Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Speaker 1: Frye and I'm Tracy D Wilson. So back when we
Speaker 1: talked about old and ancient roads, one of the pieces
Speaker 1: that I read about the Ridgeway mentioned the Doomsday Book
Speaker 1: as a reference for the age of the historical site there,
Speaker 1: and I thought, have we ever talked in detail about
Speaker 1: the Doomsday Book on the show? Like I knew it
Speaker 1: had come up before, but I was like, I don't
Speaker 1: know that we've ever actually discussed the whole thing and
Speaker 1: why it existed. And then I kept finding myself just
Speaker 1: looking things up about it as a curiosity, and I
Speaker 1: was like, well, that's gonna have to happen. So here
Speaker 1: we are to contextualize all of this and really explain
Speaker 1: the scope of this thing. The BBC wrote of the
Speaker 1: Doomsday Book project quote, it was an exercise unparalleled in
Speaker 1: contemporary Europe and was not matched in its comprehensive coverage
Speaker 1: of the cunt until the population censuses of the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: Although Doomsday itself is not a full population census and
Speaker 1: the names that appear in it are mainly only those
Speaker 1: of people who owned the land. So it's a big
Speaker 1: old project, big old data gathering project. Yeah. So the
Speaker 1: Doomsday Book, which looks like it should be pronounced Domesday
Speaker 1: but is not. If you're like, what's the Doomsday Book,
Speaker 1: it's a survey like a census and a property record,
Speaker 1: much less ominous than the doomsday that its name might suggest.
Speaker 1: It wasn't called the Doomsday Book by its originator. It
Speaker 1: didn't really have a name at that point. It was
Speaker 1: just called the Description of England, with some of the
Speaker 1: documents prepared as part of its assembly each having their
Speaker 1: own names, and the whole project was initiated by William
Speaker 1: the First, also known as William the Conqueror and even
Speaker 1: less flatteringly, William the Bastard. We're going to give you
Speaker 1: the broad strokes on his rise to power because it
Speaker 1: makes clear exactly why he wanted this survey completed. William
Speaker 1: was born in Falaise, Normandy, most likely in ten twenty eight.
Speaker 1: His father was Robert, the first Duke of Normandy, and
Speaker 1: his mother was a woman named Erleva, she sometimes noted
Speaker 1: as being called Arlette, and she was the king's concubine.
Speaker 1: Thus his less than flattering nickname. William was Robert's only son,
Speaker 1: and he was just seven when his father became ill
Speaker 1: and died while traveling home from a trip to Jerusalem,
Speaker 1: and at that point William, who Robert had named as
Speaker 1: an heir, became William the Second of Normandy. William's life
Speaker 1: after he inherited the title of Duke of Normandy was
Speaker 1: marked by constant challenges, intrigues, and loss. His own family
Speaker 1: was pretty apathetic about a situation because they were all
Speaker 1: jockeying for power, and they knew if he died or
Speaker 1: was murdered, they would stay to benefit from that. Because
Speaker 1: he was just a child, a lot of people assumed
Speaker 1: that they could really do whatever they wanted without any
Speaker 1: real repercussions from authorities, and really they weren't wrong. Without
Speaker 1: a strong leader, some people felt comfortable just laying claim
Speaker 1: to their own power. They would build new castles with
Speaker 1: which to defend their claims, and this led to a
Speaker 1: lot of violent conflict. Yeah, theoretically, you were supposed to
Speaker 1: get permission to build a new castle that was not happening,
Speaker 1: and then to make matters worse, the adults who were
Speaker 1: supposed to be supporting William and were were often attacked.
Speaker 1: His personal tutor was murdered, as were three of his guardians,
Speaker 1: and over the years, various historians have theorized that all
Speaker 1: of this instability in his early years really catalyzed William's
Speaker 1: later hardline positions regarding law and order. After being knighted
Speaker 1: at the age of fifteen, William went hard trying to
Speaker 1: prosecute and punish people who had overstepped and taken in
Speaker 1: advantage of the chaos of his early years as duke,
Speaker 1: and that led to more conflict. Most of the people
Speaker 1: he was trying to reclaim land from had held it
Speaker 1: for years at that point, so they felt it was
Speaker 1: very much theirs, and they had no intention of paying
Speaker 1: any back taxes levied on it. Numerous rebellions were mounted
Speaker 1: because of all of this, and while there was mixed
Speaker 1: success for William in terms of these conflicts, he did
Speaker 1: learn a lot about battle and he developed his style
Speaker 1: as a commander, which was direct and pragmatic. Also during
Speaker 1: this time, William got a good bit of help from
Speaker 1: King Henry the First of France, who took the throne
Speaker 1: in ten thirty one. After things settled down for William
Speaker 1: in Normandy, he supported Henry's efforts elsewhere, especially when it
Speaker 1: came to expanding France's territory in the south. In ten
Speaker 1: fifty three, William married Matilda of Flanders after negotiating for
Speaker 1: her hand as part of an alliance with her father,
Speaker 1: Baldwin the f fifth. This was actually a problematic marital
Speaker 1: alliance in the eyes of the church. Pope Leo the
Speaker 1: ninth had stated that because the two were third cousins
Speaker 1: once removed, the marriage was incestuous and should not happen.
