Editing Domesday Book (section)

==Content and organisation==

Domesday Book encompasses two independent works (originally in two physical volumes): "Little Domesday" (covering [[Norfolk]], [[Suffolk]], and [[Essex]]), and "Great Domesday" (covering much of the remainder of England&nbsp;– except for lands in the north that later became [[Westmorland]], [[Cumberland]], [[Northumberland]], and the [[County Palatine of Durham]]&nbsp;– and parts of Wales bordering and included within English counties).<ref>{{cite web |title=Hull Domesday Project: Wales |url=http://www.domesdaybook.net/domesday-book/structure-of-domesday-book/wales |access-date=14 February 2019 |archive-date=27 June 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190627131150/http://www.domesdaybook.net/domesday-book/structure-of-domesday-book/wales |url-status=live }}</ref> Space was left in Great Domesday for a record of the [[City of London]] and [[Winchester]], but they were never written up. Other areas of modern London were then in [[Middlesex]], [[Surrey]], [[Kent]], and Essex and have their place in Domesday Book's treatment of those counties. Most of Cumberland, Westmorland, and the entirety of the County Palatine of Durham and Northumberland were omitted. They did not pay the national land tax called the [[Danegeld|geld]], and the framework for Domesday Book was geld assessment lists.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Darby |first1=Henry Clifford |title=Domesday England |date=1986 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |pages=2 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Stenton |first1=Frank Merry |title=Anglo-Saxon England |date=1971 |publisher=Clarendon Press |pages=645 }}</ref>

[[File:Domesday Book - Warwickshire.png|thumb|upright=1|right|A page of Domesday Book for [[Warwickshire]]]]

"Little Domesday", so named because its format is physically smaller than its companion's, is more detailed than Great Domesday. In particular, it includes the numbers of livestock on the home farms ([[demesnes]]) of lords, but not peasant livestock. It represents an earlier stage in processing the results of the Domesday Survey before the drastic abbreviation and rearrangement undertaken by the scribe of Great Domesday Book.<ref>{{cite web | title=Domesday Book | publisher=The National Archives | date=27 July 2022 | url=https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/domesday-book/ | access-date=1 June 2024 | quote=Great Domesday contains most of the counties of England and was written by one scribe and checked by a second. Little Domesday, which contains the information for Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk, was probably written first and is the work of at least six scribes.}}</ref>

[[File:Domesday binding.jpg|thumb|right|upright=1.07|Great Domesday in its "[[Tudor period|Tudor]]" binding: a [[wood-engraving]] of the 1860s]]

Both volumes are organised into a series of chapters (literally "headings", from Latin ''caput'', "a head") listing the [[Manorialism|manors]] [[Feudal land tenure in England|held]] by each named [[tenant-in-chief]] directly from the king. Tenants-in-chief included bishops, [[abbots|abbots and abbesses]], barons from [[Normandy]], [[Brittany]], and [[Flanders]], minor French [[Serjeanty|serjeants]], and English [[thegn]]s. The richest [[magnates]] held several hundred manors typically spread across England, though some large estates were highly concentrated. For example, [[Baldwin the Sheriff]] had one hundred and seventy-six manors in [[Devon]] and four nearby in [[Somerset]] and [[Dorset]]. Tenants-in-chief held variable proportions of their manors in [[demesne]], and had [[Subinfeudation|subinfeudated]] to others, whether their own knights (often tenants from Normandy), other tenants-in-chief of their own rank, or members of local English families. Manors were generally listed within each chapter by the [[Hundred (country subdivision)|hundred]] or [[wapentake]] (in eastern England), the second tier of local government under the counties, in which they lay.

[[File:DevonDomesdayBook TenantsInChief.png|thumb|upright=1|''HIC ANNOTANTUR TENENTES TERRAS IN DEVENESCIRE'' ("Here are noted (those) holding lands in Devonshire"). Detail from Domesday Book, list forming part of the first page of king's holdings. There are fifty-three entries, including the first entry for the king himself followed by the [[Devon Domesday Book tenants-in-chief]]. Each name has its own chapter to follow.]]
Each county's list opened with the king's demesne, which had possibly been the subject of separate inquiry.{{what?|date=December 2023}} Under the feudal system, the king was the only true "owner" of land in England by virtue of his [[allodial title]]. He was thus the ultimate overlord, and even the greatest magnate could do no more than "hold" land from him as a [[Leasehold estate#history|tenant]] (from the Latin verb ''tenere'', "to hold") under one of the various contracts of [[Feudal land tenure in England|feudal land tenure]]. Holdings of bishops followed, then of [[abbey]]s and [[religious house]]s, then of [[laity|lay]] [[tenant-in-chief|tenants-in-chief]], and lastly the king's serjeants (''servientes'') and thegns.

In some counties, one or more principal boroughs formed the subject of a separate section. A few have separate lists of disputed titles to land called ''clamores'' (claims). The equivalent sections in Little Domesday are called ''Inuasiones'' (annexations).

In total, 268,984 people are tallied in the Domesday Book, each of whom was the head of a household. Some households, such as urban dwellers, were excluded from the count, but the exact parameters remain a subject of historical debate. Sir [[Michael Postan]], for instance, contends that these may not represent all rural households, but only full peasant tenancies, thus excluding landless men and some subtenants (potentially a third of the country's population). [[Clifford Darby|H. C. Darby]], when factoring in the excluded households and using various different criteria for those excluded (as well as varying sizes for the average household), concludes that the 268,984 households listed most likely indicate a total English population between 1.2 and 1.6 million.<ref>Robert Bartlett. "The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization, and Cultural Change, 950-1350."Princeton University Press; First PB Edition (August 23, 1994). p. 108.</ref>

Domesday names a total of 13,418 places.<ref name="tally">{{Cite magazine |url= http://www.history-magazine.com/domesday.html |title=The Domesday Book |magazine=History Magazine |publisher=Moorshead Magazines |date=October 2001 |access-date=September 10, 2019}}</ref> Apart from the wholly rural portions, which constitute its bulk, Domesday contains entries of interest concerning most towns, which were probably made because of their bearing on the fiscal rights of the crown therein. These include fragments of [[custumal]]s (older customary agreements), records of the [[military service]] due, markets, [[mint (coin)|mints]], and so forth. From the towns, from the counties as wholes, and from many of its ancient lordships, the crown was entitled to archaic dues in kind, such as [[honey]].

The Domesday Book lists 5,624 mills in the country, which is considered a low estimate since the book is incomplete. For comparison, fewer than 100 mills were recorded{{where?|date=December 2023}} in the country a century earlier. [[Georges Duby]] indicates this means a mill for every forty-six peasant households and implies a great increase in the consumption of baked [[bread]] in place of boiled and unground [[porridge]].<ref>{{cite book |title=Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages |first1=Frances |last1=Gies |first2=Joseph |last2=Gies |publisher=HarperCollins Publishers, Inc |page=113 |isbn=0060165901 |date=1994}}</ref> The book also lists 28,000 [[Slavery in Britain|slaves]], a smaller number than had been enumerated in 1066.<ref>{{cite book |author=Clanchy, M. T. |title=England and its Rulers: 1066–1307 |publisher= Blackwell |edition=Third |year=2006 |series=Blackwell Classic Histories of England |location=Oxford, UK |isbn=978-1-4051-0650-4|pages=93}}</ref>

In the Domesday Book, scribes' [[Middle English orthography|orthography]] was heavily geared towards French, most lacking k and w, regulated forms for sounds {{IPAc-en|ð}} and {{IPAc-en|θ}} and ending many hard consonant words with e as they were accustomed to do with most dialects of French at the time.