David Roffe & K S B Keats-Rohan 
Domesday Now 
New Approaches to the Inquest and the Book

Essays into numerous aspects of the Domesday Book, shedding fresh light on its mysteries.


Compiled from the records of a survey of the kingdom of England commissioned by William the Conqueror in 1085, Domesday Book is a key source for the history of England. However, there has never been a critical edition of the textand so, despite over 200 years of intense academic study, its evidence has rarely been exploited to the full. The essays in this volume seek to realize the potential of Domesday Book by focussing on the manuscript itself. There are analyses of abbreviations, letter forms, and language; re-assessments of key sources, the role of tenants-in-chief in producing them, and the nature of the Norman settlement that their forms illuminate; a re-evaluation of the data and its referents; and finally, fresh examinations of the afterlife of the Domesday text and how it was subsequently perceived.

In identifying new categories of evidence and revisiting old ones, these studies point to a better understanding of the text. There are surprising insights into its sources and developing programme and, intriguingly, a system of encoding hitherto unsuspected. In its turn the import of its data becomes clearer, thereby shedding new light on Anglo-Norman society and governance. It is in these terms that this volume offers a departure in Domesday studies and looks forward to the resolution of long-standing problems that have hitherto bedevilled the interpretation of an iconic text.


David Roffe and K.S.B. Keats-Rohan are leading Domesday scholars who have published widely on Domesday Book and related matters.


Contributors: Howard B. Clarke, Sally Harvey, K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, Andrew Lowerre, John Palmer, David Roffe, Ian Taylor, Pamela Taylor, Frank Thorn, Ann Williams.

Table of Content

Introduction – David Roffe

Domesday Now: a View from the Stage – David Roffe

A Digital Latin Domesday – J J N Palmer

Mc Luhan Meets the Master: Scribal Devices in Great Domesday Book – David Roffe

Non Pascua sed Pastura: the Changing Choice of Terms in Domesday – Frank Thorn

Domesday Books? Little Domesday Book Reconsidered – Ian Taylor

Hunting the Snark and Finding the Boojum: the Tenurial Revolution Revisited – Ann Williams

A Question of Identity: Domesday Prosopography and the Formation of the Honour of Richmond – K. S. B Keats-Rohan

The Episcopal Returns in Domesday – Pamela Taylor

Geospatial Technologies and the Geography of Domesday England in the Twenty-First Century – Andrew Lowerre

Condensing and Abbreviating the Data: Evesham C, Evesham M, and the Breviate – Howard B. Clarke

‘A Deed without a Name’ – Sally Harvey

Talking to Others and Talking to Itself: Government and the Changing Role of the Records of the Domesday Inquest – David Roffe

About the author

Dr K S B Keats-Rohan is Director of the Linacre Unit for Prosopographical Research and Fellow of the European Humanities Research Centre, University of Oxford.