The findings challenge long-held assumptions about the scale and intent of William the Conqueror’s great survey.
Drawing on the earliest surviving manuscript of the survey, known as Exon Domesday, researchers argue that the survey was not simply a means of maximising tax but a far more ambitious and intricate exercise in governmental control - akin to an 11th-century form of big data processing.
Professor Stephen Baxter (University of Oxford), Professor Julia Crick (King’s College London), and Dr C. P. Lewis (Institute of Historical Research, University of London) have uncovered how William’s administration gathered vast quantities of economic and territorial data across England in under seven months. The information was recorded, reorganised, and redeployed with astonishing speed and clarity of purpose.
Professor Stephen Baxter, Faculty of History said:
‘One of the points that emerges forcefully from this study is just how clever Domesday’s creators were. Their survey exudes intelligence.
'It was carefully planned, drawing on ancient precedents for taking large-scale surveys, and made rational use of existing systems of government; but it was also implemented with breathtaking efficiency and was conceptually innovative, foreshadowing the profitable exploitation of big data in the modern world, using technologies no more complex than pen, parchment and human interaction. Domesday was the product of raw, not artificial intelligence.’
In a discovery likely to reshape scholarly understanding, the team also proposes a likely identity for the principal scribe of Domesday Book - known until now only by his distinctive handwriting. Their research suggests he was Gerard, William’s final chancellor, later Bishop of Hereford and Archbishop of York. If confirmed, this would make Gerard one of the few named individuals directly linked to the great survey and the production of Domesday Book.
The study draws on the rich evidence of Exon Domesday - a manuscript compiled in 1086 by a team of scribes working under intense pressure, and the earliest surviving record of the survey. The team applied modern forensic and analytical techniques to unlock new insights into how the manuscript was created and used.
Professor Julia Crick said:
‘Making Domesday offers our interpretation of a collaborative investigation which has proved an utter education. We have learned so much not just about the Domesday process itself, but about the people responsible for writing it, the quite extraordinary way they collaborated, and, if my own projections are correct, about their diverse origins outside as well as within the Anglo-Norman realm.’
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