The text of Domesday Book, the record of the great survey of England completed in 1086 executed for William I of England, was first edited by Abraham Farley in the 1770s. The first facsimile edition of the manuscripts was made in a project led by the cartographer Henry James in the 1860s. An English translation of the Latin text for most counties was published by the Victoria County History (VCH) during much of the 20th century.
A new English translation of the entire text was prepared for the Phillimore Edition, published 1975–1992 for Phillimore & Co under the general editorship of John Morris. The Phillimore Edition is synoptic, placing its translation alongside a facsimile of Farley's edition, and is published in a separate volume for each county. The Phillimore translation did not, however supersede the VCH one as the most authoritative.
The Alecto Editions are a series of high-quality bibliophile facsimiles published 1985–1992, with a new English translation in two separate volumes. The Alecto editorial board produced a corrected and standardized translation based on the VCH text. Penguin Books reprinted the Alecto Editions translation in a single volume published in hardback in 2002 and in paperback in 2003.
A digital edition of manuscript facsimile images alongside the text of the Phillimore translation was published as the "Domesday Explorer" on CD-ROM in 2000, publicly accessible as an online database since 2008.
Abraham Farley's edition (1773–1783)
Domesday Book was an item of great interest to the antiquarian movement of the 18th century. This was the age of the county history, with many accounts of the English shires being published at this time, and Domesday Book, as a property record of early date that happened to be arranged by county, was a major source for the medieval history of all the counties encompassed by the survey.
The reconstituted Society of Antiquaries of London, founded in 1717 by Humfrey Wanley, John Bagford and John Talman,[1] made it part of its mission to work towards the publication of a wide variety of ancient records, including Domesday.[2] The Society struggled to achieve its aims, however, being afflicted by its members' limited resources and sheer lack of enthusiasm.[3]
Nevertheless, after the purchase of a Royal Charter in 1751, the possibility of publishing Domesday became more realistic. In 1756 Philip Carteret Webb read a paper to the Society emphasising the great value of Domesday Book, and by implication the urgent need for a published edition: this paper was printed by the printing press of William Bowyer. The following year, in response to Webb's request, members reported back to the Society regarding existing printed and MS transcripts from Domesday Book, with the intention of compiling material that might be of assistance in the task of compiling an edition.[4] This effort did not bear fruit.
In 1767, however, for reasons that may be connected to this renewal of interest in Domesday Book, plans were set in motion for the publication of a complete, scholarly edition of Domesday: this coincided with a programme of publication of other public records, including the Parliament Rolls.[5]
Entries for Croydon and Cheam, Surrey, in Farley's edition of Domesday Book
In March 1767 Charles Morton (1716–1799), a librarian at the British Museum, was put in charge of the scheme; a fact which caused resentment towards him from Abraham Farley, a deputy chamberlain of the Exchequer who for many years had controlled access to Domesday Book in its repository at the Chapter House, Westminster, and furthermore had been involved in the recent Parliament Rolls printing operation.[6] In 1768 Farley complained to the Treasury that he, not Morton, should be in charge of the project, while Morton, for his part, complained that he was being obstructed in his work by the staff at the Chapter House.[7]
The government, meanwhile, had become concerned at the spiralling cost estimates – Morton indicated in 1770 that to continue would cost £4,525 on top of the £2,810 he had already spent. At this point, Farley was remembered, and he became co-editor of the work. Farley and Morton's rivalry precluded an enduring, constructive relationship, and after 1774 Farley was effectively in sole charge.[8]
Farley pursued the task with a single-minded devotion born of long involvement with the public records, and Domesday Book in particular. One of his closest associates during the project was the printer John Nichols, inheritor of William Bowyer's London printing press, who in 1773 had developed the special "record type" typeface that was used in the published edition to represent as closely as possible the script in Domesday Book itself.[9] Ultimately, Farley's edition of Domesday was completed by 15 March 1783.[10]
Although of a high standard, Farley's work lacked supplementary material and indices. In 1800, therefore, the Record Commission ordered the printing of indexes to Farley's work. These were compiled under the direction of Sir Henry Ellis and published in 1816, together with an edition of four "satellite surveys" – the Exon Domesday, the Liber Winton, the Inquisitio Eliensis and the Boldon Book.[11][12]
A page from the photozincographic edition of Domesday Book for Somersetshire (published in 1862), showing entries for some of the landholdings of Glastonbury Abbey
The circulation of Farley's edition was too limited to significantly expand public access to the Domesday Book. That was to take place only in 1861, with the production of the first photozincographicfacsimile edition of Domesday.