Speaker 1: But they got married anyway, and it seems to have
Speaker 1: been a pretty good match. They had nine children that
Speaker 1: lived to adulthood, and Matilda ruled Normandy when William was away.
Speaker 1: Regarding their choice to ignore the pope, that was pretty serious.
Speaker 1: It was also a little surprising because William was known
Speaker 1: to be very religious. But six or seven years into
Speaker 1: the marriage he reconciled with the church, and he made
Speaker 1: amends by agreeing to build two monasteries at cont one
Speaker 1: in his name and one in Matilda's. This penance enabled
Speaker 1: the papacy to officially sanction their marriage, and that bolstered
Speaker 1: William's position during another period of upheaval in Normandy. William
Speaker 1: made a deal with Edward the Confessor, who was the
Speaker 1: King of England and also William's cousin. Edward had no heir,
Speaker 1: and William thought that he could be Edwards named Air
Speaker 1: and this was likely something that was possible because he
Speaker 1: had allied with Flanders through marriage, and as this agreement
Speaker 1: seems to have happened even before the marriage took place,
Speaker 1: but after William had made his deal with Baldwin the Fifth,
Speaker 1: so he was in a good position to be like, hey,
Speaker 1: I could handle this kind of power. That deal became
Speaker 1: important because William had fallen out of favor with King Henry.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, Henry and Jeffrey Martel also known as
Speaker 1: Jeffrey the second Count of Anjous, had reconciled after their
Speaker 1: own falling out, and they had joined forces to launch
Speaker 1: an attack on William's Normandy, which happened as multiple rebellion
Speaker 1: efforts were all happening within Normandy. William managed to regain
Speaker 1: control of Normandy, and then, regarding his conflict with the
Speaker 1: Crown and the Count of Anjous, he got lucky. King
Speaker 1: Henry died on August fourth, ten sixty and his eight
Speaker 1: years year old son, Philip the First took the throne,
Speaker 1: with widowed Queen Anne of Kievs serving as regent. Just
Speaker 1: a few months later, on November fourteenth, Jeffrey Martel also
Speaker 1: died and his title went to his nephews. So William's
Speaker 1: two strongest limiters to his success in expanding Norman lands
Speaker 1: were no longer on the board, and their successors were
Speaker 1: neither as strong nor as driven to stop him. Okay,
Speaker 1: so now we have to go back to Edward the Confessor,
Speaker 1: and we are reaching a point where there are two
Speaker 1: different narratives of what happened next. According to the Norman version,
Speaker 1: Edward sent Harold, Earl of Wessex from England to Normandy
Speaker 1: to confirm the agreement that Edward would name William as
Speaker 1: his heir. Harold was shipwrecked and he was captured by
Speaker 1: one of William's vessels, Gui, the first of Ponthieu. William
Speaker 1: intervened to free Harold, and Harold told William that yes,
Speaker 1: Edward was ready to confirm their bequest agreement. This involved
Speaker 1: the swearing of an oath on Harold's part. Again, that's
Speaker 1: according to Norman sources. Some of those sources include the
Speaker 1: bio tapestry, which features an image of Norman's swearing fealty
Speaker 1: to William. The alternate version suggests that Harold's mission was
Speaker 1: not about confirming that agreement, because Edward named Harold as
Speaker 1: his heir while he was on his deathbed, so either
Speaker 1: he sent Harold for a different reason or he changed
Speaker 1: his mind. But when Edward died on January fifth, ten
Speaker 1: sixty six, the throne went to Harold after the nobility
Speaker 1: confirmed him. Unsurprisingly, this was not something that delighted William,
Speaker 1: and it also brought conflict from other places, because William
Speaker 1: wasn't the only person that thought he should inherit from Edward.
