This was of great importance to William, not only for military reasons but also because of his resolve to command the personal loyalty of the under-tenants (though the "men" of their lords) by making them swear allegiance to himself. And the other ploughs might be made up again. The place-names found in the Domesday Book are township and estate names, and may include other villages and hamlets that receive no specific mention in the text; for example, the Domesday entry for Shepshed, near Loughborough, includes the settlements of Long Watton, Lockington and Hemington, but they are not specifically mentioned.Domesday was never a single volume but originally two books, Great Domesday and Little Domesday (which was a longer version, covering the counties of Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk, which was never written up into the main volume).

William kept this administration in place when he conquered the country and used it for his survey.A list of questions that were used for the survey in the territory of Cambridgeshire (called the Ely Inquest since it was found in the Ely Cathedral) still survives. The precise purpose of the enterprise is not known but the most likely reason was to determine who legally owned what land, to settle disputes of ownership and to … Others are anonymous, such as the one 'poor woman' of Barfreston in Kent who only appears in the text because she had to make an annual payment of 3 ¾ d, although for what is not recorded.

It also gives the names of some of the jurors showing the Norman and English mix.Compiled at amazing speed for an age without computers or rapid means of communication, and where most of the population could neither read nor write, the returns were then summarized and re-shaped. Then 80 sheep, now 90. This Latin term has been translated in different ways by historians, as villein, villager, and villan.

Domesday Book was compiled in AD 1086 for William the Conqueror. There are some 30,000 manors recorded in the final document and each one was either subjected to a list of questions from the inspectors in person or a self-assessment in The officials eventually reported back to Winchester and had their findings written up in the royal writing office (scriptorium) there. Often listed with the number of ploughs, it has been assumed that most would have worked as ploughmen, domestic servants and dairymaids. Some holdings were huge, with some twelve barons controlling nearly a quarter of the country but it is not always easy to distinguish between individuals with the same names who may have held lands in the same county or across a number of different counties.Anglo-Saxon names appear mainly as under-tenants of Norman lords. Each county section began with an entry describing all the boroughs, followed by a list of landholders and then a detailed description of their manors, beginning with those held by the king himself and followed by those of the tenants-in-chief, itemised in rank order. Or, as the Domesday Book is a treasure trove of information for historians and reveals much about 11th century CE England. These were mainly: It is our earliest public record, the foundation document of the national archives and a legal document that is still valid as evidence of title to land.Based on the Domesday survey of 1085-6, which was drawn up on the orders of King William I, it describes in remarkable detail, the landholdings and resources of late 11th-century England, demonstrating the power of the government machine in the first century of the new Millennium, and its deep thirst for information. And the geographer, as he turns over the folios, with their details of population and of arable, woodland, meadow and other resources, cannot but be excited at the vast amount of information that passes before his eyes.Darby also notes the inconsistencies, saying that "when this great wealth of data is examined more closely, perplexities and difficulties arise. Studies of its figures reveal, amongst many others, such insights as:Some technical terms in the documents remain unknown but as a snapshot of a medieval population, it is unrivalled in detail. William needed money to put toward defending the country.Another reason for the survey may have been so that William could enforce his rights as a feudal overlord.