Description
The Domesday Book contains a great many things, including the most comprehensive, varied, and monumental legal material to survive from England before the rise of the common law. This book argues that it can - and should - be read as a legal text. When the statistical information present in the great survey is stripped away, there is much material still left, almost all of which stems directly from inquest, testimony given by jurors impanelled in 1086, or from the sworn statements of lords and their men. This information, read in context, can provide a picture of what the law looked like, the ways in which it was changing, and the means whereby the inquest was a central event in the formation of English law. The volume provides translations (with Latin legal terminology included parenthetically) for all of Domesday Book's legal references, each numbered and organised by county, fee, and folio.
A thorough and complete survey of all the legal actions and references in Domesday Book.
Reviews
"Robin Fleming's lively and engaging examination of Domesday Book makes it clear, nonetheless, that the survey, and the thousands of local insights that informed it, still have a great deal to tell us about the early years of the Norman Conquest. Fleming's work will most certainly generate a `clamour' of its own among scholars. But the book will require all who read it to think much more deeply than they have done to date about the ways in which post-Conquest lords depended on the machinery of Anglo-Saxon local government and the rich legacy of Anglo-Saxon law when they undertook the overthrow of the kingdom that William I won from Harold Godwinson in 1066." Cynthia J. neville, Canadian Journal of History
"This is an important and very remarkable book." J.C. Holt, Albion
"This work...provides much of interest to social, economic, legal, political, and even religious historians." Katherine Fischer Drew, Journal of Interdisciplinary History
"Fleming's discussion...is sensitive, extremely well-informed, and intelligent." Speculum
Book Information
ISBN 9780521528467
Author Robin Fleming
Format Paperback
Page Count 572
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 1010g
Dimensions(mm) 247mm * 189mm * 30mm
A thorough and complete survey of all the legal actions and references in Domesday Book.
Reviews
"Robin Fleming's lively and engaging examination of Domesday Book makes it clear, nonetheless, that the survey, and the thousands of local insights that informed it, still have a great deal to tell us about the early years of the Norman Conquest. Fleming's work will most certainly generate a `clamour' of its own among scholars. But the book will require all who read it to think much more deeply than they have done to date about the ways in which post-Conquest lords depended on the machinery of Anglo-Saxon local government and the rich legacy of Anglo-Saxon law when they undertook the overthrow of the kingdom that William I won from Harold Godwinson in 1066." Cynthia J. neville, Canadian Journal of History
"This is an important and very remarkable book." J.C. Holt, Albion
"This work...provides much of interest to social, economic, legal, political, and even religious historians." Katherine Fischer Drew, Journal of Interdisciplinary History
"Fleming's discussion...is sensitive, extremely well-informed, and intelligent." Speculum
Book Information
ISBN 9780521528467
Author Robin Fleming
Format Paperback
Page Count 572
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 1010g
Dimensions(mm) 247mm * 189mm * 30mm
