Hello, welcome to history here at Oak National Academy.

My name is Mr. Newton and I'll be your teacher for today guiding you through the entirety of today's lesson.

Right, let's get started.

Over the next few lessons we'll be thinking about our big inquiry question.

How did Norman government impact England? This is the question we will use to investigate the nature of Norman England.

After the Normans had successfully conquered England, it was uncertain what an Anglo Norman state would look like.

Much of what we know about the nature of the Anglo Norman State comes from a very unique document, Domesday Book.

Domesday would provide a very detailed inventory of England.

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to explain the significance of Domesday Book.

Before we begin, there are a few keywords we need to understand.

A survey is an examination of specific details, opinions, behaviour, et cetera, made by asking people questions.

A manor is a unit of land overseen by a lord.

A lord's large manor house is also a feature.

Geld is the name of a tax traditionally used to defend England against Viking invasions or any other invasions for that matter.

Today's lesson is split into two parts.

First, we'll look at William's Great Survey of 1086.

Then in the second part we'll go on to see how this became known as Domesday Book and why it is considered an incredibly important document in history.

Okay, let's start the lesson with William's Great Survey of 1086.

In 1085, towards the end of his reign, William ordered an ambitious survey of his kingdom.

The survey would detail the possessions of thousands of settlements covering most of England and also parts of Wales.

William wanted to know exactly what his new kingdom contained.

Once he knew who held what land and how much that land was worth, he could make sure everyone was paying him the correct tax.

William sent his commissioners into every shire with the instructions to cover every yard of land, count every cow and pig, and discover what land was held by the king and his nobles.

Have a look at the illustration on the left.

It shows King Williams officers questioning a farm tenant for the national survey.

We can also see that Norman soldiers have accompanied the commissioner and we can see a chest to the left of the table full of scrolls detailing all the possessions of the various settlements they have previously visited.

We can probably imagine that this might have felt like an interrogation.

What does the king want with this information? What will he do with it? Does he want to take the possessions? Will he raise taxes? Once in a settlement, the commissioners would be tasked with finding out what was the name of the manor, who held the manor during the reign of Edward the Confessor in 1066.

Who holds it now in 1085? Then the questions became more detailed.

How many hides of land were there? How many ploughs farm them? How much woodland and pastures was there? How many mills and fisheries, how many free men and enslaved people? Finally, they asked about the value.

What was the total value in 1066 and how much is it worth now? Okay, let's have a look at an example entry for an English settlement.

Okay, so firstly in this example, the lord of the manor in 1066 was Earl Gyrth.

Of course, pre-1066, all the major landowners were Anglo-Saxon, and many were from the house of Godwin.

Let's have a look at the next detail of the entry.

So by the time of the survey, the lord of the manor in 1086 was Countess Judith, and we know that after 1066, William gave land to his loyal supporters.

In this example, it was his niece, Judith, and in this settlement there was 145 hides.

And as you will remember, the hide was the basic unit of land which could support one household, approximately 120 acres.

Understanding how many hides were in a settlement gave a basic unit from which to calculate from how many households the area could support and how productive it might be.

And in this settlement, we can see that there was land for 82 ploughs, woodland to support 2,000 pigs and six mills.

Here we can see this information could be useful in understanding how productive the area was, and it also shows the sources of power used.

The plough, the implement powered by an ox that would dig the furrows to plant seeds in.

And the other source of power is the mill usually powered by water.

The mill could grind flour, for example.

And from these details we can also understand how much farming was being done, how much land is arable, how many plough teams are farming the land.

For example, each plough team would have approximately eight oxen.

And as we know that agricultural sector was very important to England's economy and of course to people's survival.

And we can also see that this settlement contains 80 villagers, 47 smallholders, and three enslaved people.

And here we have a breakdown of the type of people or the households in the settlement.

And finally we can see that the settlement has an annual value in 1086 of 30 pounds.

Again, we can see William is gaining an understanding of the value of his new kingdom.

The responses that landholders gave to William's officers were scrutinised by comparing the information with testimonies from witnesses.

Both Anglo-Saxons and Normans were summoned to shire courts to give those testimonies.

Again, we're getting that feeling that Williams Great Survey's feeling like an interrogation.

And once the decision is made upon what is in these settlements, the decision will be final and unaltered like a judgment's passed down in a court of law.

Okay, let's have a check for understanding.

In what year did William order a detailed survey of England to understand his kingdom's possessions? Is it A, 1065, B, 1070, C, 1085? Pause the video, have a think and come right back.

Okay, welcome back and well done if you knew the answer was 1085.

Okay, let's continue.

So the commissioners visited over 13,000 settlements and the survey, when written up, totaled two million words.

