Editing Domesday Book (section)

{{Short description|11th-century survey of landholding in England}}
{{Redirect2|Domesday|Doomsday Book||Domesday Book (disambiguation)|and|Domesday (disambiguation)|and|Doomsday Book (disambiguation)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=May 2017}}
{{Use British English|date=May 2017}}
{{Infobox manuscript
<!-------------------->
| name                  = Domesday Book
| location              = [[The National Archives (United Kingdom)|The National Archives]], [[Kew]], London
<!----------Image---------->
| image                 = Domesday-book-1804x972.jpg
| width                 =
| caption               = Domesday Book: an engraving published in 1900. Great Domesday (the larger volume) and Little Domesday (the smaller volume), in their 1869 bindings, lie on their older "[[Tudor period|Tudor]]" bindings.
<!----------General---------->
| Also known as         = {{plainlist|
* Great Survey
* {{lang|la|Liber de Wintonia}}
}}
| Type                  =
| Date                  = 1086
| Place of origin       = [[Kingdom of England|England]]
| Language(s)           = [[Medieval Latin]]
| Scribe(s)             =
| Author(s)             =
| Compiled by           =
| Illuminated by        =
| Patron                =
| Dedicated to          =
<!----------Form and content---------->
| Material              =
| Size                  =
| Format                =
| Condition             =
| Script                =
| Contents              =
| Illumination(s)       =
| Additions             =
| Exemplar(s)           =
| Other                 =
| below                 =
}}
'''Domesday Book''' ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|d|uː|m|z|d|eɪ}} {{respell|DOOMZ|day}}; the [[Middle English]] spelling of "Doomsday Book") is a manuscript record of the '''Great Survey''' of much of [[England]] and parts of [[Wales]] completed in 1086 at the behest of [[William the Conqueror]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/domesday+book?show=0&t=1318466370 |title=Domesday Book |work=Merriam-Webster Online |access-date=13 October 2011 |archive-date=8 February 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120208112203/http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/domesday+book?show=0&t=1318466370 |url-status=live }}</ref> The manuscript was originally known by the [[Latin]] name {{lang|la|Liber de Wintonia}}, meaning "Book of [[Winchester, Hampshire|Winchester]]", where it was originally kept in the royal treasury.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |url=http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/domesday+book |title=Domesday Book |dictionary=Dictionary.com}}</ref> The ''[[Anglo-Saxon Chronicle]]'' states that in 1085 the king sent his agents to survey every [[shire]] in England, to list his holdings and dues owed to him.<ref name="asc">{{cite book |url=http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/657 |translator1-first=J. A. |translator1-last=Giles |translator1-link=John Allen Giles |translator2-first=J. |translator2-last=Ingram |title=The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle |publisher=Project Gutenberg |year=1996 |access-date=6 November 2016 |archive-date=29 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110629061518/http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/657 |url-status=live }}</ref>

Written in [[Medieval Latin]], it was [[Scribal abbreviation|highly abbreviated]]{{Efn|One common abbreviation was {{Smallcaps|TRE}}, short for the Latin ''Tempore Regis Eduuardi'', "in the time of King Edward (the Confessor)", meaning the period immediately before the Norman Conquest.}} and included some vernacular native terms without Latin equivalents. The survey's main purpose was to record the annual value of every piece of landed property to its lord, and the resources in land, labour force, and livestock from which the value derived.

The name "Domesday Book" came into use in the 12th century.<ref name=Harvard>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wZuiVjVgdsgC&pg=PA250|title=The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: English Traits|volume=5|page=250|number=65.15|author=Emerson, Ralph Waldo|author2=Burkholder, Robert E. (Notes)|name-list-style=amp|publisher=Harvard University Press|date=1971|isbn=978-0674139923|access-date=25 October 2015|archive-date=13 January 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230113061909/https://books.google.com/books?id=wZuiVjVgdsgC&pg=PA250|url-status=live}}</ref> [[Richard FitzNeal]] wrote in the {{Lang|la|[[Dialogus de Scaccario]]}} ({{circa}} 1179) that the book was so called because its decisions were unalterable, like those of the [[Last Judgment]], and its sentence could not be quashed.<ref>{{cite book |editor-first=C. |editor-last=Johnson |title=Dialogus de Scaccario, the Course of the Exchequer, and Constitutio Domus Regis, the King's Household |page=64 |place=London |year=1950}}</ref>

The manuscript is now held at [[The National Archives (United Kingdom)|the National Archives]] in [[Kew]], London. Domesday was first printed in full in 1783, and in 2011 the Open Domesday website made the manuscript available on the [[Internet]].<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13395454 |title=Domesday Reloaded project: The 1086 version |work=BBC News |first=Rory |last=Cellan-Jones |date=13 May 2011 |access-date=21 July 2018 |archive-date=12 December 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171212014256/http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13395454 |url-status=live }}</ref>

The book is an invaluable primary source for modern historians, especially [[Economic history|economic historians]]. No survey approaching the scope and extent of Domesday Book was attempted again in Britain until the [[Return of Owners of Land, 1873|1873 ''Return of Owners of Land'']] (sometimes termed the "Modern Domesday")<ref>{{cite book|author=Hoskins, W.G.|title=A New Survey of England|location= Devon, London|date= 1954|page=87}},</ref> which presented the first complete, post-Domesday picture of the distribution of landed property in the [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland|United Kingdom]].<ref name="Return of Owners of Land, 1873, Wales, Scotland, Ireland">{{cite book|url=http://www.cefnpennar.com/1873index.htm |title=Return of Owners of Land, 1873, Wales, Scotland, Ireland |access-date=15 April 2013 |date=1873|url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120910212405/http://www.cefnpennar.com/1873index.htm |archive-date=10 September 2012 }}</ref>