Speaker 1: Before William could even get his affairs in order to
Speaker 1: bolster his standing and get ready to attack England, Harold's
Speaker 1: brother Tostig and Harold the second Hardrod of Norway invaded
Speaker 1: England to wrest power from Harold. They were unsuccessful, but
Speaker 1: left Harold weakened and low on troops. William was able
Speaker 1: to take advantage of this, and was of course victorious
Speaker 1: at the Battle of Hastings, during which King Harold was killed.
Speaker 1: There's a particularly grizzly and famous account of that death
Speaker 1: where he gets shot right in the eye, which sounds awful.
Speaker 1: But William became William the First of England on December
Speaker 1: twenty fifth, ten sixty six. Yeah, we have old episodes
Speaker 1: about the Battle of Hastings and about the Tapestry all
Speaker 1: hanging out there in the archive. With William finally on
Speaker 1: the throne of England's we can finally start talking about
Speaker 1: the Doomsday Book, and we will get into it after
Speaker 1: we first pause for a sponsor break. Been to twenty
Speaker 1: years after William became King of England, his leadership was
Speaker 1: as tumultuous as it had been as Duke of Normandy
Speaker 1: in France. He went home to Normandy in ten sixty seven,
Speaker 1: but he had to return to England almost immediately to
Speaker 1: deal with a series of rebellions, and he became rather
Speaker 1: ruthless in putting such rebellions down over the next several years.
Speaker 1: William is known for introducing a lot of Norman governing
Speaker 1: structures to England. Some of these were literal structures, including
Speaker 1: the Tower of London and other castles, that were intended
Speaker 1: to give Norman lords central strongholds from which they could
Speaker 1: control the surrounding lands. Those Norman lords had replaced members
Speaker 1: of England's aristocracy as part of William's restructuring, and he
Speaker 1: had instituted a landholding policy that required promises of military
Speaker 1: service to the lords that oversaw them. William traveled between
Speaker 1: Normandy and England throughout his reign, sometimes returning to his
Speaker 1: original home for years before something like a rebellion would
Speaker 1: bring him back to England to assert his authority. And
Speaker 1: as he faced both within and without his kingdom, that
Speaker 1: system of landholding that he established became more and more
Speaker 1: important to him. William the First wanted to make sure
Speaker 1: that he understood completely who owned what and thus who
Speaker 1: owed him military service as well as money, and so
Speaker 1: he decided at the end of ten eighty five that
Speaker 1: he needed a survey assessing who was on what land
Speaker 1: and details of any estates. This survey would ultimately yield
Speaker 1: what became known as Doomsday Book. Doomsday Book is sometimes
Speaker 1: described as the way William the First assessed his new kingdom,
Speaker 1: but it was almost twenty years before he initiated the project,
Speaker 1: so obviously that is not accurate. The Anglo Saxon Chronicle,
Speaker 1: which is a history that was started in the late
Speaker 1: ninth century and was updated in fits and starts until
Speaker 1: eleven fourteen. That mentions the moment that William made his
Speaker 1: decision to have the survey done, describing it this way quote.
Speaker 1: After this had the King a large meeting and very
Speaker 1: deep consultation with his council about this land, how it
Speaker 1: was occupied, and by what sort of men. Then he
Speaker 1: sent his men all over England into each shire, commissioning
Speaker 1: them to find out how many hundreds of hides were
Speaker 1: in the shire, what land the King himself had, and
Speaker 1: what stock upon the land, or what dews he ought
Speaker 1: to have by the year from the shire. Also he
Speaker 1: commissioned them to record in writing how much land his
Speaker 1: archbishops had, and his diocesan bishops, and his abbots, and
Speaker 1: his earls, And though I may be prolix and tedious,
Speaker 1: what or how much each man had who was an
Speaker 1: occupier of land in England, either in land or in stock,
Speaker 1: and how much money it were worth. So very narrowly, indeed,
Speaker 1: did he commission them to trace it out that there
Speaker 1: was not one single hide, nor a yard of land
Speaker 1: name or over. It is shameful to tell, though he
Speaker 1: thought it no shame to do it, Not even an
Speaker 1: ox or nora, a cow, nor a swine was there
Speaker 1: left that was not set down in his writ and
Speaker 1: all the recorded particulars were afterwards brought to him. Incidentally,
Speaker 1: hides here is not referencing animal hides. It is a
Speaker 1: measurement of land. So Doomsday Book was actually two books,
Speaker 1: and it still exists, but not quite in that form,
Speaker 1: and we're going to talk about that later. The first
Speaker 1: volume is called Great Doomsday and the second is called
Speaker 1: Little Doomsday. There are also additional supporting pieces of writing,
Speaker 1: many of which were summarized in Great Doomsday. Great Doomsday
Speaker 1: is written in an abbreviated form of Latin on parchment
Speaker 1: that's made of sheepskin. Most of the ink in it
Speaker 1: is black, although red ink was used for page headers, corrections,
Speaker 1: and addendums. This total's four hundred and thirteen pages. Great
Speaker 1: Doomsday includes most of the records collected about all of
Speaker 1: the county surveyed, with the exception of Norfolk, Essex, and Suffolk.