The driving force behind the project was Colonel Henry James, the Director General at the Ordnance Survey. The process involved the transferring of a photograph onto zinc or stone, which could then be used directly for printing or, alternatively, onto the waxed surface of a copper plate where the image formed a guide for engraving. It was a system that enabled facsimile reproduction en masse and thus, following a meeting with William Ewart Gladstone in 1859, in which James was allegedly asked by the then-Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether he "knew of any process by which some of our ancient manuscripts in the Record Office could be copied", James emphasised the superiority of this process over other reproductions, such as lithography, which used heavy and brittle stone blocks and claimed that the process would be ideal for making cheap facsimile copies of Domesday Book.
In a letter to the assistant Secretary to the Treasury, George Hamilton in October 1860, James outlined the cost of a complete reproduction of Domesday Book as an estimated £1575 for 500 copies or, alternatively, £3. 3s. per copy. James further outlined the cost of a single county to demonstrate the affordability of the process, using Cornwall as an example of one of the shorter entries in the volumes (eleven folio pages) and estimating the cost of 500 copies to be £11.2s.4d (i.e. 5⅓d per copy). On 14 January 1861, James was granted permission to photo-zincograph the Cornwall fragment of Domesday Book as a Treasury-funded experiment to determine the success of the process and, consequently, by 1863 the Ordnance Survey had photozincographed Domesday Book in its entirety, publishing it in 32 county volumes. Two colours (red and black) were used, replicating those used in the original manuscript.
The general public were excited about the invention of photozincography. Newspapers such as the Photographic News reported on the events surrounding the invention and even supplied their readers with an example of a document which had undergone the process.[13]
English translations
Victoria County History (1900–1969)
The Victoria County History (VCH) was founded in 1899 as a project to publish an encyclopaedic history of each of the historic counties of England to a uniform plan. From the outset, it was intended that this plan should include English translations of the relevant county sections of the Domesday Book, with a scholarly introduction and a map.
Round retired from the project in 1908, but the VCH subsequently published translations of Domesday for Suffolk (translation anonymous, introduction by B. A. Lees, published 1911); Yorkshire (by William Farrer, published 1912); Cornwall (translation by T. Taylor, introduction by L. F. Salzman, published 1924); Huntingdonshire (by Frank Stenton, published 1926); Kent (translation by F. W. Ragg, introduction by N. Neilson, published 1932); Cambridgeshire (translation by J. Otway-Ruthven, introduction by L. F. Salzman, published 1938); Oxfordshire (by Frank Stenton, published 1939); Wiltshire (by R. R. Darlington, published 1955); Staffordshire (by C. F. Slade, published 1958); Dorset (translation by A. Williams, introduction by Ralph Pugh, published 1968); and Middlesex (by T. G. Pinder, published 1969).
The Phillimore Edition is a parallel-text Latin and English edition of Great Domesday Book, published by the local-history specialist publishers Phillimore & Co under the general editorship of John Morris. Each county occupies a separate volume. The first volumes to appear were those for Middlesex, Surrey and Huntingdonshire, all in 1975; and the last those for Lincolnshire, Yorkshire (both counties occupying 2 volumes each), Shropshire, and Suffolk, all of which were published in 1986.
The Latin text, printed on the left-hand pages, is a facsimile of Farley's edition; the translation, on the right-hand pages, was prepared by a team of volunteers, who (to ensure uniformity) worked within standardised guidelines for syntax, punctuation and the rendering of proper names and technical terms. Each volume includes notes, tables of tenants' names and place-names, and a map.
Uniform with the edition, a one-volume Guide to Domesday Book by Rex Welldon Finn was published in 1973.[16] A 3-volume set of indexes was published in 1992.
