In Our Time - The Domesday Book

Episode Date: April 17, 2014

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Domesday Book, a vast survey of the land and property of much of England and Wales completed in 1086. Twenty years after the Battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror sent officials to most of his new territories to compile a list of land holdings and to gather information about settlements, the people who lived there and even their farm animals. Almost without parallel in European history, the resulting document was of immense importance for many centuries, and remains a central source for medieval historians.With:Stephen Baxter Reader in Medieval History at Kings College LondonElisabeth van Houts Honorary Professor of Medieval European History at the University of CambridgeDavid Bates Professorial Fellow in Medieval History at the University of East AngliaProducer: Thomas Morris.

Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time, for more details about In Our Time, and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk slash radio four. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello, 20 years after the Battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror sent hundreds of officials out into the English and Welsh countryside. Their job was to make a survey of the land and who owned it, and how many people and animals lived there, in some cases right down to the last pig. This enormous task was finished in seven months, and the result was one of the most remarkable documents ever produced, the Doomsday Book. Compiled in 1086, the Doomsday Book was still being consulted and used in legal disputes

many centuries later. It's the oldest and arguably the most important of all our public records, and the original copy still exists in the National Archives. But why was the Doomsday Book compiled? And why is it such a significant document? With me to discuss the Doomsday Book are Stephen Baxter, reader in medieval history at King's College London, Elizabeth Van Haust, Honoury Professor of Medieval European History at the University of Cambridge, and David Bates, professorial fellow in medieval history at the University of East Anglia. Stephen Baxter, are we talking about an event that took place in the 1080s, 20 years after Norman invasion? Would you give us a quick sketch of where we were at that time in the 10thas?

Sure. Well, the conquest had happened 20 years ago, as you, as you, had said and in the intervening time, a variety of things that had happened, all of which were relevant to understanding Doomsday Book. In the first place, the King had got himself crowned on 21st of December 1066, and that began a lifelong obsession with legitimacy. He also seized control of the machinery of government, a system of taxation and coinage and of law and of local courts, all of which are recorded in Doomsday Book. They followed a long period of rebellion and also of retribution. and large parts of the country were laid waste. Especially the north.

Indeed. And perhaps we'll return to that later. Extraordinary amount of damage was caused during that period. Then large numbers of English landholders were dispossessed. And England became part of a larger polity, if you like, an empire, a cross-channel empire, in which lots of landholders had land in both England and in Normandy. Meanwhile, new landscapes of power being put up, castles and cathedrals were being brought, and William the Conquer himself spent a lot of time after the sort of initial period from about 1072 onwards.

He spent about three quarters of his time in Normandy, fighting fires on the south coast of Normandy, in particular in Maine, and in the Norman Vex in the area near Paris. He was also very preoccupied with two major concerns during the 1080s. One was his family. He'd fallen out with his brother-in-law, Odo, and put him in prison, his son. son was in intermittent rebellion, and his much-loved wife had died in 1083, so he was beginning to get lonely and lacking in trust. So those are some of the elements in the background. And to come to specifically the nearer 1086, he was facing a number of threats.

Indeed, yeah. He'd raised an enormous tax in 1884 and spent it, as usual, firefighting in the south of his dominions in Normandy in Maine. And he was in Normandy, ...conducting a siege of a castle in Maine, when news came to him of a really dramatic threat to England. The Vikings were coming again, in essence. Knoot, King of Denmark was raising an army, and he was in alliance with Robert Counter Flanders. And we're told by an eyewitness contemporary

that he raised the largest army that had ever been assembled in England and sailed it across to England, comprised men from Brittany and Flanders as well as Normandy. This is William. This is King William, yeah. This is bigger than the army that he brought over to Haysley. Precisely so, yeah. So this is the scale of the threat that he was.

