Source.—Richard, son of Nigel, Dialogus de Scaccario, ed. Hughes, Crump, and Johnson, p. 107.
The book of which you ask is the inseparable companion of the royal seal in the treasury. The cause of this practice, as I have been told by Henry, sometime bishop of Winchester, is as follows.
When the famous conqueror of England, king William, a kinsman by blood of the same prelate, had subdued the further limits of the island to his sovereignty and cowed the hearts of rebels by terrible examples, he decreed that the subject race should submit to a written law and a written code, to prevent thereafter the existence of an easy means of error. The English laws, therefore, were laid before him, according to their threefold diversity, to wit, Mercian law, Dane law, and West Saxon law; some laws he denounced, others he approved, and added thereto the foreign laws of Neustria which he thought most effectual for the keeping of the peace of the realm. Finally, that nothing might be thought lacking, he brought the whole of his far-seeing measures to completion by despatching from his side his wisest men in circuit throughout the realm. The latter made a careful survey of the whole land, in woods and pastures and meadows, and arable lands also, which was reduced to a common phraseology and compiled into a book, that every man might be content with his own right and not encroach with impunity on that of another. The survey is made by counties, by hundreds and hides,[5] the king’s name being set down at the head, and thereafter the names of the other lords appearing in turn according to the dignity of their rank, those, namely, who hold of the king in chief. Each name thus in the list is numbered in order, so that the section concerning them can easily be found in its place below in the book. This book is called “Domesday” by the natives, that is “the day of judgment” by a metaphor; for just as the award of that last stern and terrible trial cannot be evaded by any subtlety of pleading, so when a dispute has arisen in the realm touching the things there noted, once the book is referred to, its award cannot be derided or with impunity defied. Therefore we have named it the book of dooms, not because it makes awards on any matter in dispute, but because, like the last judgment, it allows no sort of evasion.
THE DOMESDAY COMMISSION (1085).
Source.—The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. Thorpe, vol. i., p. 352. (Rolls Series.)
Then at Midwinter was the king at Gloucester with his witan and there held his court five days, and thereafter the archbishop and clergy had a synod three days.... After this the king had a great council and very deep speech with his witan touching this land, how it was peopled or with how many men. Then he sent his men over all England into every shire, and caused to be learned how many hundred hides were in the shire, or what land the king himself had and what cattle on that land, or what manner of dues he ought to have for twelve months from the shire. Also he caused to be written how much land his archbishops had, and his bishops and his abbots and his earls, and, though I take long to tell it, what or how much each man had, who was a land-holder in England, in land or in cattle, and how much money it was worth. So very straitly he caused it to be traced out that not a single hide nor a yard of land, nor even—it is a shame to tell, though he thought it no shame to do—an ox, nor a cow, nor a swine was left that was not set down in his writing. And all the writings were brought to him thereafter.
THE FORM OF THE DOMESDAY INQUEST (1085).
Source.—Inquisitio Eliensis (Domesday Book, vol. iii.).