The survey was compiled into a huge book which became known as Domesday Book.

So where does this ominous title come from? So domesday refers to the Day of Judgement when Christians believe that Jesus Christ will return to Earth and pass judgement on them.

So the name represents the king passing down his final judgement on what tenants owned and how much tax was owed.

So we can infer from the title how people felt about this book, comparing it to the Day of Judgments.

If you have a look at the illustration on the left, it shows Domesday Book and the chest that it came to be stored in.

Despite the size of the book, the survey was actually completed in incredible speed around six months.

So we can really imagine how this whirlwind detailed investigation must have impacted England at the time.

Okay, let's have a check for understanding.

What questions did the commissioners of the Great Survey ask? Select three correct answers.

A, how many castles were there? B, how many hides of land were there? C, what was the name of the manor? D, who held the manor in 1066 and in 1085? Pause the video, have a think and come right back.

Okay, welcome back.

Well done if you knew it was how many hides of land was there? Another question was what was the name of the manor? And finally, who held the manor in 1066 and 1085? Okay, excellent, let's move on to task A.

What I want you to do here is study the four features of William's Great Survey of 1086 below, and I want you to support each feature by providing additional evidence.

So for example, for the first one, you can see the feature I've identified here is that Williams sent his commissioners into every shire to find out.

I want you to complete that sentence to provide some supporting additional information which further describes the feature being mentioned.

Okay, pause the video, have a go at the task and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back.

So there's many ways you could have completed those sentences, but let's have a look what I've got here.

So firstly, William sent his commissioners into every shire to find out who held the manor during the reign of Edward the Confessor and who held it in 1085.

So we can see there, we are not looking for a full detailed list of everything that the commissioners were trying to find out.

We're just providing one piece of additional evidence to support the feature.

Let's have a look at the second sentence.

The responses that landowners gave were scrutinised by comparing the information with testimonies from witnesses, both Anglo-Saxons, and Norman summoned to shire courts.

The next one, the survey was a huge undertaking.

For example, the commissioners visited over 13,000 settlements and the survey totaled two million words.

And lastly, the survey was compiled into a huge book later known as Domesday Book, referring to Christianity's Day of Judgement.

Okay, great.

So we've got some understanding of William's Great Survey of 1086 and what Domesday Book entailed.

Now let's have a look at the purpose of Domesday Book, its importance or its significance.

The Domesday process was a way for William to untangle the chaos of the Norman colonisation of England.

The colonisation of England was an opportunistic and confusing process with land being illegally grabbed, the Normans often making competing claims on territory and then not paying tax on it afterwards.

Have a look at the illustration on the left.

It shows monks compiling the Domesday survey.

We can see it involved many monks.

One of them on the left is carrying a pile of scrolls.

In the centre of the picture, perhaps there's a Norman officer overlooking the work of the monks, making sure the details are correct.

I wonder what the monks made of the information they were recording and did they know how significant this document would be? Nonetheless, by resolving the confusion about who owned which pieces of land, William was strengthening his royal authority and appeared as a ruler who was fair to all his subjects, Anglo-Saxons, as well as Normans.

In other words, it looked like William was trying to legalise the colonisation process to try and work out who owed what pieces of land and finally deliver a judgement on all the competing claims that were taking place.

By collecting the evidence of land holdings, William could confirm the noble's feudal obligations to him, such as military service, relief, guardianship, et cetera.

These commitments gave William enormous power.

Once England's land and landholders were properly recorded in the survey, William summoned the tenants-in-chief to a grand ceremony where they paid homage.

If you have a look at the illustration on the left, it shows a landholder paying homage to the king, a ceremony which tightened the bond between the lord and his vassal, a king and his people.

Although many of William's supporters had sworn allegiance decades before, William now made sure that the tenants-in-chiefs formally recognised that they held their land from William and that they would fulfil their feudal commitments.

Domesday armed William with the knowledge and the ability to seize and distribute lands and to charge accordingly.

This was a power not enjoyed by any ruler in Europe.

This is just one example of why Domesday is considered a significant document, especially for William.

Domesday may also have provided William with an accurate account of the geld tax and soldiers his new kingdom could provide.

This was significant because at the time, England was threatened with invasion by the king of Denmark.

William needed to find money to pay for his armies and castles.

The geld tax was one way to raise this money.

This tax was set at a national rate per hide.

For example, two shillings per hide, which everyone who held land then had to pay.

This raised enormous sums of money, and once William knew the number of hides, he could calculate how much could be raised from each shire.

William could also use this information to calculate how many soldiers could be raised for his army.

So perhaps we can see some of the significant aspects of Domesday Book at the time.

But now let's zoom out and put Domesday Book into the context of wider history.