And he settled some of these troops among his vassals in England and then convened a great council, a national assembly, if you like, at Gloucester at Christmas in 1086. And there we told he had much thought and very deep discussion with his advisors. And an extraordinary thing happened. A man who'd spent most of his life, in the saddle fighting wars, decided to let loose

a fact-finding mission. Doomsday book, or the Doomsday survey was launched. So before we get specifically to that, Elizabeth Van Houtts, can you tell us a bit more about the 11th century England? We have Anglo-Saxonism, as it were, up to

66, then how brutally changed was it? Just can you give us some idea of the pattern? Was there a basic pattern? Anyway, where you go? Well, Anglo-Saxon England was a warrior society. So most of the population consisted of peasants. The top layer consisted of the king,

his earls belonging to about four or five families, and an elite of royal servants called thanks or stallers who in the locality provided services for the king. Now, what happens after 1066? It's mostly the land of the earls, the royal servants, the Thames and the Stollers, and some of the land of the free peasants, the top lair of the peasantries, peasantry that is being taken away from the Anglo-Saxons and is handed over to the followers of William the Conqueror.

Could we call the Thanes, would they be related to what people would. more generally think of as the knights. Yes. So you have the aristocracy, small family and bonded families, bound together families, not bonded, bound together families, and then the Thanes, and then administrators below them, and a parallel line, I suppose, of church dignitaries, to the left-hand side, or the right-hand side, more likely.

And then you have the mass of people whom you're using the French word peasants for. We might say something else that they were just, well, they weren't. Well, all right, peasants. Okay. And the things were, you know, they had about five heights of land. And a contemporary author tells us, which means about between 300 and 600 acres would be the minimum of land they had. So if you multiply that by thousands, you can think of how much land actually was being handed over to the Normans and the Flemish and the Bretons who came with. I think handed over as a kind way of putting it, isn't it?

Well, the land was being... In fact, the Anglo-Sacconaristocracy was reduced to to 4% of its former strength. Absolutely. That's not much a handover as a mass slaughter and exile, isn't it? Well, the land was being confiscated, basically, and the argument that William the Conqueray used was that these men had fought on the side of Harold. Harold was the arch traitor.

The men were deemed to be traitors, and therefore he could take the land away from them. but there's of course, you know, an ideological justification that he used. Can we say, did one of the attractive things about England in the 9th and 10th centuries to conquerors, it was very, very well organised, it was very centralized, it had its laws, it had vernacular language in advance of most of the letters call it for the sake of these European languages. It was well said. So it was a wonderful prey, a great sort of plump duck to shoot, if you could. Did William of Normandy take that over lockstock and barrel?

Or did he impose a different structure on it? He certainly took over the wealth of Anglo-Saxon England. He took over the logistical administration to get all the taxation out of the landholders. he took over the structure of the hundreds and the shires. He didn't touch any of that, and he wouldn't, because that was the means through which he could lay his hands on the wealth. But he made, as Stephen pointed out in his opening remarks, he made very visible the power, didn't he,

with the castles and the cathedrals, these great statements of power, many of which still remain in this country. That was deliberate. And what was he saying with that? Well, he certainly did that, and he had to do that, because after all, he hadn't been invited to come to England. He was a conqueror king.

And in order to establish himself with a relatively small elite and keep the land under control, he had to put up the fortifications in order to prevent rebellions. Yes, but to get back to, again, something he even said, he's crowning himself on Christmas Day with legitimacy. He thought he was the legitimate hour. And he therefore, as you just said, he could treat the English aristocracy as traitors because they'd followed the traitorous as he saw it, Harold Godwinson.

So he was, that was the psychological or convenient political position he was in. Absolutely. Although, of course, you know, what some people have said, he was like the Danish kings who conquered England. He's basically an up-to-date fighting. who... Who took over a country primarily because it was so very rich. It was a richest country in Western Europe.

