Decoding Domesday: 0 - Tapa dura

Sinopsis

Decoding Domesday proposes a re-assessment of Domesday Book which has profound implications for our understanding of the society and economy of medieval England. Hitherto all modern accounts of the period have assumed that the Domesday inquest was a comprehensive survey of lords and their lands and it thus tells us about the economic underpinning of power in the late eleventh century. This study begins by rejecting the assumption. In 1086 matters of taxation and service were at issue and data were collected to illuminate these its concerns. Chapter by chapter the various items of Domesday data are re-examined in these terms and fresh light is cast on longstanding Domesday conundrums. What emerges is that Domesday Book tells us less about a real economy and those who sustained it than a tributary one. Much of the wealth of England was omitted. The source, then, is not the transparent datum that social and economic historians would like it to be. In return we have a richer understanding of late eleventh-century England in its own terms.

DAVID ROFFE is an honorary research fellow at Sheffield University. He has written widely on Domesday Book and edited five volumes of the Alecto County Edition of the text.

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