Speaker 1: Those are included in Little Doomsday, but not as summaries.
Speaker 1: It seems like these should have been incorporated into the
Speaker 1: larger first volume at some point, but for reasons unknown
Speaker 1: that did not happen. This whole thing also did not
Speaker 1: include the northern areas of England. London, Winchester and Bristol
Speaker 1: are also excluded, as are Northumberland and Durham. There may
Speaker 1: have been, and probably were, plans to get to all
Speaker 1: of that, but those areas and some other small towns
Speaker 1: and villages that we know existed but weren't included, either
Speaker 1: never got their data collected or we do not have
Speaker 1: the records. Little Doomsday is actually a more detailed work
Speaker 1: than Great Doomsday, and though its cover size is smaller,
Speaker 1: it has more pages at four hundred and seventy five.
Speaker 1: It appears that the larger book made use of records
Speaker 1: similar to those than Little Doomsday and condensed and abbreviated them.
Speaker 1: In Great Doomsday appears to have been written by a
Speaker 1: single person, it appears that a second scribe checked the
Speaker 1: work and made some notes. In contrast, Little Doomsday appears
Speaker 1: to have had several different people recording information in it.
Speaker 1: Those supporting documents that we mentioned earlier offer their own
Speaker 1: unique insights into this whole project. For example, the document
Speaker 1: known as Inquisition of the County of Cambridge, which has
Speaker 1: a much longer Latin name that I thought I should
Speaker 1: not attempt, includes information on process and procedure for capturing
Speaker 1: all of this data. And it's from this document that
Speaker 1: we know that the whole thing was carried out as
Speaker 1: a series of sworn inquests. So it's believed that major
Speaker 1: landowners initially sent in information who their tenants were, what
Speaker 1: manners were part of their land, et cetera, and then
Speaker 1: that information was compared to existing records. Then came the
Speaker 1: part where William sent his men all over England, as
Speaker 1: described in the quote that Tracy read earlier, to hold
Speaker 1: these inquests and get confirmation and additional details about land holdings.
Speaker 1: The commissioners conducted the proceedings at assigned circuits, each of
Speaker 1: which was divided into counties and then subdivided into Feif's hundreds, vills, manners,
Speaker 1: and sub manners, with some circuits subdividing even further. There
Speaker 1: were seven circuits in total, with three to four commissioners
Speaker 1: assigned to each, and the juries that were assembled for
Speaker 1: these inquests were made up of Norman and Anglo Saxon
Speaker 1: members to avoid bias, and then witnesses were called to
Speaker 1: verify the information that the landowners, which were literal landlords,
Speaker 1: had provided. The questions asked at the inquests also appeared
Speaker 1: in the supplemental documents. There are eighteen of them. What
Speaker 1: the manner was called? Who held it at the time
Speaker 1: of King Edward? Who holds it now? How many hides
Speaker 1: there are? How many plows held by the lord, and
Speaker 1: how many belonging to the peasants? How many villains those
Speaker 1: were wealthy sort of in quotation marks indentured peasants. They
Speaker 1: would not have been wealthy at all. It was relatively
Speaker 1: more prosperous. How many cotters those are indentured peasants, who
Speaker 1: owned land totaling less than five acres? How many slaves?
Speaker 1: How many freemen? How many soakmen? Those were freemen who
Speaker 1: owed dues to their lord? How much woodland? How much meadow?
Speaker 1: How much pasture? How many mills, how many fisheries? How
Speaker 1: much had been added or taken away from the estate?
Speaker 1: What it used to be worth altogether? And what it
Speaker 1: is worth now? These questions were posed in triplicate. One
Speaker 1: set of answers was given for the time of Edward
Speaker 1: the Confessor before ten sixty six. One set was to
Speaker 1: capture the situation in the aftermath of William the first
Speaker 1: redistribution of property that was right after he took the throne,
Speaker 1: and then the third set was to reflect the situation
Speaker 1: at the time the survey was perfer formed, and the
Speaker 1: answers to all of these questions were then compiled and
Speaker 1: used to create first one set of documents and then
Speaker 1: the summaries that appear in the Great Doomsday. Landowners' names
Speaker 1: and they were generally all Normans with a few exceptions
Speaker 1: were recorded and some of their Anglo Saxon under tenants.
