The Danish threat
So why did William want to institute a Geld survey in 1085? Once again, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle has the answer, 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. Cnut the Holy was the son of Swegn Estrithson. He had threatened England in earlier years, when he supported Hereward at Ely and raided York in 1075. Now, with his father dead and his elder brother installed on the throne of Denmark, he was seriously looking towards England as a forum for his dynastic ambitions.
'...to pay for war with the Danes'
So the Domesday Book was a Danegeld survey, summoned in response to the largest Danish threat King William had ever encountered during his reign. Yet it was also more than that. In essence, there were two Domesday surveys: the first raised a royal Geld to pay for war with the Danes; and the second dealt with matters of land tenure arising from the first and the billeting of so many troops on English land.
The Domesday Book put that assessment on a firm basis, so that everybody knew what was owed by them and what was due to them. It was necessary in the wake of the Norman Conquest, because nobody was actually quite sure who owned what in the new Norman kingdom.
Published: 2001-07-01
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