Although the Phillimore edition rapidly became the most readily accessible and widely used version of Domesday Book, scholars criticised the translation for over-simplifying complex historical concepts: David Bates, for example, described it as "unconvincingly and unhelpfully 'modern'".[17]
The Alecto Editions (1985–1992)
Alecto Millennium Edition binding
Published between 1985 and 1992, the Alecto Edition is the most complete facsimile of Domesday Book to date. There are three types of Alecto edition, the "Penny Edition", the Millennium Edition and the Domesday Book Studies edition. It has been called an "indecently exact facsimile" by Professor Geoffrey Martin, then Keeper of Public Records and custodian of the original Domesday.[18]
This edition was accompanied by a volume of indices, a two-volume English translation and a box set of Ordnance Survey Maps with the Domesday sites overlaid on the modern maps.[19]
Facsimile
In order to produce this extremely high quality reproduction, the original Domesday Book was unbound to allow each page to be photographed. The camera used for this process was the same size as a Ford Fiesta,[citation needed] and for security reasons was only operated in a sealed cage.
The Penny Edition was printed on a specialist paper made from cotton from the American Deep South to give something of the same weight and feel as the parchment of the original. These pages were then bound between sheets of 15th-century oak set with a silver penny of William I and another 1986 Elizabeth II penny minted specially for the occasion. Because of the vast expense involved each copy of the Penny Edition cost £5750 and only 250 were produced. The later Millennium Edition used the same high quality images and paper was bound into two volumes of calfskin in the style of the 12th-century binding. This edition was limited to 450 copies at a cost of £6750 for Greater Domesday and £5750 for Little Domesday.[20]
The Library Version of Domesday used the same paper as the Penny and Millennium versions but was bound in a linen cover and boxed to provide durability. This edition came with indices, translations and maps.
Translation
Cover of Penguin Edition (UK)
The Alecto Historical Editions translation, published in two companion volumes to the facsimile, was intended to supersede the VCH translation, which, although of high quality, suffers from inconsistencies due to its publication history being spread out over more than 80 years. The editorial board, consisting of Ann Williams (editor-in-chief), G. H. Martin (general editor), J. C. Holt, Henry R. Loyn, Elizabeth Hallam-Smith (Assistant Keeper of Public Records), and Sarah Tyacke (Keeper of Public Records, the National Archives) produced a rigorously standardized and corrected translation based on the VCH text.
Penguin Books reproduced the Alecto translation in a single volume, published in 2002 in hardback and in 2003 in paperback, with an introduction by G. H. Martin. It is the first edition to omit the Latin text entirely, and the first single-volume edition of the translated text. The paperback was originally priced at £25.[21]
Digital editions
The Domesday Explorer
Screen shot of the Domesday Explorer
The Domesday Explorer was developed by John Palmer of University of Hull and his son Matthew Palmer as a private project beginning 1986 and using Microsoft Access, later turned into a publicly funded project, receiving a grant of £250,000 from the British Arts and Humanities Research Council. It was published on CD-ROM in 2000, and eventually made publicly accessible online by the University of Essex in 2008.[22] The database includes high-resolution manuscript images, the text of the Phillimore translation (ed. John Morris), geographic information for interactive mapping of searches, stock charts of all reported livestock and statistics reports on each county of the survey. These were produced by Palmer using the work of previous Domesday experts such as Ellis, Maitland and Finn.
Commercial copies
There are two main suppliers of commercial copies of Domesday,
Domesday Book – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 at the behest of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by the Latin name Liber de Wintonia, meaning "Book of Winchester", where it was originally kept in the royal treasury. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states that in 1085 the king sent his agents to survey every shire in England, to list his holdings and dues owed to him.
John Nichols was an English printer, author and antiquary. He is remembered as an influential editor of the Gentleman's Magazine for nearly 40 years; author of a monumental county history of Leicestershire; author of two compendia of biographical material relating to his literary contemporaries; and as one of the agents behind the first complete publication of Domesday Book in 1783.
The Victoria History of the Counties of England, commonly known as the Victoria County History or the VCH, is an English history project which began in 1899 with the aim of creating an encyclopaedic history of each of the historic counties of England, and was dedicated to Queen Victoria. In 2012 the project was rededicated to Queen Elizabeth II in celebration of her Diamond Jubilee year. Since 1933 the project has been coordinated by the Institute of Historical Research in the University of London.
The Roxburghe Club is a bibliophilic and publishing society based in the United Kingdom.
The hide was an English unit of land measurement originally intended to represent the amount of land sufficient to support a household. It was traditionally taken to be 120 acres , but was in fact a measure of value and tax assessment, including obligations for food-rent, maintenance and repair of bridges and fortifications, manpower for the army, and (eventually) the geld land tax. The hide's method of calculation is now obscure: different properties with the same hidage could vary greatly in extent even in the same county. Following the Norman Conquest of England, the hidage assessments were recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086, and there was a tendency for land producing £1 of income per year to be assessed at 1 hide. The Norman kings continued to use the unit for their tax assessments until the end of the 12th century.
