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Early Castles
Highlights
The 'Domesday Book'
This is one of the more familiar historical records to most Britons. 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 1085-86, which was drawn up on the orders of William
the Conqueror, 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.
But what was Domesday Book really about? Well, unsurprisingly there’s a
good deal of controversy about that. But I think the best explanation is that
it's to set the seal on 20 years of fairly chaotic land acquisition, and you can
see it’s very much a directory for William’s ministers in London,
so they could quickly find out who owned what.
The transcript from the Voiceover on the Video:
“Now this is obviously not the original from 1086. But it is an absolutely
perfect modern facsimile.
Now let’s find the county of Shropshire. There’s the king’s
lands… the first big layman you come to is Roger of Montgomery.
You can find Roger’s individual manors very, very easily. And if you work
through his manors, you can see, down there, ‘Montgummerie’…
The whole of the Latin sentence reads, ‘Ipse comes construxit castrum Muntgumery
vocatum’, “The same earl constructed the castle called Montgomery.”
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