Speaker 1: Once all of these inquests were complete, the commissioners then
Speaker 1: assembled together so that all of their collected data could
Speaker 1: be amassed. So what does all that data show. More
Speaker 1: than thirteen thousand places are mentioned in the Doomsday Book,
Speaker 1: most of them are still around today, although in some
Speaker 1: cases the names have changed. Sprinkled throughout all those places
Speaker 1: are thirty thousand recorded manners. The total value of all
Speaker 1: the properties listed in the book is estimated at seventy
Speaker 1: three thousand pounds calculated by size. Thirty five percent of
Speaker 1: the land was deemed arable, twenty five percent was pasture
Speaker 1: or meadow land, with meadow being the dominant, the two
Speaker 1: fifteen percent was woodland, and the remaining twenty five percent
Speaker 1: was listed as other. This clearly shows too, the way
Speaker 1: that William consolidated wealth and power among his followers. Whereas
Speaker 1: two thousand Anglo Saxons had owned the majority of the
Speaker 1: surveyed land in the time of Edward the Confessor, by
Speaker 1: ten eighty six, just two hundred people did, all of
Speaker 1: them Normans. Seventeen percent of all of the land in
Speaker 1: England was owned by the king and his family, and
Speaker 1: then the church, bishops and abbots owned twenty six percent,
Speaker 1: Tenants in chief owned fifty four percent, and those two
Speaker 1: thousand Anglo Saxons had largely become under tenants to those
Speaker 1: two hundred Norman landholders. And it showed that ninety percent
Speaker 1: of the population lived outside of cities, and that three
Speaker 1: quarters of them were serfs, and it estimated that about
Speaker 1: sixteen thousand troops could be called up from the existing population.
Speaker 1: What you can't get from Doomsday Book is a reliable
Speaker 1: population count, because, as we mentioned in the intro and
Speaker 1: then again just a little while ago, it listed only
Speaker 1: the names of landholders, so they would say who was
Speaker 1: under them, but not by names, so you can't really
Speaker 1: reconcile that with accuracy, and Doomsday is the work that's
Speaker 1: still being researched and reinterpreted. In twenty twenty one, a
Speaker 1: paper in English Historical Review shared new insights into the work.
Speaker 1: We talked about this and unearthed that year, but we
Speaker 1: don't expect anybody to remember that. The study that resulted
Speaker 1: in the paper was a collaboration between University of Oxford
Speaker 1: and King's College London, led by doctor Stephen Baxter, Professor
Speaker 1: of Medieval History at Oxford. Their work looked specifically at
Speaker 1: one of the supporting documents, the Exon Doomsday. Its Latin
Speaker 1: name is Liber Exoniensis, and Exon Doomsday is the oldest
Speaker 1: of the manuscripts associated with the project. This particular part
Speaker 1: of the work is not with the rest of the
Speaker 1: two main sections. It's at the Exeter Cathedral Library, cataloged
Speaker 1: as MS thirty five hundred. Yeah. I should point out too,
Speaker 1: I didn't include it in this outline that this also
Speaker 1: was published as a book by Baxter's team. But Baxter's
Speaker 1: team carefully analyzed Exon Doomsday to determine which of the
Speaker 1: numerous scribes two dozen who worked on it wrote which sections,
Speaker 1: and then tracked what documents each of them had worked
Speaker 1: from to do so, and it showed a really impressive
Speaker 1: level of organization and efficiency. Doctor Baxter was quoted in
Speaker 1: the press as saying of doomsday quote. This research shows
Speaker 1: the compilation of Doomsday to be one of the most
Speaker 1: remarkable feats of government in the recorded history of Britain.
Speaker 1: The survey was brilliantly conceived to generate and structure information
Speaker 1: that would enable the conqueror's regime to maximize his revenue
Speaker 1: from different income streams. The conqueror's regime effectively compiled and
Speaker 1: manipulated a dapt base of England's landed wealth in less
Speaker 1: than nine months, using technologies no more complex than parchment,
Speaker 1: pen and ink and human interaction. Perhaps most mind blowing
Speaker 1: is the research team's determination that the first draft of
Speaker 1: this whole project was done in the course of just
Speaker 1: one hundred days, starting on Christmas Day ten eighty five,
Speaker 1: when William first ordered the survey, and ending on Easter
Speaker 1: ten eighty six, which was April fifth. The work notes
Speaker 1: that taxes were collected at the same time the first
Speaker 1: pass of the survey was done, and that the inquest portion,
Speaker 1: which was more of a fact check, took place in
Speaker 1: the following fifty days, being completed on May twenty fifth.
