Decoding Domesday
David Roffe asks why exactly Domesday Book, the oldest and most precious of the English public records, was compiled – and for whom.
Domesday Book must have always impressed. It is in fact not one hook but two. Volume One, known as Great Domesday, is a large folio of almost 800 pages. In it, shire by shire and lord by lord, is contained an account of thirty of the thirty-three counties of late eleventh-century England. Volume Two, Little Domesday, is smaller in format but, at nine hundred pages, is slightly longer. It contains a more detailed account of the remaining three shires, Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk. Both volumes, now bound in five parts, are preserved in the National Archives at Kew as the oldest and most precious of the English public records. Why should it need decoding?
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