Domesday: Book of Judgement provides a unique study of the extraordinary eleventh-century survey, the Domesday Book. Sally Harvey depicts the Domesday Book as the written evidence of a potentially insecure conquest successfully transforming itself, by a combination of administrative insight and military might, into a permanent establishment. William I used the Domesday Inquiry to contain the new establishment and consolidate their landholding revolution within a strict fiscal and tenurial framework, with checks and balances to prevent the king's followers from taking more powers and assets than they had been allocated. In this way, the survey served as a conciliatory gesture between the conquerors and the conquered, as William I came to realise that, faced with the threat to his rule from the Danes, he needed England's native populations more than they needed him. Yes, the overlying theme of the Domesday Book is Judgment: every class of society had reason to regard the Survey's methodical and often pitiless proceedings as both a literal and a metaphorical day of account. In this volume, Sally Harvey considers the Anglo-Saxon background and the architects of the survey: the bishops, royal clerks, sheriffs, jurors, and landholders who contributed to Domesday's content and scope. She also discusses at length the core information in the Survey: coinage, revenues from landholding, fiscal concessions, and taxation, as well as some central tenurial issues. She draws the conclusion that the record, whilst consolidating William's position as king of the English, also laid the foundations for the twelfth-century treasury and exchequer. The volume newly argues that the Domesday survey also became an inquest into individual sheriffs and officials, thereby laying a foundation for reinterpreting the size of towns in England.

About the Author
Sally Harvey, sometimes Lecturer in History at the University of Oxford and Fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford, has also written and lectured in the field of Domesday studies and the Norman Conquest for many years, in posts at the universities of Cambridge and Leeds. She is currently an Honorary Fellow at the School of History and Cultures at Birmingham University.

Reviews
Sally Harvey's half-century of scholarship gives her authority few have and gives us a richly researched book that takes its place alongside the essential Domesday texts. * Alex Burghart, The Times Literary Supplement *
This long-awaited book represents the culmination of a lifetime's research, and it does not disappoint ... It represents a major contribution to Domesday scholarship * Judith A. Green, English Historical Review *
Sally Harvey has written a deeply learned and extremely interesting book, a remarkable culmination of decades of research and thinking about Domesday. Reading it is like experiencing an exceptionally good one-to-one tutorial ... the book's willingness to speculate joins its immense scholarship, its intelligence of interpretation, its flashes of novel insight into much-studied topics and texts, to win the reader, heart as well as mind. * John Hudson, American Historical Review *
This is a masterful work of scholarship ... Harvey is to be commended for the rich and complex analysis she provides. * Speculum *


Awards
Winner of Shortlisted for the Longman-History Today Award 2015.



Book Information
ISBN 9780199669783
Author Sally Harvey
Format Hardback
Page Count 368
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 1g
Dimensions(mm) 236mm * 166mm * 29mm