework. The volume newly argues that the Domesday survey also became an inquest into individual sheriffs and office-holders (thereby incidentally laying a foundation for reinterpreting the Domesday evidence on towns in England). In this way, the survey served as a modest conciliatory gesture between the conquerors and the conquered, as William I came to realize that, faced with the threat to his rule from the Danes, he needed the support of England's native populations. In this volume, Sally Harvey considers the Anglo-Saxon background and the architects of the survey; the bishops, royal clerks, sheriffs, jurors, and landholders who determined Domesday's scope and supplied its contents. She examines the core information in the survey: coinage, revenues from landholding, fiscal concessions, and taxation, drawing the conclusion that, whilst consolidating, William's position as king of the English, Domesday provided the foundation of the twelfth-century treasury and exchequer. Yet, whilst the subject-matter of Domesday Book is overwhelmingly practical and material, Harvey argues that the overlying theme, which gave it its English name, is Judgement: and that every class of society save the servile, had reason to regard the survey's methodical and often pitiless proceedings as both a literal and a metaphorical day of account. Book jacket.

Contents:

I The Making of Domesday Book

1 The English Context: The 'Book of Winchester' and the Domus Dei 7

The Winchester heritage 9

Edward the Confessor and Winchester 13

The import of Winchester 15

Domus Dei 17

A royal writing office? 19

Expertise in the regions 23

Records 25

Winchester, the bishops, and the Treasury 27

2 The Architects of the Inquiry: The Bishops and the Royal Clerks 32

The role of the bishops 33

Continuity, expertise, and the Lotharingian connection 36

The king's New Men 41

Land pleas and Domesday commissioners 49

3 Who Wrote Domesday? Resources and Expertise in the Localities 54

The landholders' written returns 58

The local communities 63

The shire 63

The hundred, the wapentake, and the Domesday jurors 74

Pressures on the men of the shire, hundred, and vill 79

Hundred versus landholder as suppliers of information 83

4 Who Wrote Domesday? The Returns and the Book 87

Defining the circuits 87

The role of the Domesday commissioners 90

Regional Domesdays 92

The dare of Great Domesday 96

The order of Great Domesday's inscription 100

The Great Domesday scribe and his scriptorium 101

5 The Mastermind 107

Personality and anonymity in Domesday 107

Robert, bishop of Hereford 1079-95 109

Samson, bishop of Worcester 1096-1112 111

William of St Calais, bishop of Durham 1080-1096 112

Osmund, chancellor 1070-8, bishop of Salisbury 1078-1099 114

Rannulf Flambard, bishop of Durham 1099-1128 115

The Domesday connection 124

Appendix: Samson and Rannulf 131

II The Purposes of the Inquiry and the Book

6 Coinage, the Treasury, and the 'Exchequer' 133

The complexity of crown receipts in the eleventh century 136

Methods of payment in coin and silver in Domesday 136

1 Payment by counting 138

2 Payment by weight 138

3 The assay and Treasury practices 140

Renovatio, the Treasury, and the hundred 143

Mint taxation: De Moneta and Monetagium 147

Coinage and trading policies 149

The 'Exchequer' and Winchester 151

Conclusion 152

Appendix 1 Gold payments in Domesday 154

Appendix 2 Assaying, blanching, and ingots 157

Appendix 3 An interpreted translation of silver payment phrases 160

7 The Valor: The Definition and Import of Values in Domesday 161

The central questions and some interpretations 162

The beneficiaries 165

Problems of terminology and time 167

Who were the valuers? Who received the value? 168

The role of shire and hundred 168

The landholders 170

Domesday procedures 174

The constituents of the value 175

The demesne 176

The demesne livestock 182

Rents and dues 186

Leases and other agreements 193

Renders and reeves 200

Values, renders, and estimates 202

Summary and conclusion 205

8 Domesday and Taxation 210

The geld 210

The assessment and collection of geld under William I before 1086 212

Fiscal exemptions and Domesday's novel dimension 221

Ploughlands 223

The public burdens 227

Military manpower 228

Fortress-work 229

Bridge-work 229

Cartage and transport 230

Domesday's aftermath and fiscal exemption 232

Conclusion: Domesday, taxation, and governance 234

9 'The Checking': The Inquest of Sheriffs and Other Royal Office-Holders 239

The sheriffs' returns: The boroughs and the problem 239

The boroughs and 'the Checking' 242

'The Checking' in the landed sector 250

'The Checking' of key royal officials 259

Barons of the Exchequer? 265

Conclusion 266

Sequel and rebellion 268

III Domesday and the Day of Judgement

10 The Book of the Day of Judgement 271

Land-grants and Domesday 273

The ceremonies of land transfer 276

Relics and courts 278

Oaths and judicial ordeals 280

Anathema and judgement 287

Harold's trial by battle 291

William's claim to be king of the English 298

'A plague on both their houses' 299

TRE and tenurial hiatus 304

The Danish crisis and Domesday: Time for Paxs? 308

Post mortem 322

Domesday's aftermath 323

Epithet or epitaph? 326.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780199669783

0199669783

OCLC:

868042483