Historians consider Domesday to be a significant document in English and world history.

It's quite remarkable that the book and its pages have survived to this day.

The image on the left is a page from Domesday Book, and by reading the pages from the Domesday Book, it gives historians an unique insight into England at that time.

Domesday revealed critical details about the Norman Conquest because of the way the survey obtained the value of land in 1085, but also what it had been worth in 1066 when Edward the Confessor had been king.

That means historians can assess the growth in the economy of towns under Norman Rule.

The book also reveals the impact of the harrying of the North.

For example, 16 years after the harrying land values had still not recovered in many areas of Yorkshire with large areas recorded as waste, meaning the land was ruined, no one lived or farmed there, and no tax could be collected.

Therefore, many historians consider Domesday Book to be a unique document in world history.

The reason for this is that there is no comparable 900-year-old inventory of an entire country offering a detailed snapshot of England, village by Village, farm by Farm.

It recorded minute details such as fish ponds, beehives, and the nicknames of peasants such as Alwin, the rats.

Because of its volume and scope, it is considered one of the most important documents in English history alongside Magna Carta.

Okay, let's have a check for understanding.

What were the possible purposes of the Domesday Book according to his historians? Select two correct answers.

A, it gave William a detailed account of his castle building programme.

B, it gave William a detailed account on landholding.

C, it gave William an accurate account of geld tax revenue and numbers for military service.

Pause the video, select your two correct answers and come right back.

Okay, welcome back and well done if you knew it was B.

It gave William a detailed account of landholding, and C, it gave William an accurate account of geld tax revenue and numbers for military service.

What significant advantage did Domesday Book give to William in terms of governance? A, the ability to communicate with his subjects and to deliver writs quickly.

B, the capacity to seize and distribute lands and to charge accordingly.

C, the technology to build stronger castles and to change the garrisons that guarded them.

Pause the video, have a think and come right back.

Okay, welcome back and well done if you knew the correct answer was it gave William the capacity to seize and distribute lands and to charge accordingly.

Okay, excellent.

Let's move on to the final tasks in task B.

Jun and Izzy have different views about the purpose of Domesday Book.

Who do you agree with most? Explain your choice.

So let's read Jun's opinion about the purpose of Domesday.

"The purpose of Domesday Book was for William to consolidate his power after the chaos of the Norman conquest." Okay, now let's look at Izzy's opinion.

"The purpose of Domesday Book was to find money to pay for armies and castles as William was worried about a Danish invasion." So pick who you agree with most and then I want you to explain your choice, explain your reasons for your choice.

Pause the video, have a go at the task, and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back.

So you might have agreed with Izzy or you could have agreed with Jun.

In my example here, I've agreed with Jun.

So let's see how I justified my choice.

I agree with Jun because the colonisation of England was chaotic.

There were competing claims on land, often illegally grabbed.

By resolving the confusion about who owned which pieces of land, William could confirm the nobles' feudal obligations to him.

William had consolidated his powers.

He was better equipped to legitimately seize and distribute lands, thereby maintaining the loyalty of the nobles.

Okay, let's move onto the second part of task B and I now want you to write an answer that agrees with the view you did not agree with most.

So if like me, you originally agreed with Jun, I now want you to write an answer that which agrees with Izzy.

However, if your original answer in the first part of task B agreed with Izzy, I now want you to write an answer which agrees with Jun.

And in history, this is a really important skill.

This is great practise for evaluating different points of view and being able to understand both sides of an argument.

Okay, pause the video, have a go at the task and then come right back.

Okay, great, welcome back.

So you've already seen my example answer, which supported Jun.

Now let's look at my answer, which supports Izzy's view.

Izzy makes an interesting point about Domesday Book, the information on who held the land and what taxes it should be paying, gave William an accurate assessment of what level of geld tax he could be collecting and allowed him to calculate how many soldiers each manor should be able to provide.

England was threatened with invasion by the King of Denmark in 1085, so these were important calculations for William.

Okay, that's excellent.

Let's summarise today's lesson.

In 1085, towards the end of his reign, William ordered an ambitious survey of his kingdom, the records of which were later known as Domesday Book.

Commissioners found out the landholder, the amount of hides and villagers and the value of the land.

Historians do not fully agree on the purpose, but Domesday Book gave William a very detailed account of landholding confirming his nobles' feudal obligations to him.

It also may have provided an accurate basis for calculating the geld tax and soldiers his new kingdom could provide.

Domesday Book increased William's royal authority and control.

Well done on a brilliant lesson.

Thank you for joining me for our study into the nature of Norman England, and I hope you can see why Domesday Book is a valued document in the history of England and indeed the mediaeval period in general.