[182] The hum of Bees.
* * * * *
~Dissertations on Doomsday.~
_For the Table Book._
§ I. NAME.
Doomsday Book, one of the most ancient records of England, is the
register from which judgment was to be given upon the value, tenure, and
services of lands therein described.
Other names by which it appears to have been known were Rotulus
Wintoniæ, Scriptura Thesauri Regis, Liber de Wintonia, and Liber Regis.
Sir Henry Spelman adds, Liber Judiciarius, Censualis Angliæ, Angliæ
Notitia et Lustratio, and Rotulus Regis.
§ II. DATE.
The exact time of the Conqueror’s undertaking the Survey, is differently
stated by historians. The Red Book of the Exchequer seems to have been
erroneously quoted, as fixing the time of entrance upon it in 1080; it
being merely stated in that record, that the work was undertaken at a
time subsequent to the total reduction of the island to William’s
authority. It is evident that it was finished in 1086. Matthew Paris,
Robert of Gloucester, the Annals of Waverley, and the Chronicle of
Bermondsey, give the year 1083, as the date of the record; Henry of
Huntingdon, in 1084; the Saxon Chronicle in 1085; Bromton, Simeon of
Durham, Florence of Worcester, the Chronicle of Mailros, Roger Hovedon,
Wilkes, and Hanningford, in 1086; and the Ypodigma Neustriæ and Diceto
in 1087.
The person and property of Odo, bishop of Bayeux, are said to have been
seized by the Conqueror in 1082.
§ III. ORIGIN AND OBJECT.
Ingulphus affirms, that the Survey was made in imitation of the policy
of Alfred, who, at the time he divided the kingdom into counties,
hundreds, and tithings, had an Inquisition taken and digested into a
Register, which was called, from the place in which it was reposited,
the Roll of Winchester. The formation of such a Survey, however, in the
time of Alfred, may be fairly doubted, as we have only a solitary
authority for its existence. The separation of counties also is known to
have been a division long anterior to the time of Alfred. Bishop Kennet
tells us, that Alfred’s Register had the name of Domeboc, from which the
name of _Doomsday Book_ was only a corruption.
Dom-boc is noticed in the laws of Edward the elder, and more
particularly in those of Æthelstan, as the code of Saxon laws.
§ IV. MODE OF EXECUTION.
For the adjusting of this Survey, certain commissioners, called the
king’s justiciaries, were appointed inquisitors: it appears, upon the
oaths of the sheriffs, the lords of each manor, the presbyters of every
church, the reeves of every hundred, the bailiffs, and six villans of
every village, were to inquire into the name of the place, who held it
in the time of Edward (the Confessor,) who was the present possessor,
how many hides in the manor, how many carrucates in demesne, how many
homagers, how many villans, how many cotarii, how many servi, what
freemen, how many tenants in socage, what quantity of wood, how many
meadows and pasture, what mills and fish-ponds, how much added or taken
away, what the gross value in king Edward’s time, what the present
value, and how much each free-man or soch-man had or has. All this was
to be triply estimated; first, as the estate was in the time of the
Confessor; then, as it was bestowed by king William; and, thirdly, as
its value stood at the formation of the Survey. _The jurors were,
moreover, to state whether any advance could be made in the value._ The
writer of the Saxon Chronicle, with some degree of asperity, informs us,
that not a hyde or yardland, not an ox, cow, or hog, were omitted in the
census.