Speaker 1: From that point to August. First, the information was all
Speaker 1: parsed and reorganized into statistical summaries that would lead to
Speaker 1: the production of the Great Doomsday. It's important to point
Speaker 1: out that while this effort was unprecedented in its scope,
Speaker 1: it wasn't as though William the Conqueror conjured the idea
Speaker 1: of the land survey like this out of thin air.
Speaker 1: Quite a few of the counties that were surveyed for
Speaker 1: the Norman King had been surveyed before. Some of that
Speaker 1: documentation was used to model the structure of Doomsday Book,
Speaker 1: and Doomsday Book didn't supplant all those other records either.
Speaker 1: Historian Sally Harvey, who studied the Doomsday Book throughout her career,
Speaker 1: rote in nineteen seventy four, quote, we may emphasize the
Speaker 1: background documentation and treasury practice that enabled the Doomsday survey
Speaker 1: to be taken so quickly. Nevertheless, the enterprise was prodigious
Speaker 1: and indicates that existing documentation was deemed inadequate. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: are also some surveys similar to this that had already
Speaker 1: happened in other parts of Europe. So again, not a
Speaker 1: completely new concept coming up. We're going to talk about
Speaker 1: how all of this information was used, but first, we
Speaker 1: will hear from the sponsors that keep stuff you missed
Speaker 1: in history class going. So you may be wondering what
Speaker 1: did William the First do with all of this information
Speaker 1: that he had commanded to be collected, Well, he actually
Speaker 1: died before he could do a whole lot with it.
Speaker 1: It wasn't quite completed when he died in September of
Speaker 1: ten eighty seven. As we noted, some of the major
Speaker 1: cities were not entered in the book, and information in
Speaker 1: Little Doomsday and the additional documents was likely intended to
Speaker 1: be incorporated into one main volume, but that seems to
Speaker 1: have fallen to the wayside with William's death. But it
Speaker 1: was still used to make decisions about governance and to
Speaker 1: settle disputes long after William the First was gone, as
Speaker 1: evidence of how important the project was. It wasn't until
Speaker 1: almost one hundred years after the record was compiled that
Speaker 1: it got its ominous sounding name the eleven seventy nine
Speaker 1: Dialogue of the Exchequers, where it got the name Doomsday,
Speaker 1: as that writing includes the note quote just as the
Speaker 1: sentence of that strict and terrible last judgment cannot be
Speaker 1: evaded by any art or subterfuge. So when a dispute
Speaker 1: arises in this realm concerning facts which are written down,
Speaker 1: and an appeal is made to the book itself, the
Speaker 1: evidence it gives cannot be set at naught or evaded
Speaker 1: with impunity. The name stuck. Even the Public Record Office,
Speaker 1: which was tasked with caring for the book, started to
Speaker 1: call it Doomsday, and it's been known that way since
Speaker 1: the twelfth century. Incidentally, the Public Record Office is now
Speaker 1: the National Archives. According to John MacDonald and gd Snooks,
Speaker 1: writing in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five, quote, during the first few centuries after
Speaker 1: ten eighty six, dB was in constant use in the Exchequer,
Speaker 1: where it held pride of place amongst Treasury documents, and
Speaker 1: was even seriously consulted as late as fifteen seventy three
Speaker 1: by Elizabeth I. As we look at this project and
Speaker 1: its extraordinary collection of information, it's easy to see why
Speaker 1: it has fascinated historians and researchers and has been a
Speaker 1: topic of debate for centuries. Once again quoting Sally Harvey, quote,
Speaker 1: Doomsday Book's own monumentality is one of its greatest hazards,
Speaker 1: though it bulks largest as a source of information for
Speaker 1: eleventh century England. It is by no means the sole
Speaker 1: survivor of late Anglo Saxon and of Anglo Norman administration.
Speaker 1: Many of the near contemporary texts have suffered because all
Speaker 1: have been turned into Doomsday satellites, even texts which are
Speaker 1: known to contain figures and arrangements which are not those
Speaker 1: of Doomsday Book. On the other hand, the effort to
Speaker 1: avoid the magnetism of Doomsday has caused a few historians
Speaker 1: of administration to evade its ambit. Altogether, the Doomsday Survey
Speaker 1: had motives and objectives, its findings were acted upon instantly,
Speaker 1: and it remained a reference work for years to come.