The three-volume novel was a standard form of publishing for British fiction during the nineteenth century. It was a significant stage in the development of the modern novel as a form of popular literature in Western culture.
John Robert Morris was an English historian who specialised in the study of the institutions of the Roman Empire and the history of Sub-Roman Britain. He is best known for his book The Age of Arthur (1973), which attempted to reconstruct the history of Britain and Ireland during the so-called "Dark Ages" following the Roman withdrawal, based on scattered archaeological and historical records. Much of his other work focused on Britain during this time.
A text publication society is a learned society which publishes scholarly editions of old works of historical or literary interest, or archival documents. In addition to full texts, a text publication society may publish translations, calendars and indexes.
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Abraham Farley (?1712–1791) was an English chamberlain who was custodian of the Domesday Book. He was appointed Deputy Chamberlain of the Exchequer in 1736 and became responsible for the public records at the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey. First amongst these was the Domesday Book, of which Farley became custodian, granting visiting antiquaries access to make transcripts for a fee. In 1753, he was approached by Philip Carteret Webb to make a transcript from Domesday Book; this he did, and, perhaps in return for Webb’s help in raising awareness of Domesday’s importance, waived the usual fee. Two years later, Webb’s paper on the Book was read to the Society of Antiquaries of London. In later life, Farley was to produce the first printed edition of the Domesday Book, which was then in high demand. Following a Parliamentary order in 1767, Farley was appointed co-editor of the Domesday printing project in 1770, alongside Charles Morton of the British Museum. In his Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, the printer John Nichols remarked that Morton and Farley’s relationship was characterised by rivalry and mistrust. Farley, whom Nichols called "of all men the properest person for so important a trust", due to his "long and intimate acquaintance with the original record", evidently considered himself best fitted to produce the landmark work. Farley eventually cut Morton out altogether, pressing ahead with the work with Nichols’ co-operation. Farley received payment to the tune of £2,500 for his services.
In the 1860s the first facsimile of Domesday Book was created by the process of photozincography, and was executed under the directorship of Henry James at the Southampton offices of the Ordnance Survey.
Record type is a family of typefaces designed to allow medieval manuscripts to be published as near-facsimiles of the originals. The typefaces include many special characters intended to replicate the various scribal abbreviations and other unusual glyphs typically found in such manuscripts. They were used in the publication of archival texts between 1774 and 1900.
The Boldon Book contains the results of a survey of the bishopric of Durham that was completed on the orders of Hugh du Puiset, Bishop of Durham, in 1183, designed to assist the administration of the vast diocesan estates. The survey was similar to that of the Domesday Book in the previous century, covering the bishop's lands in what was to become County Durham and other parts of the north east of England that, following the Norman Conquest, were liable to tax by the Prince-Bishop of Durham and not taxed directly by the King of England. It is the first survey undertaken north of the River Tees, where the king's authority was never more than nominal.
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Cyneweard of Laughern or simply Cyneweard was a mid-11th century Anglo-Saxon thegn and sheriff in Worcestershire, England. Probably the son of Æthelric Kiu and grand-nephew of Wulfstan Lupus, Archbishop of York (1003–1023), he was one of the leading nobles of the county at the Norman Conquest of England. On the death of Edward the Confessor he held lands in Gloucestershire and Warwickshire as well as Worcestershire.
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Lincoln Record Society is a British text publication society founded in 1910 which edits and publishes historic records relating to Lincolnshire and the Diocese of Lincoln. The ancient diocese covered not only Lincolnshire, but also Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Rutland, Oxfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Huntingdonshire and parts of Hertfordshire, and the society's publications may touch on the history of all these areas. In practice, they have tended to relate either to the ecclesiastical administration of the diocese, or to the broader history of the county.
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References
↑ Sweet, Rosemary (2004). Antiquaries: the Discovery of the Past in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p.84.
↑ Condon, M. M.; Hallam, E. (1984). "Government Printing of the Public Records in the Eighteenth Century". Journal of the Society of Archivists. 7 (6): 348–88, at p. 374. doi:10.1080/00379818409514252.
Bates, David (1985). A Bibliography of Domesday Book. Woodbridge: Boydell. ISBN0-85115-433-6.: contains full details of all editions and translations published up to that date.
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