Defending the Conquest
Compiling Domesday Book was a huge endeavour, which entered the folk memory because almost everyone was involved. At least 62,000 witnesses gave evidence throughout the enquiry; and it is easy to see why the chroniclers, writing with hindsight in the knowledge that William died as it was finished, should have accorded the Domesday survey with such significance. Yet behind it all lay some very mundane reasons which speak volumes about the security of the kingdom and the foundations of lordship upon which it was based. It is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle which provides the real purpose of Domesday in the preceding paragraph of its 1085 entry:
In this year people said and declared for a fact that Cnut king of Denmark, son of King Swegn, was setting out in this direction and meant to conquer this country. When William, King of England, found out about this, he went to England with a larger force of mounted men and infantry from France and Brittany than had ever come to this country, so that people wondered how this country could maintain all that army. And the King had all the army dispersed all over the country among his vassals, and they provisioned the army each in proportion to his land.
'...a desperate need to defend the Conquest...'
Cnut the Holy was the son of Swegn Estrithson. He had threatened England in earlier years, joining his father in the raids of 1069 and 1070, and raiding York on behalf of Swegn in 1075. Now Swegn was dead, and William was afraid that Cnut was preparing an attempt to repeat the achievements of his namesake. So he needed to billet a large army on his people in preparation for the feared invasion and raise a Danegeld to pay for it. Domesday Book put this assessment on a firm basis, so that everyone knew what was owed both to them and by them: without this quid pro quo, William's lords would never have co-operated. Government at this time was all about personal relationships, and the King could not simply demand such a huge sacrifice without giving something back. So Domesday Book was not born out of a desire to 'set the seal' upon the Conquest of England, but out of a desperate need to defend the conquest from yet another threat, this time by a foreign power.
Published: 2001-05-01
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