Domesday Book in United Kingdom

(Source: the University of South Caroline Gould School of Law) The original MS. of the Domesday Book is in the PRO. It has “had several variant names – Liber de Wintonia, Rotulus Wintoniae, Scriptura Thesauri Regis, Liber Regis, Liber Judicarius, Censualis Angliae, Angliae Notitia et Lustratio, Roulis Regis, Liber de Thesauro, Exchquer Domesday. As originally compiled, it was in two volumes. In the first were 382 folios dealing with thirty counties, and it is sometimes called Great Domesday. The second is a smaller book, though it has 450 folios. It treats of Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk, and is called Little Domesday.” (63)

The accounts given by Domesday Book of various counties have often been edited, and many are accompanied by translations. A list of the most important local studies can be found in Graves.(64) The Herefordshire Domesday is listed below as an example of these local studies. A discussion of some of the surveys which were compiled as a result of the Domesday inquisition can be found in vol. 2 of English Historical Documents.(65) Maxwell has an extensive list of the texts, translations and commentaries on the Domesday Book, including analyses by county.(66) Other local inquests and surveys carried out by the exchequer between 1066-1200 are also listed in Graves.(67) For early printed editions of the Domesday Book, see Winfield. (68)

Domesday Book and Medieval Law

Domesday Book and Legal History

Bibliographies of English Law History

• Maxwell, William H. A Legal Bibliography of the British Commonwealth of Nations. Volume 1: English Law to 1800. London: Sweet and Maxwell, 1955-
• Beale, Joseph H. A Bibliography of Early English Law Books. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1926.
• Winfield, Percy H. The Chief Sources of English Legal History. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1925.

Resources

See Also

• Comparative Legal History (in this legal Encyclopedia)
• Assumpsit (in this legal Encyclopedia)
• Judicial Review (in this legal Encyclopedia)
• History Definition (in this legal Encyclopedia)