David Bates, it was then England became part of an empire, in effect, the empire run by William of Normandy. Can you give us a sense of William's territory and how England figured in this, let's call it an empire for the sake of fun? Yes, well, I would... be very happy to call it an empire, Melvin, which is a good starting point. The core is

Normandy and England, but shortly before 1066, in 1062, 63, William had also conquered Maine, the county of Maine, the district around Le Mans, which is to the south of Normandy. And after 1072, and Stephen has already alluded to this, between 1072 and his death, 1887, William spent approximately 80% of his time in northern France, fighting with wars, who was you fighting against that? The King of France, who have controlled only a small territory around Paris, the Counts of Angéieu, with Maine and the Vexins, the main areas of conflict. And there's a beautiful phrase, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, is always worth quoting.

and I'm paraphrasing here, but he left England after the survey had been completed, taking with him as much money as possible, as was his custom. So in a way you could almost argue that England does become part of an empire, but it is perhaps the periphery of an empire. But the cross-channel dimension produces all multifaceted consequences. When William is fighting away, what's his aim in what we now call France? I know we've got to use this because it was also... Anyway, what was his aim?

What else did he want to conquer? What did he want to do? Actually, he wasn't trying to conquer anything. He was on the defensive. I see. He was on the defensive against people who were... He was the rich duck in France? Yes.

I mean, he was up against people who were every bit as capable in the techniques of warfare. as he was. I mean, in the end, remember, he's a man who won one great battle, which changed everything. But that didn't mean that he escaped all the problems that he had before 1066, and a beautiful... It can't be a coincidence.

The harrying of the north, we've already talked about. Coincidentally, the aristocracy of Maine revolt at exactly the same time. they knew a man who was over-extended, and the fact that he defeated both threats is, I guess, a compliment to him. I mean, it's a sign of a conqueror who knows what he's doing. Why did he commission the Doomsday Book? In the end, we don't know.

This is, we do not have any of the planning documents for this. So it is something I think we'll discuss around the table through the rest of the program. It's tremendously reassured by people like you don't know. I would surmise, remember it's called a descriptio.

Well, I don't know. No one knows. Ultimately, it's called a descriptio, which is the language of St. Luke's Gospel. Caesar Augustus had ordered a survey at the time of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. I suspect this argument

weighed with William. Do you reckon they read that bit when they met at Christmas? I would like to think, I think they did. I think they did, or someone would have reminded him, and they would have reminded him that minor figures like Charlemagne had thought in terms of doing similar surveys. Christmas Day again? Christmas Day again, yes.

And it's all part of, let's not think English all the time, when we discussed Doomsday Book, it's part of a European documentary culture. Can we just continue this, Stephen Baxter? Have you got anything to add? I think it's helpful to think of motives at this stage, and our way of getting through to why a doomsday book was made

is partly to map out how it was made and what the final product looked like, but we can have a reasonable guess at what a King's motives were at this point. They were partly fiscal. It needed more tax to wages wars in France. they were partly military in a world where there was a close relationship between holding land and performing military service, it helps to know who holds what land. It's also partly political. A king knowing all of his major aristocrats where they hold land and how much is going to be tremendously useful, both in dealing with them and eventually when they die with their children, problems of inheritance and so on. And then there's no whole ideological dimension to this. It reaffirms William's legitimacy by establishing,

and what the Dooms Day Commissioners were asked to do was not only find the situation now in 1086, but also the day on which Edward the confessor was alive and dead, very precisely, 5th of January 1066, the last legitimate moment before, as you say, Harold usurped. So the whole range of things that the king was getting out of this. But what's so extraordinary about doomsday? is how quickly it was done, which implies...

Before you how quickly it was done, I made a slight reference to the reading at Christmas, the story of Christ, which I understand they did, would the idea of sending out a tax to be collected everywhere, therefore they all had to move to where they... Would that have influenced them? Was that just a side where it belongs? In the sense that taxation was being routinely collected.

But not on this, not with this, Not in this systematic way. Information to support the collection of taxation being collected in this way may be unique, but the actual act of sending out tax collectors would have been fairly routine, I think. And on this scale, Elizabeth Van Hautez, how much do we know about the scale of this survey and how it was carried out? Well, the scale of the surface survey was enormous. The country was divided in about six or seven circuits, its circuit being. and a couple of shires.

