We need such scientific methodology if we are to teach our children the truth about the past, if
we want to help them to build a better future, if they are to survive.
Also try this – for a demonstration
QUESTIONS AND MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT
DOMESDAY BOOK
1. Q. is a “hide” the same as a “carucate”?
A. No, D.B. Makes this quite clear in thousands of entries
2. Q. Does the “hide” word have any meaning as a value or a
unit
A. Yes, D.B. specifically tells us it was a measurement of
240 acres of land (and had been so for several hundreds of
years) which was subsequently linked to taxation (of land)
after 991 A.D. The compiles of D.B. used it to measure tax
liability assessed in 240 acre blocks. Sadly not everyone
made an honest tax declaration!
3. Does “wasta” (wasted) mean “burnt to the ground”
A. No, there is no single record of anything “burnt to the ground”. It seems to mean “gone to
waste”, sometimes as a result of reprisals but sometimes as a result of neglect.
4. Q. Does D.B. record stolen or expropriated lands?
A. Yes, very often. Sometimes as a result of rapacity by a Norman lord when taking possession
of forfeited Saxon lands but surprisingly often lands stolen from the Royal Estates (the King) by
barons and bishops – it even records churchmen using forged documents in order to support such
thefts.
5. Q. Does D.B. say that any women (either Saxon or Norman) held lands?
A. Yes, quite a number are recorded and a significant number of them were English (Saxon)
women.
6. Q. Does D.B. record forced marriages involving Saxon women?
A. No, there is not a single such specific entry.
7. Q. Does D.B. record wholesale rape and pillage?
A. No, there is not a single specific entry of either.
8. Q. Does the greater Domesday record only pigs and no other animals?
A. No, both the greater Domesday and the lesser Domesday record animals of all sorts.
However, the lesser Domesday tells us of places in much greater detail and it includes
information which helps us to apply cross-checks (a deliberately constructed audit trail) when
reading either the lesser or the greater Domesday.
9. Q. Was England still covered with extensive forests in 1086?
A. No, “forest” is, anyway a legal entity. It has nothing to do with trees. “Forests” were hunting
preserves, the King had thousands of acres under “forest”law (some of it farmed) and some
noblemen had private “forests”, though most called these “parks”. King William was very fond
of hunting and venison was a wild food resource ‘on the hoof’, but the majority of England was
not covered with trees.
10. Q. Surely there were large, empty and uncharted areas of wildwood, moors and heaths in
1086?
A. No, there was little (if any) ‘wildwood’ and even heaths were limited. The evidence points in
many cases to a planned landscape in which most trees and woods were carefully managed.
Where heath-land existed it was kept for grazing and fuel and because it sat on poor quality
soils, though in the far west and in the north were extensive moorlands with rocky outcrops.