Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Tables
- Dedication
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- 1 Domesday Past and Present
- 2 The Domesday Texts
- 3 The Inquest and the Book
- 4 The Domesday Boroughs
- 5 Lordship, Land, and Service
- 6 The Vill and Taxation
- 7 The Economy and Society
- 8 The Communities of the Shire
- 9 The Beyond of Domesday
- 10 Domesday Now
- Appendix The main entry forms of GDB
- Bibliography
- Index
9 - The Beyond of Domesday
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 March 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Tables
- Dedication
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- 1 Domesday Past and Present
- 2 The Domesday Texts
- 3 The Inquest and the Book
- 4 The Domesday Boroughs
- 5 Lordship, Land, and Service
- 6 The Vill and Taxation
- 7 The Economy and Society
- 8 The Communities of the Shire
- 9 The Beyond of Domesday
- 10 Domesday Now
- Appendix The main entry forms of GDB
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Domesday Bookincorporates history into its very fabric. It may not have been compiled to document the Norman Conquest and settlement, but it does so because ‘the day on which King Edward was alive and dead’ was set as the term of the assize for the changes which the Domesday inquest wished to document. This perspective has, perhaps, been one of the most important characteristics that have ensured a continuing fascination with the record. From early on in its history Domesday has been used to reconstruct Old English society, becoming, as we have seen, first a pawn in successive political debates, and then latterly the stuff of academic discourse. As much as to recreate the present of 1086, Domesday Book is today used to reconstruct the past, the ‘beyond of Domesday’.
That evocative phrase has been coined in reference to Frederick Maitland's great book Domesday Book and Beyond. Maitland was by no means the first to attempt a systematic reconstruction of Anglo-Saxon England from the folios of Domesday Book, but in his masterpiece he formulated a manifesto that has resonated down to the present day. In the final paragraph of the work he wrote:
There is every reason why the explorers of ancient English history should be hopeful. We are beginning to learn that there are intricate problems to be solved and yet that they are not insoluble. A century hence the student's materials will not be in the shape that he find them now. In the first place, the substance of Domesday Book will have been rearranged. Those villages and hundreds that the Norman clerks tore into shreds will have been reconstituted and pictured in maps, for many men from over all England will have come within King William's spell, will have bowed themselves to him and become that man's men. Then there will be a critical edition of the Anglo-Saxon charters in which the philologist and the palaeographer, the annalist and the formulist will have winnowed the grains of truth from the chaff of imposture. Instead of a few photographed village maps, there will be many; the history of land-measures and field-systems will have been elaborated. Above all by slow degrees the thoughts of our forefathers, their common thoughts about common things, will have become thinkable once more. There are discoveries to be made; but also there are habits to be formed.
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- Information
- Decoding Domesday , pp. 280 - 305Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2015