And they used a mechanism, as Stephen just said, of collecting taxation or indeed recruiting troops. So they had people on the ground who would be able to provide the information they needed. Well, this isn't entirely sure is whether in the first instance William asked his tenants-in-chief to provide a list of the land they had before the commissioners were sent out or whether the commissioners were the first.

who collected this information orally. What we do know is that the commissioners would meet with local people, sworn juries at the 100th court, to check whether the information given by the landholders was indeed the correct information. And they worked from a questionnaire that all commissioners had. And the commissioners would go down the questionnaire and asked them questions.

Again, as Stephen said, they would need the information for the moment in time when Edward died in January, 1066, and now being 1086. And also we got information of the time when William gave the land to his new followers.

So you have three spotlights for each plot of land. Who held it then? Who held it under the Anglo-Saxons? Yes. He gave it when he came over and what happened to do it since. Yes. And what turns out as a result of the verification process in the Hundred Court is that not everyone agreed who held the land

because between 1066 and 1086, a time of tremendous turmoil, some of the land changed hence. So Doomsday Book also functions as an inventory of conflicts of title. And for that, Doomsday Book later on was being consulted as a repository of conflicting claims as to who held the land. David Bates, can you give us some detail about the information that the Commission... Stephen began to talk about the speed with which by present day, and as we look with all, that they collected this in about seven months, in an enormous amount of information that they got together. So can you just allude to that, but tell us what sort of stuff they got.

Yes. Well, there are variations, but if we say there is a formulaic entry, it would normally include the name of the village or manor. It would include its location within a hundred. It would include... The hundred being... The hundred being a unit of local government and local action, which is a sub-division of the Shire, or the size of 100

it will vary greatly it will include let's say for the sake of argument 1520 villages a subdivision of a shire it will include who held the land the tenant in chief that is usually a subtenant

it will include a record usually of who held the land before 1066 or at least on the day that King Edward was alive and dead It will divide demand land, that is the Lord's own land and the land of the peasants. It will list the peasants, the plows, the ploughlands. It will give the gold assessment in hides or caracades usually.

The value, Tempore or Regis, Edwardi, TRE on the day that Edward was alive and dead. The value, sometimes when received, and the value in terms, 1086. And in the midst of this, there will be narrow narratives of disputes, clamores, invasiones, which of course also makes it a source of stories.

And finally, it's a, you know, there's creativity going on here. They are inventing, not inventing, they're adapting new terms to the phenomena of the moment. So, I've listing the main parts of information,

I would say at the same time one should never underestimate its potential for including more and interesting information. It is extraordinary this business of the pig, isn't it? The person who wrote the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the priest, was he said it's very shameful that you should want to know even down to the pigs.

Well, what is surprising actually is that animals are not that frequently recorded. In great tombs, they were at least. Little Doomsday book the record of Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex has many more details on demand, livestock, on animals. Can I just get one thing straight before we move on, David?

Is the king, you said use the word tenants. So the basic notion is all the land belongs to the king, and he is letting it to this aristocracy. I'm not sure that we can be as schematic as that. Right. The legal principle that all land is the king's land does develop from this later. But this is before the emergence of the English common law.

So I am of the school that says that it is not as straightforward as that. What I would emphasise is Doomsday Book as a collaborative exercise. It was useful to his main landowners also to know what the king would. wished to find out. Because remember these are people like, oh Robert Count of Mortar, William de Rochen. These are people with huge cross-channel land holdings

who have exactly the same. Some of the bandits when they came to Britain and England. Oh, some of them must have been nice people. Some of them were, well etc. It's actually there is

a phase. I agree. It's the most ruthless takeover of land, I think, ever possibly ever, ever? You mean ever, ever? I mean, including the Old Testament and the far east? No, no, no, not quite that far back.

Let's say, pretty close Anno Domini. But there is a phase of adjustment. Stephen Baxter, the Library of Exeteral has a book related known as the Exxon Doomsday. What does that bring us?

