What the Domesday Book Tells us

1
What the Domesday Book Tells us

• L/O to examine how the King found out about
  England

2
Contents

• Background
• Popular, or Not?
• All About villages
• All about Towns

3
Background

• Twenty years after the Battle of Hastings, King
  William decided to find out who really owned all
  the land in England.
• This was so he could work out who should pay him
  taxes

4
Popular, or not?

• The Domesday book was really a big list of who
  owned what. William used it to work out how much
  tax people had to pay. People were gutted by
  this. Written in 1086 it asked questions like
  these.
• How many Slaves and freemen are there in the
  manor?
• How much is your manor worth.

• It even had lists of how many animals were in the
  manor.
• This showed how efficient the Normans were,
  compared to the Saxons before them.

5
All about villages

• The overall population of England was only around
  one and a half million and about 90-95 lived in
  villages.
• Villages were small, around 300-500 people.
• 1 or 2 manor houses in each village
• Peasants were called villeins

• Villenins had their own small piece of land and
  paid for them by working for their local lord.
• Villeins had 3 chances of freedom. Given it by
  the lord, save up and buy it, or run away for 1
  year and I day.

6
All about Towns

• Only 100 towns were included in the Domesday
  Book.
• the only big places had Cathedrals, such as
  Lincoln, York and Westminster Abbey.
• Towns developed around travelling routes and
  river crossings.
• Towns attracted Merchants to trade.
• Craftsmen formed Guilds to protect their
  quality of work. Wealthy towns were surrounded by
  strong walls, to protect them.
• Successful towns were granted charters for
  peoples rights, granted by the Lord or sold by
  the King.

7
(No Transcript)
8

• Towns were dangerous and smelly, but thats
  another story.