What is the most valuable UK book in every respect? And which book has the scariest title? When was it published and what is it dedicated to? This is the Domesday Book - a collection of materials of the first general land census in medieval Europe.
Perhaps, you say, is this some ancient magic book of secrets containing recipes for ancient poisons or deadly conspiracies? Or - if you take into account the title of the article - a judicial manual for the executioner, with detailed descriptions of the terrible torture? Or maybe some new version of the Apocalypse? - you think and it turns out that you have not guessed. Because in this case we will talk about the very first book in Europe with census data!
In Russia, the last time the population census took place was not so long ago, and probably no one has forgotten how it happens. But is it not surprising that population censuses similar to the current one took place in the third millennium BC in Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, China and Japan. Even in the early feudal states of the Aztecs and Maya, whose calendar today evokes a storm of emotions in various parts of our planet, population census took place shortly before the colonization of these peoples by Europeans. It was taken into account in ancient Greece - for example, in Attica, where in the 4th century BC, all adult men were counted, and in Ancient Rome. There, since 435 BC, the male population was regularly censored for military service! But in ancient China, the population was determined by the weight of the salt eaten per year.
As for medieval Europe, in the Middle Ages it was divided into so many different lords that it was simply impossible to conduct a general census in them. The only exception in the 11th century was England, which fell victim to the invasion of William the Conqueror in 1066. And it turned out that the conquerors, the French, who came from Brittany and Normandy, ended up in a completely foreign country for them, inhabited by people whose language they did not even understand. And now Wilhelm's desire to strengthen the military and financial position of his power as much as possible, and formed the basis for the decision to conduct a census of the entire population of the then England.
During the census, it was supposed to assess, firstly, the economic resources of each estate in order to streamline the collection of taxes (the so-called "Danish money"), and secondly, to find out exactly what the maximum possible number of soldiers each land holding or flax could provide to the king. However, the author of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle defined all this in a much more laconic way: "the king wanted to know more about his new country, how it is populated and what people."
And so at a meeting of the Royal Grand Council on Christmas Day 1085, it was decided to conduct a census. After that, representatives of the king were sent to all English counties. And in the counties themselves, commissions were created, which included the sheriff, barons and their knights, representatives of the judiciary, and also - this is the basis of today's British democracy! - the headman and six villans (peasants) from each village. Their duty was to confirm with an oath the information that would be collected by the interrogators, and possibly resolve land disputes. The commissions included both Anglo-Saxons and Normans in equal shares, although not everywhere.
What did the scribes of the medieval English ask about? According to the book, the main object of the census was land holdings - manors. At the same time, the following data were recorded for each land holding:
- the names of the owners of the estate for 1066 and the date of the census itself;
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- names of conditional landholders;
- the area of arable land;
- the number of peasants in the estate;
- the size of pastures, meadows and forests, as well as mills and fishing grounds;
- the value of the estate in monetary terms;
- the size of the allotments of free peasants;
Just as now, the interviewers were interested in the potential for increasing the productivity of each estate, that is, its… "investment attractiveness"!
Surprisingly, the king displayed rare statesmanship in his desire to fix and assess the possible sources of income for his country. So, neither knightly castles, nor any other buildings, if they were not associated with economic activities, were not included in the census, although it would seem that he really needed to know about them ?! That is - castles - with castles, but the king was primarily interested in the income of his subjects!
The royal census was completed by 1088, and on the basis of the information collected, two volumes of a book were compiled, which received the name "Doomsday Book" ("Book of the Day of Judgment") or "Book of the Last Judgment". They called it that because the information collected in it was accurate in the same way as those that were to be presented to the throne of the Most High on the day of the biblical Last Judgment! By the way, as a result of the census, it turned out that only two million people live in all of England!
The first volume (or "Little Book") collected information on the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex, and the second ("Big Book") described the whole of England, with the exception of the northernmost regions, as well as London, Winchester and some other cities - the census task in which would be very difficult. The materials themselves are grouped by county. In each county, the king's land holdings are described first, then - churches and spiritual orders, then large landowners (barons) and, finally, the list is closed by small landholders and … women who in England could also have land holdings! In some counties, the urban population was also enumerated. The most interesting thing is that the original "Book of the Doomsday" has reached us practically without damage, and now it is the most valuable national monument of Great Britain!
And these are not just beautiful words - acquaintance with the "Book of the Day of Judgment" allows you to learn about the life of England in the XI century. a lot of things that sometimes we do not even think about today. Well, for example, that almost all the settlements that exist in England today were already in 1066 and that there were practically no large unused wild places in the country! To the surprise of those studying this book, in England at that time there were practically no cows at all for milk and meat, but used for plowing. Sheep and pigs were raised for meat, and the latter were grazed in the forests, where they ate grass and acorns. So England in that era did not have its famous Devonian cream or Cheddar cheese, and the cheese was from goat's milk, not from cow's milk!
Interestingly, although this was already the Middle Ages, in England there were still many slaves who could be bought and sold, so there was such a clear division into the era of slavery and serfdom, as we were taught in our high school, at that time there did not exist! But the villans, the peasants, were quite prosperous people, because eight oxen were required for plowing - four harnessed pairs and the lords appreciated such owners. And now it turned out that almost half of the people recorded in the "Book of the Last Judgment" in England were villans!
Actually, the lords who were at the top of society in 1086 were only about 200, that is, the feudal nobility was numerically very small. But what there were many in England was mechanical mills that milled grain into flour. In 1066, there were 6,000 of them - much more than in Roman Britain, although the country was even more populated then. But in Roman times, the grain was ground by slaves using hand mills! Approximately 25 percent of the land was owned by the Catholic Church.
The Last Judgment Book was first kept in Winchester, the capital of the Anglo-Norman monarchy until the reign of Henry II. Under him, she, along with the royal treasury, migrated to Westminster, and under Queen Victoria it was transferred to the British Archives. It was printed in typography for the first time in 1773, and in 1986, for the 900th anniversary of its creation, the BBC released an electronic version of this book with an English translation, because it was originally written in Latin.