Exxon Doomsday is a remarkable record and the only one we know for certain was produced during 1086 itself. And what it is is a record of or contains various documents produced during the course of the survey for the South Western Shires. So Cornwall, Somerset, Devon, Dorset and Wiltshire. And it's of enormous interest. We can think of it almost like being a Voyager probe taking us deeper into the Big Bang of 1086 because it records what was going on during the inquest itself.

It was the document from which a scribe eventually wrote up Great Doomsday Book. Our account of the Great Doomsday Book was written from this sort and contains the Great Doomsday Scribes' handwriting. And it's of terrific interest to us, not least because it contains documents of different kinds and relates back to your question about purpose earlier. For example, it contains lots of geld lists, which we know were updated in 1086, yeah. Taxation lists. arranged in a way which is convenient for tax collectors to actually pick up land on the ground.

It also shows us how the information was recorded from oral transmission at these packed and exciting meetings of Shire courts up and down the land in which 50,000 people were giving evidence. There was a moment in which all that material was converted into Latin in writing. And French people asking questions and those who are answering, often answering. in English. Indeed, yeah. And then turning it into Latin. So we've got this multilingual event going on, and this is our moment of transition from oral into writing. And it shows, too, how all of that information was transferred from a geographically

arranged survey into, if you like, a feudally arranged survey. That is to say information was placed under the names of tenants in chief, the major barons. And so it holds out the possibility that when we're thinking about trying to identify the purpose, singular of Doomsday, we're asking the wrong question. Lots of purposes could potentially have been served and lots of different records were being produced during the survey. And you wanted to know what he had in case he did get invaded by these people. Indeed. These other Vikings. Yeah, absolutely. Elizabeth Van Harts, how has the information presented in the finished book? The Great Dumpstay book is the one that provides the

most edited version of the information. Great Doomsday book is a large volume at 378 pages. So about 400 sheep must have been killed in order to provide the pages.

It's a 400 sheep book. On which the information is laid out very beautifully in two columns. Written as Stephen just said by one scribe, whereas little doomsday book was written by a number of scribes. The great doomsday books written out two columns, beautiful layout, and even nowadays one glance on a page,

guides you quite quickly to the plot of land you might be interested in because there's nice red rubrication that gives us. Do we know anything about this one man who transcribed the whole lot and so elegantly and organizationally superbly in one year. Well, some suggestions have been made as to his identity. Am I right, I think? Yes. David. Yes, I am as convinced as we can be

by the notion that the scribe was working for William of Saint-Calley, Bishop of Durham. Because the hand has been found, this is the work of Pierre Chaplin for the 900th anniversary. If you were to encapsulate the difference between great doomsday book and Little Doomsday Book, what would you say? Well, aesthetically, little doomsday book is less pleasing to the eye, but it is still a very well-written document. Several scribes, more information, in particular in relation to animals, I mean a wonderful source for fisheries, for example, as well, and also for more detail on peasants and more records of disputes.

Probably a final version just like Great Doomsday Book, not an intermediate stage. Why are the two volumes then? Why didn't they bring them together as one great Doomsday Book? Controversial subject. Tend to follow David Roth and another of the modern,

great modern Doomsday Scholars. I think Little Doomsday Book was good enough to be a working document and the Doomsday Scribe recognized difference and decided it didn't need to be done. Right. Can we, Stephen Baxter, can we get to what more

the Doomsday Book gives us? Because as you said, a lot of things went into it, a lot of things come out of it. What does it say about how the country changed to start with? We've got 1066, let's say 1068 and then 1086. What new country is being forged? Well, first of all, there's a very complete elite takeover, and I think you've already said that only 4% of the landed wealth of England

was held by Englishmen. After that, yeah. Yeah, in 1086. Quite a lot of Englishmen, about a thousand of them in total, are still holding in 1086, but they're fairly modest individuals at this stage. The overwhelming bulk of land has been transferred. In addition to that, we see a whole structural shift

in the shape of landed society. At the top, at the middle and at the bottom. Firstly, at the top, the king's income, roughly doubled from about £8,000 to about £16,000. So the royal demean has increased in size very dramatically. To give that some context, William the Conqueror himself possessed roughly one-fifth, 20% of the whole country was in his personal possession.