Speaker 1: We gain insight into the administration which produced the survey
Speaker 1: and understand how Doomsday's existence affected the character of subsequent
Speaker 1: administrative policy, particularly in the following reign. Harvey notes in
Speaker 1: that writing, which was part of the published transactions of
Speaker 1: the Royal Historical Society, that in some cases the scholarly
Speaker 1: approach to the book kind of distances researchers from its
Speaker 1: very necessity, because it's easy to lose sight of its
Speaker 1: functional need and purpose. But some of the problem lies
Speaker 1: in the fact that different researchers have perceived the function
Speaker 1: and purpose of the work differently. While some have focused
Speaker 1: on it as a financial tool for William the First,
Speaker 1: others have suggested that its primary purpose was more about
Speaker 1: the legal establishment of a new feudalism. Obviously, both of
Speaker 1: these things can be true at once, but as historians
Speaker 1: over the centuries have sought to analyze this work and
Speaker 1: its true purpose, sometimes one or the other and even
Speaker 1: other motivations have gotten lost. We don't actually know the
Speaker 1: exact reason or reasons that William called for this extensive survey,
Speaker 1: and it seems most likely there were multiple factors, like,
Speaker 1: for example, we don't have any document where he says
Speaker 1: to determine the nature of my lands, like we don't
Speaker 1: have anything like that. It absolutely may have been about
Speaker 1: just taxes or establishing Norman style feudalism, but William may
Speaker 1: have also been influenced by the fact that he was
Speaker 1: facing a likely invasion by Denmark and Norway at the time,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to know everything he could about the
Speaker 1: country for potential military strategizing, in part to see how
Speaker 1: many of those people could be called up, but also
Speaker 1: just what the country had and looked like if someone invaded,
Speaker 1: and of course additional tax revenue that could be collected
Speaker 1: would also help war efforts. There was also a growing
Speaker 1: issue that was just bickering. The various people under William
Speaker 1: who had been given land had started to argue about
Speaker 1: whether that distribution had been handled fairly. It kind of
Speaker 1: vibes like petulant kids to me. But I have the
Speaker 1: distance of history, so it's easy to say that. But
Speaker 1: with documentation of specifics about all of these lands, such
Speaker 1: arguments could easily be put to rest. Doomsday is an
Speaker 1: important document for all the reasons mentioned in the Sally
Speaker 1: Harvey quote we read earlier, but also because it serves
Speaker 1: as the beginning of written history for a lot of
Speaker 1: towns and villages. It's become a foundational reference for historians,
Speaker 1: though its interpretation has shifted and been questioned over the years.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty six, to mark the nine hundredth anniversary
Speaker 1: of William the First Survey, there was a project mounted
Speaker 1: by the BBC to create a new version of the
Speaker 1: Doomsday Book called Doomsday Reloaded, and this was intended to
Speaker 1: create a new digital snapshot of the UK for future generations.
Speaker 1: More than a million people participated in this project, submitting
Speaker 1: their own digital document mentory accounts of ordinary life. Per
Speaker 1: the BBC website that documented the project, Quote, schools and
Speaker 1: community groups surveyed over one hundred eight thousand square kilometers
Speaker 1: of the UK and submitted more than one hundred forty
Speaker 1: seven thousand, eight hundred nineteen pages of text articles and
Speaker 1: twenty three thousand, two hundred twenty five amateur photos cataloging
Speaker 1: what it was like to live, work and play in
Speaker 1: their community. The major fault in this project was the
Speaker 1: storage media used for all that information, because remember this
Speaker 1: was the eighties, this used layser discs. They could only
Speaker 1: be read by some computers. That particular style of disc
Speaker 1: technology really got left behind as the digital age advanced.
Speaker 1: There were efforts to access and share the community disc Archive,
Speaker 1: which included updates over the years, but in June of
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, the project was finally closed for good. The
Speaker 1: website created for it is now part of the National Archive,
Speaker 1: UK government web archive. Today, the physical volumes of Doomsday
Speaker 1: Book are kept in the National Archives. And remember how
Speaker 1: earlier we said there were two volumes, Now there are
Speaker 1: technically five because the book was rebound in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 1: That was part of a long term preservation plan because
Speaker 1: people still want to look at it, they are not
Speaker 1: readily accessible to most people in their physical form. They
Speaker 1: kind of held back for very specific requests of like
Speaker 1: scholarship and legal needs. However, there is a complete digitized
Speaker 1: version online that anyone can access. It is completely free.
