Doomsday Book
How many people, so much salt
Now let's remember that population censuses were carried out in the third millennium BC. In such an advanced state at that time as Egypt, in the states of Mesopotamia, India, China, and also in Japan. Even the states of the Aztecs and Mayans, whose calendar has frightened gullible simpletons for so many years, the population count was set in an exemplary manner. Well, and the Incas, all the data on the number of people, lamas, land and mats were entered on a pile - that is, they wrote down in their knotted letter. The population was also taken into account in Ancient Greece. So, in Attica in the 4th century. BC. conducted a count of the entire adult male population, and the same was done in ancient Rome, where, starting from 435 BC, the so-called census was regularly carried out, that is, the division of the male population for service in different divisions of the army! But in ancient China, the population was determined by the amount of salt that they ate per year.
Want to know everything
In medieval Europe, there was such a large number of all kinds of lords that it was completely impossible to conduct a population census in them. And that's why the only exception to this rule in the 11th century was England, conquered by the Normans in 1066. It turned out that here the conquerors, who were mainly from Brittany and Normandy, ended up in a completely foreign country, with a population that spoke foreign language. And then Wilhelm, undoubtedly wishing to maximally strengthen both the military and financial position of his new power, decided to conduct a census of the entire population of England, conquered by him. It was supposed to find out, firstly, how much of what there is in each estate and thus streamline the collection of taxes (which was called "Danish money", since earlier this money was used to buy off the Danes), and secondly, to find out for sure how many warriors each land holding or hereditary flax can give to the king. Although the author of the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" described the goals of this census much more prosaically: "the king wanted to know more about his new country, how it is populated and what kind of people."
This is how it looks …
It was decided to conduct a census at the Grand Royal Council at Christmas 1085. Then representatives of the king went to the English counties. Well, in the counties themselves, by royal order, commissions were created, which necessarily included the sheriff, as well as local barons and their knights, as well as representatives of the judicial collegiums, and - this is the basis of modern English democracy! - also a village headman, and six villans from each village. Their main responsibility was to confirm with an oath that the information collected by the interrogators was correct. In addition, the task of the commissions was to settle the arising land disputes. Moreover, both the local Anglo-Saxons and the Norman conquerors were usually included in the commissions in equal shares, although this was still not the case in all counties.
What did the medieval English ask about?
The main objects of the census were land holdings - manors. Keeping was carried out on the basis of the rule - "according to the custom of the manor and the will of the lord." That is why the questioning of witnesses and their oath confirming the holding of the land according to "custom" was so important! And in the process of the census, from each such land holding, the interviewers recorded the following information:
- the name (or names) of the owner (s) of the estate, first in 1066, and then on the date of the census;
- the name of the conditional holder of the land;
- the total area of arable land in manor;
- the number of peasants actually present;
- the area of pastures, meadows and forests, as well as the number of mills and fishing grounds;
- the cost of manor in monetary terms;
- the size of the allotments belonging to free peasants.
It is interesting that, just like today, the interviewers were interested in the prospects for a possible increase in the productivity of estates, that is, their … "investment attractiveness"!
It should be noted that the king showed a truly rare statesmanship in his desire to fix and evaluate all possible sources of income for his treasury. It is interesting that neither knightly castles, nor any other buildings, unless they were associated with economic activities, were not included in the census materials. That is - a castle is a castle, and the king was primarily interested in knowing what the income of his subjects was!
Page from the "Book of the Last Judgment" dedicated to Baldwin.
Everything is exactly as before God
The royal census was completed by 1088, after which all the information collected was entered into two thick books, well, and all of it received the frightening title "Doomsday Book" ("Book of the Doomsday") or "Book of the Last Judgment". Such a strange name for her, however, was not chosen by chance. It seemed to say that all the information collected in it is accurate in the same way as the information that will be presented to the Almighty on the day of the Last Judgment! The result of the census, by the way, showed that England at that time was a very sparsely populated country - only two million people lived in it!
The "Little Book" or the first volume of "Doomsday Book" contained information collected in such counties as Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex, and in the second volume ("Big Book") the whole of England was described, except for its northernmost regions and such cities like London, Winchester and a number of others, where an accurate census was very difficult. The materials themselves were grouped by county. First, they described the land holdings that belonged to the king, then - church lands and possessions of spiritual orders, then came the large holders (barons) and, finally, small land holders and … women, who in England, according to the law, also had the right to be the owners of land ! In some counties, the urban population was also rewritten. And the most interesting thing is that in its original form the “Book of the Day of Judgment” has survived to our time practically without any damage and today it is the most valuable national cultural monument of Great Britain!
A page from the "Book of the Last Judgment" dedicated to Bedfordshire.
England of peasants, millers and swineherds
Studying the Doomsday Book gives us the opportunity to learn about the life of England in the 11th century. there are many things that today we simply do not even suspect. Well, for example, that practically all of the settlements existing today in England already existed in 1066 and that there were practically no large unused and wild places in the country at that time! Surprisingly, in England of those years, almost no cows were kept at all, or rather, they were not kept for the sake of their milk and meat, but were used mainly for plowing. For meat, they raised mainly sheep and pigs, and these latter were grazed in the forests, where they had to eat grass and acorns. So England at this time did not have either its famous Devonian cream, or the equally famous Cheddar cheese, but there was a cheese that was made from goat's, and not from cow's milk!
Although this was already the Middle Ages, in England there were still many slaves who were both bought and sold, so, frankly, there was such a clear division into the era of slavery and serfdom, as we were taught in Soviet high school, at that time it was not observed there! But the villagers, the peasants, were not at all so poor and unhappy,but rather even well-to-do people, because for plowing the land they needed eight oxen - that is, four harnessed pairs, and, it turns out, many had them. And the lords appreciated such masters. And, finally, it turned out that almost half of the people who were recorded in the "Book of the Last Judgment" were exactly Villans at that time!
Actually, the lords themselves, that is, people who were at the top of society in 1086, according to the census, were only about 200 people. That is, the feudal nobility in England was very small in number. But what there were many in England was mechanical mills that ground grain into flour. In 1066 there were as many as six thousand of them - significantly more than even in Roman Britain, although the population of the country was then even larger. But in the Roman era, slaves milled a lot of grain with handmills, and in William's England, watermills took their place! About 25% of all land belonged to the Catholic Church at that time.
A page from The Last Judgment Book dedicated to Yorkshire.
Save forever as a memory
First, the "Book of the Last Judgment" was kept in Winchester - the capital of the Anglo-Norman monarchy until the beginning of the reign of Henry II. Under him, it was transported along with the royal treasury to Westminster, and under Queen Victoria, it was transferred to the British Archives. It was first printed in typography in 1773, and in 1986, on the 900th anniversary of its creation, the BBC prepared an electronic version of it with a translation into modern English, since this book was originally written in Latin.