In the middle we find a group of major landholders with lands between about 50 and 750 pounds. To give context again, 72,000 pounds is the whole landed wealth of England, the entire net profit. So these are major landholders. There were a lot more of them at each level. So at the major down to minor tenants in chief, there were more substantial in terms of numbers.

Where had all that land come from? It's the people we were referring to as peasants and as Thanes. People between roughly 30 acres of land going up to 500 acres of land, maybe 15 to 20,000 of them had been dispossessed or suppressed and pushed down into the ranks, and their wealth had been redistributed. So is this the radical... Do we see, can we say here, that society in this country changed in a radical way was seen to have been changed in the doomsday.

Yes, I mean, we've been much concerned. and in recent news with whether our standards of living have gone off well down since a fixed point when the government changed. Well, I think it's demonstrable using Doomsday Book that the overwhelming majority of people had suffered a real sharp fall in standards of living. Large sways of England had been wasted during the harring of the north. What does wasted mean in that context? Can you just tell all the listeners briskly, when he went to waste the north or along the, the tracks in the southeast that his army came from. What is that waste?

Wasting is physically burning, torching houses, it's killing livestock, it's taking control of grain stores, it's making farms inoperable. It means that it's impossible to live there, and we're told that in the winter of 1069 to 70, 100,000 people were starving,

we're dying of starvation because of the wasting. That is recorded in 1086, as lots of places are still waste, either because they weren't active farms or because no income was being generated by their lords. Elizabeth. Yeah, I think we can add to that,

the waste in towns. In towns, quite a lot of houses were being destroyed in order to make built castles in some places also, and new cathedrals. But in the process of clearing land for the foundations of these new buildings, large wards of towns were being destroyed.

And what happened to the people who lived in these houses, goodness knows, they had to find shelter with family, presumably. Come to you know, Mama, David. I just want to just tell with Elizabeth for one question here. The houses, we told that the English aristocracy was an enormous massacre and there's still a dispute whether William won that Battle of Hastings, David, or whether Harold lost it by Oberyn Petroastrian.

But that's another program. What happened to the widows? What happened to the women? Well, we know, for example, the mother of Harold collected a number of aristocratic women around her. She was called Gita, and she fled to an island, a flat home in the south of England, the two years realized that the Normans were going to stay.

So she then took them to Flanders. We know of women taking refuge in nunneries. And there's very interesting information in a letter from Archbishop at Landfranck writing to his colleague saying, what should be done with the nuns in the nunneries who were not properly professed? And in particular, he referred to those women who took refuge in.

in non-or-rease, not out of love for religion, but out of fear of the French. Now, what does that mean? That must have meant fear of being married off to Frenchmen. It was very common for kings to use widows and their land to reward followers who obviously didn't have land in England. So not so much arranged marriages as forced marriages. Forced marriages, absolutely.

And then another fear was a fear of sexual violence and rape. And we know that William the Conqueror legislated or informed his soldiers that they should not commit violence to women. But as we all know, in all, all through history, during wars and conquest, soldiers do commit rapes. So the option of refuge in nunneries was only an option that was available for the very rich, because the nuns wouldn't take you unless you paid for your accommodation. And then another...

We're getting this from Doomsday still, are we? The information you're giving us. Well, actually, Doomsday Book provides us with list of names of women who we think were widows of thanks. There is also evidence that, for example, in Gloucestershire,

we know that the widow of a sheriff called Elwyn was given by the king to a man called Richard. Well, a man called Richard would have been a Norman. And that was not a voluntary arrangement. David, you wanted to come in. I wanted to come in with actually three points, all of which we could discuss at great length.

Well, we haven't got time. One of the things we shot of is great length of them at the moment, David. None of that then. First of all, there are degrees of wasting, i.e. tactical wasting and the harrying of the north is top level wasting. Secondly, you and politically controversial things. Making people suffer wasting in towns

is the basis in many towns of great economic growth eventually and great tribute to human resilience in all of this. You're knocking things down to build new things? Yes. Like cathedrals and castles? Yes, great source of employment. And thirdly, one can actually Even advance the argument

That England, precocious, wealthy, The great catalyst to precocity Was repeated catastrophic military defeat And the creation of effectively war economies Please discuss Well, that's a nice three little hand grenade Come in, like I come in, like I'll say? Right.