Speaker 1: That is thanks to the work of public interest technologist
Speaker 1: Anna Powell Smith, who with permission, used digitized Doomsday data
Speaker 1: compiled by jj N Palmer of the University of Hull
Speaker 1: and his team. They compiled that data in the nineteen
Speaker 1: nineties and she used it to make an interactive website
Speaker 1: called opendoomsday. It is at opendoomsday dot org. Again, does
Speaker 1: is spelled domes and you can click around a map
Speaker 1: to see what data was collected there in William's survey.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty cool project and massive and according to
Speaker 1: the BBC, Doomsday is still valid as evidence to title
Speaker 1: of land. It remained the most detailed account of England
Speaker 1: and its landholdings for more than seven hundred years until
Speaker 1: a national census was taken in eighteen oh one, and
Speaker 1: people still love it and spend their entire careers researching it.
Speaker 1: Which I kind of love. I have a very, very,
Speaker 1: I think hilarious email. This is from our listener Kristen
Speaker 1: and it is about divorce ranches. And she writes, Dear
Speaker 1: Holly and Tracy, I've been meaning to write you about
Speaker 1: your episode on divorce ranches in Nevada, as my family
Speaker 1: has had a personal experience with a divorce ranch. One
Speaker 1: summer in the mid nineteen sixties, my parents packed the
Speaker 1: four of us kids into the station wagon and drove
Speaker 1: from our home in northern California just across the state
Speaker 1: line into Nevada to a dude ranch in Verding, Nevada
Speaker 1: that's about ten miles west of Reno. My parents took
Speaker 1: us there based on reports that the ranch was family friendly.
Speaker 1: There's horse riding, swimming pool, playground games, lots of kids
Speaker 1: to play with, et cetera. And when we arrived, the
Speaker 1: place appeared to live up to their expectations. However, after
Speaker 1: a time we did begin to notice a strange demographic
Speaker 1: to the ranch. My father was the only man there
Speaker 1: who wasn't part of the staff. People kept asking us,
Speaker 1: is your mom staying here? Yes, where's your dad also
Speaker 1: staying here? She then has in quotes question marks and
Speaker 1: exclamation plays. Despite that, we did have a good time there.
Speaker 1: I still remember horseback riding and meals served family style
Speaker 1: on long tables and benches. The attached picture shows me,
Speaker 1: my three brothers, and my mom absorbing the atmisphere at
Speaker 1: the ranch. My dad was behind the camp for pet
Speaker 1: tax I'm attaching a picture of our late great kitty,
Speaker 1: Harry Potter cat. We adopted Harry Potter, who was a
Speaker 1: homeless street kitten living on the island of Elba. He
Speaker 1: was named by my daughter, who, at third grade, had
Speaker 1: just discovered the magic of the Harry Potter books. Harry
Speaker 1: was a very well traveled cat. He lived with us
Speaker 1: in Milan, Washington, d c. And Beijing before retiring with
Speaker 1: us to North Carolina. Harry was very loving and was
Speaker 1: always available to help me with my costuming projects, as
Speaker 1: shown here assisting with my ursula Seawitch bell a poc
Speaker 1: cosplay construction. He was a wonderful kitty and we miss
Speaker 1: him every day. I just want to thank you for
Speaker 1: all you do to bring history to life and into
Speaker 1: my home. I have an ma in history, but still
Speaker 1: learn something new from you in nearly every podcast. My daughter,
Speaker 1: a teacher has also become an addict after I introduced
Speaker 1: her to you. I get a real kick out of
Speaker 1: your delivery style and feel like you guys are two
Speaker 1: of my besties that I haven't yet had the opportunity
Speaker 1: to meet. Keep up the amazing work, Kristin. This is
Speaker 1: so sweet and I love it and I'm scary following
Speaker 1: you on Instagram, Kristen, I just love the idea of
Speaker 1: somebody going to a divorce ranch for a family vacation
Speaker 1: and kind of befuddling everyone. Where's your dad right there?
Speaker 1: I do love it, but also I love that you
Speaker 1: had a great time. That pictures gold. I hope you
Speaker 1: keep it forever and ever and ever. Is so wonderful,
Speaker 1: and Harry sounds like a wonderful cat. Thank you for
Speaker 1: giving him a home and giving him a life that
Speaker 1: many people would envy. It sounds like. If you would
Speaker 1: like to write to us, you can do so at
Speaker 1: History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. If you'd like to
Speaker 1: subscribe to the show and you haven't done that yet,
Speaker 1: you can do that on the iHeartRadio app or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff you Missed in
Speaker 1: History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.