The Collaborative International Dictionary
Domesday \Domes"day`\, n. A day of judgment. See Doomsday. [Obs.]
Domesday Book, the ancient record of the survey of most of the lands of England, made by order of William the Conqueror, about 1086. It consists of two volumes, a large folio and a quarto, and gives the proprietors' tenures, arable land, woodland, etc. [Written also Doomsday Book.]
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1178, popular name of Great Inquisition or Survey (1086), William the Conqueror's inventory of his new domain, from Middle English domes, genitive of dom "day of judgment" (see doom). "The booke ... to be called Domesday, bicause (as Mathew Parise saith) it spared no man, but iudged all men indifferently." [William Lambarde, "A Perambulation of Kent," 1570]
Wikipedia
Domesday Book ( or ; Latin: Liber de Wintonia "Book of Winchester") is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William the Conqueror. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states:
While spending the Christmas time of 1085 in Gloucester, William had deep speech with his counsellors and sent men all over England to each shire to find out what or how much each landholder had in land and livestock and what it was worth.
It was written in Medieval Latin, was highly abbreviated, and included some vernacular native terms without Latin equivalents. The survey's main purpose was to determine what taxes had been owed during the reign of King Edward the Confessor. (This interpretation is challenged by some historians, who see it as an attempt to assess where power lay after a wholesale redistribution of land following the conquest.)
The assessors' reckoning of a man's holdings and their values, as recorded in Domesday Book, was dispositive and without appeal. The name "Domesday Book" ( Middle English for "Doomsday Book") came into use in the 12th century. As Richard FitzNeal wrote in the Dialogus de Scaccario (circa 1179):
for as the sentence of that strict and terrible last account cannot be evaded by any skilful subterfuge, so when this book is appealed to ... its sentence cannot be quashed or set aside with impunity. That is why we have called the book 'the Book of Judgement'... because its decisions, like those of the Last Judgement, are unalterable.
The manuscript is held at The National Archives at Kew, London. In 2011, the Open Domesday site made the manuscript available online.
The book is an invaluable primary source for modern historians and historical economists. No survey approaching the scope and extent of Domesday Book was attempted again in Britain until the 1873 Return of Owners of Land (sometimes termed the "Modern Domesday") which presented the first complete, post-Domesday picture of the distribution of landed property in the British Isles.
The Domesday Book is a record of the great survey of England completed in 1086.
Domesday Book may also refer to:
- Domesday Book, the newsletter of the Castle & Crusade Society
- Exeter Domesday Book, land and tax register
Usage examples of "domesday book".
Nor does Ealdgyth appear as queen in accounts of the coronation, or in any of the records of his reign, or in Domesday Book as the holder of any land in his earldom.
She should tell the Domesday Book what she intended to do, but she didn't know what that was.
Perusing the Domesday Book proved to be a far bigger and more irksome task than even Sabat had anticipated.
It had the longest Gothic cathedral in the world, the oldest public school in England and, more amusingly, the Domesday Book had been compiled within its walls - she had her own chapter to write in it.
Stable ecosystems had been altered or destroyed without thought for anything past the moment's advantage, and species died so quickly biologists were hard pressed to keep the recordswrite in the Domesday Book now, mourn later.