Can we... Do you want to take that up, Stephen? Do you want to talk about the... To build on the points which were being made about women, which were made, and we can play with statistics again, about 6% of the land of wealth of England was in women's hands. We're still referring... We're just so, listen, we're getting this information on the Doomsday Books, are we?

Absolutely, yeah. And by 1086, only about 2%. Well, so there's been a significant reduction. But I think both of those statistics underestimate the importance of women and during their lifetimes, they may well come into significant amount of property and then be married to or be compelled to marry to a particular individual or become heiresses and so on. So during their lifetimes, they may well have much more significant amount than any snapshot,

which Doomsday Book is. Sorry, this was a massive operation, but significant places were left out. Can you briefly tell us which and why? Yes, some major towns, London, Winchester. Hastings actually. We don't know. All we know is that the scribe left a space and so he obviously expected to have to write something up but he never filled that space in.

It may well be that the survey generated very big, cumbersome, complex accounts of these were already large and complex towns and it may be a very simple logistical reason that he didn't write it into the book. The other major admission is the area to the north, the north of the river T's to the north of Yorkshire so all of Durham and Northumberland is omitted

and the area to the north of there's a tiny bit of Cumberland is included but north of the river Esk is excluded so why that was emitted is I think we could be more confident of that that area was simply not brought into the region of shires and hundreds and of taxation

which the Anglo-Saxon kingdom were constructed. And so it's a good illustration of the extent to which Tim's Day book was built on the framework of government which had been bequeathed to them by the Anglo-Saxons. So you have this book in remarkably quick time, that still strikes me as extraordinary, especially given what the comparisons we have with nowadays, to be quite open about it, it's extraordinary.

The speed and the usefulness of the book, you just think they could do that then? Or they did. when did Elizabeth when did it start to be used the Doomsday book? You've got it, he's gone back with his ship

full of silver, when did the book start to be used? Well, I think the book must have been used straight away in Winchester where it was being kept. Winchester was the place where the king kept his treasury and by the

early 12th century it probably went with all the king's archive to London and was kept presumably in the Tower of London. And I would imagine that particularly at Tenant-in-Chief level, when there was any dispute about the landholding, the first place when we would look at would be Doomsday Book. And what then happened later with Doomsday Book,

we have references coming from the 13th century, from the 14th century, of people who slip into their documentation that they consulted it. David, I know, but can I ask you one thing? Can you tell us, does it have any parallel in medieval Europe, this book, the Dumbtebo? No parallel, no surviving parallel from that period. Anything of that size and comprehensiveness? No, no, no, simply no. It doesn't.

It is a unique document. But just add to the point about later usage. I mean, we've been working our way around the controversy of good thing, bad thing, the Norman conquest, etc. And Doomsday Book, of course, well, it becomes a legal document for consultation in cases of ancient demand in the later Middle Ages. It is regularly used, and you said at the beginning you still use. But through into, from the 13th century into the 17th, it becomes, you're not. either the symbol of the continuity of English institutions and identity or the symbol of Norman oppression.

And the debates which are running through this programme focus on Doomsday Book in the great 17th century debates which in so many ways are still with us. Yes. In terms of its use, we can be pretty certain that William Conqueror never saw great Doomsday Book itself. He left it. England shortly after the survey was completed and did not return.

Well, that will have to do. I'm really sorry to end that. Thank you very much, Stephen Baxter, Elizabeth Van Hutz and David Bates. And next week, Tristram Shandy, Stearns' novel. Thank you for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. I was scuffed up with cold, and you did marvelously often.

