The Domesday Book has long been used as a source of information about legal and economic matters, but its bearing upon the geography of medieval England has been comparatively neglected. This volume on the northern counties of England contains chapters on Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Cheshire, Lancashire, Derbyshire and the Northern Counties.
The Domesday Book has long been used as a source of information about legal and economic matters, but its bearing upon the geography of medieval England has been comparatively neglected. The extraction of geographical information involves problems of interpretation, since it necessitates an analysis into elements and their subsequent reconstruction on a geographical basis. But when this has been done new materials for making a general picture of the relative prosperity of different areas are available, as well as data for the comparative study of varying geographic and economic factors. The whole work, The Domesday Geography of England, will be in six volumes. In them different experts are to be allotted large distinct districts under Professor Darby's editorship. He will himself draw together all the threads, and write the concluding chapters of each volume and the whole of the concluding volume. The book will be fully illustrated by many maps, all specially drawn under the general editor's supervision. The volumes will be separately available, though the first contains some general introductory matter relevant to the whole work.
Domesday Book is the most famous English public record, and it is probably the most remarkable statistical document in the history of Europe. It calls itself merely a descriptio and it acquired its name in the following century because its authority seemed comparable to that of the Book by which one day all will be judged (Revelation 20:12). It is not surprising that so many scholars have felt its fascination, and have discussed again and again what it says about economic, social and legal matters. But it also tells us much about the countryside of the eleventh century, and the present volume is the seventh of a series concerned with this geographical information. As the final volume, it seeks to sum up the main features of the Domesday geography of England as a whole, and to reconstruct, as far as the materials allow, the scene which King William's clerks saw as they made their great inquest.
Æthelwine, Pre-Conquest Sheriff; Alliances of Ælfgar of Mercia; Castle Studies since 1850; Charles the Bald's Fortified Bridges; Clares and the Crown; Coastal Salt Production; Hydrographic and Ship Hydrodynamic Aspects of the Invasion; Leland and Historians; Monks in the World: Gundulf of Rochester; Obtaining Benefices in 12c E. Anglia; St Pancras Priory, Lewes; Slavery; Wace and Warfare.