Thank you. Well, thank you. Well, and also thank you for, I think, getting to the heart of the matter very, very quickly ending. What was the heart of the matter today? You have to tell me, I'm in a sort of cold plod at the moment. I'm going to zoom at the moment. I think we have two hearts of the matter. First of all, not asking us to be precise about the planning process. But also, well, no, three things actually. Secondly, it's symbolic controversialness in the history of the history of the. English and the history of Europe. I mean, oppressive tyranny or great symbol

of continuity. And thirdly, I mean, just the way in which you allow particularly Leasbeth and Stephen to develop on it as a source of stories and understanding communities. I mean, it still comes

to life. I mean, I don't begin to sound like, well, I don't begin to sound, I feel I'm sounding like Michael Wood here. But it, it comes to life. doesn't it as you read it Stephen I mean you've made television programs to say precisely this yeah and I think you're right it's exactly in those moments of where stuff is being disputed you basically have the unedifying image of

usually two normans you know vultures over the carcass of anglox in England you know squabbling over the spoils and but there are also human stories in the text and I wasn't able to tell the lovely story about the the Breton soldier who is recorded as having a plot of, yeah, has a small holding, which it is that he comes from the girl with whom he fell in love. I think it's the only place where Amor love is being mentioned in Doomsday Book. And you just, in this one little phrase, conjure up a story about, you know, real life and emotion,

where a foreigner comes in has to be beastly to the local population. he can't and forms a relationship with a local girl. And also this is in Little Doomsley book, I know, but it's a sign of the humanity of the people who are writing the text. They ought to have, I mean, a bureaucrat ought to have left that out.

Right at the end of Little Doomsley book, and I always wonder whether this was a scribe who was slightly bored and didn't believe his report would ever be read, but he gave someone the nickname Golden Bullocks. And I, it was, I always wonder whether this is a joke or someone who personally. Well, he might have fathered a lot of sons, I don't know.

You were just about to start a very interesting, you know, we ran out of time on the ancient demean. From the kind of 1250s onwards, very interestingly, peasants got the idea that if they could show that Doomsday Book made their village a royal manor, they got special privileges. And that was a reality. and therefore clubbed together to pay for extracts from Deem Stoble to show this.

Now, usually they were wrong, and they had to pay anyway. But you've got this delicious irony, which if any text shows that your Norman Yoke was a reality, it is doomed day rent went up, you know, villas were wasted, manners were formed, and their lower orders were suppressed. And yet, by the late 13th century, it was used as a recourse for peasants who thought they could show their freedoms were enshrined in its sense. which is also wonderfully illustrative of the authority that this document commands. I mean, we didn't fit in why, you know, the invention of the name Doomsday Book, the equivalence of the last judgment.

Yeah, that is where it comes from, isn't it? Yes, it is. And when did that come in the 12th century? 12th century. Stephen. The record is text known as the Deologus, which was written in the 1170s. But it has authority in so far it was the point. person who was looking after D'em's Zaybook at that moment in the Treasury.

And his account of it says that the English came to call it Domus Day. That is the Day of Judgment, by analogy with the Day of Judgment, because it is such a source of authority. We don't know whether, I think that that reputation is established early, but it's not recorded at all the total. What do you like to handle it? It's still that on Q, isn't it? Oh, you must have read it. I've seen it. I haven't touched it.

No, it was... Have you got to put on... White gloves and permission is almost always denied now to handle it because there are such good facsimile images. There must be a specific paleographical reason for scientifically studying the manuscript. There are advantages, though, in age. I'm older than Stephen.

And I was actually allowed to touch it and handle it and whisk over. Why did age come into this? my age. Not the manuscript, my age. Do you mean before 1986? In 1986, yes, I was allowed. There's also titan since then, I think.

But interestingly, yes. What was it like? You were touching the book? Oh, it was deeply moving. It was quite wonderful. Yeah, because you could well, flick over the pages. No, it was deeply moving

just to see the manuscript and how it comes along. Here's Tom Morris, going to move us on, and bring us some tea, maybe. That might be... It would be lovely. There are many more Radio 4 arts and discussion programmes to download for free. Find these on the website at BBC.com.com.

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