Lesson video

Hello, and welcome back to Key Stage 3 history with me, Miss Dawson.

We are now at lesson five of our six-lesson inquiry into how much life changed during the Norman conquest.

And today we're going to be looking at something called the Domesday Book.

If you have already completed lessons one to four of this inquiry, then very well done.

Welcome back.

You're in the right place.

If you haven't, then you need to go and do those first before starting this lesson so it makes more sense to you.

So what I'm going to do now is get my head out of the way of the screen so you can copy down today's title which is the Domesday Book.

Put your video on pause in order to do that.

Once you've copied it down, resume the video and we'll get started.

Off we go So, for today's lesson, all you should need is a piece of paper and a pen and somewhere nice and calm and quiet to work without any distractions.

Very well done if you're already ready and you've got everything that you need to start this lesson.

If you haven't pause your video, go grab the equipment you need, get yourself set up somewhere nice and quiet and resume when you're ready to go.

So I'd like to start us off by looking at this image.

Now I'll tell you that this is one of the most important surviving pieces of source material from the Norman conquest.

And it's from this that historians base lots and lots of their understanding of the importance of the conquest and the changes.

Now, that said it doesn't look like much when you first look at it, does it? And that's okay.

Remember, this is a document from almost 1000 years ago, and you'd be doing very well to understand straight away what it was you're looking at.

I'd like you to just take a moment, pause the video if you need to, just to take some guesses as to what it might be, have a think about why it might be so important before I move on and give us some clues.

If you're not sure, don't panic at all.

As I said, this is quite a tough one.

You may be wondering, why Ms. Dawson, have you told us this is such an important document? It looks like it's just a list of people's names.

How could this possibly be one of the most important records of the Norman conquest? I promise you it is.

Well done if you worked out, first of all, that what we are looking at here is a list of names.

Our next question then, clearly, is going to be, who are they? Why have they been named? Why have their names been written down? Let's have a look.

So I've cheated and translated this.

So there's no way that you would have necessarily known what that bit said.

I've zoomed in on a detail here, which says a list of tenants-in-chief.

So we know now this is a list of names and these people who are listed here are tenants-in-chief.

So what could that mean? And why is that so important? So we could try and work this out, by zooming in on that word chief.

That obviously means important or in charge.

And then we might think about the word tenants with reference to land.

So this here is a list of the most important people who controlled land in Norman England.

So if we think back to our inquiry on the feudal system, it might start making a bit more sense as to why these people's names have been recorded.

Now, you may think that that's all we could work out from looking at this, but there's actually something else quite significant which we might not have noticed which we're going to look at just now.

Can you see anything unusual about all of their names? Have a think.

Very well done if you noticed that lots of these people have very similar names.

I've circled some of the biggest examples we can see here.

These are different people, but lots and lots of them have got the same first name.

This could tell us potentially that they are from a similar place.

They've got a similar background.

Something else for us to note, lots of them don't just have a similar name, but lots of them are called William.

Where might this mean that all of these people come from? Have you worked it out? Okay, so now we have shown ourselves to be true medievalists by unpicking the details of this complicated thousand-year-old document.

Very, very well done for that.

I'm going to ask you now to use some of the clues and explanation that I've just given you to write up a quick answer as to what this image shows and what that might suggest.

So about two developed sentences for me, please, using a detail from the picture, and then a guess from your own head as to what that might be.

Put your video on pause, resume it once you've written your answer up and then we can compare it to mine.

Off you go.

Okay, very well done.

Welcome back.

A reminder, your answer might be different to mine and that's absolutely fine.

Let's go over and have a look at what I would've written.

This image shows a list of people who were in charge of large amounts of land in England.

It might suggest that the land was controlled by Normans as many of them are named William.

Very well done if you worked that out based on the clues, I was trying to give you.

Now in modern-day England, it wouldn't seem that unusual for several people on a list to be named William, but we need to think like historians and actually it's worth mentioning the fact that before William and the Normans came over, William was not a common name in England at all.

It was a Norman name and not an Anglo-Saxon name.

So therefore we can look at this list of people who were in control of all the land in England.

We can look at the fact that lots of them have got very similar first names and we can use what we know already about the feudal system to gather that this is a list of Normans who have taken over the land in England.

Very well done if you've managed to connect those dots.

This was quite a difficult one today.

Really impressed.

If you didn't get that don't panic at all.

Okay, you can pause the video and add some details to your notes if you need to.

If not, let's move on and get started.

So I told you already that the image we were looking at at the beginning of the lesson was one of the most important surviving documents from the Norman conquest.

It absolutely was it's a document which we now know as the Domesday Book.

The word dome means judgement in Old English.

So it was given this name much, much later as people thought that it was a book which had recorded everything and was judging the English people.

What does that mean? What was in it? So the Domesday Book remains one of William's biggest achievements.

It was one of the most important and detailed things that he did.

It was the first record of its kind.

So the Domesday Book was a place where all of the land and property and people of England were recorded in one place.

Now that doesn't seem like much to those of us who are used to having the internet and records everywhere, but in the year 1085 and 1086, having all of the records of where people lived and what they owned was a huge deal.

It's a very, very big achievement.

And just to emphasise quite how big it was, it had 2 million words in it and all of these were handwritten because it was before the time of printers.

So this is the Domesday Book, and this is what we're focusing on today.

It is very, very important that we have an accurate definition of this term before we move on, because we won't be able to succeed today if we don't know what it is.

The Domesday Book was a book which William ordered to be created in order to keep a record of all the land and property in England.

Go ahead, pause your video, copy down the definition and resume when you're ready to keep going.

Brilliant.

So just to remind ourselves where we are so far in our inquiry, as I said previously, we're in lesson five out of six.

So we've almost finished examining all the ways in which England changed during the Norman conquest.

We looked at this redistribution of land under the feudal system.

We looked at how Saxon noblewomen were forced to marry Normans in order to help embed the feudal system.

We looked at how castles and harsh treatment were used to control rebellion.

We looked at how the church was reorganised and how churches were rebuilt.

And today we are going to look at the Domesday Book.

Just to remind us of where we are in terms of chronology, William took the throne of England in 1066.

The famous Harrying of the North took place in 1069.

Today's lesson is about the writing of the Domesday Book, which was completed in 1086.

And that's just one year before William the Conqueror died.

Now, I've already told you that the Domesday Book was 2 million words long, and it was handwritten.

That suggests to us that it must've been an awful lot of effort to gather all of this information.

So clearly it must have been very important to William the Conqueror to do this.

So why was this so important to him? The first reason is that he needed to understand what he owned.

When he took over England in 1066, he claimed all of the land as his, and he started redistributing everything.

However, this was part of a conquest.

There were rebellions going on at the time, and it was not done in an organised fashion.

William wanted to start counting his winnings and to have a good idea of what he now owned as the settled and established King of England.

If he understood what he owned, then he would also be able to understand how to correctly tax the Anglo-Saxons.

All of the Anglo-Saxon people who loaned and worked on his land had to pay him taxes.

William needed to gather as much tax as possible in order to successfully run his realm.

However, if he asked him for too much, too much that they couldn't afford to pay, he ran the risk of angering them and facing more rebellion, which he didn't want.

So he needed to know what they owned to know what he could ask for.

Lastly, having a good record of who worked on which land, what they owned there, how many peasants lived there, all of these things helped him have a good idea of how the feudal system worked and to keep it running nice and smoothly.

If you remember, William took over England with only 10,000 Normans and they had 2 million Saxons to keep under control.

So having as much information as possible was really, really crucial to him keeping that control.

Just a reminder of how this links to the feudal system, if the king owned all of the land and lent it all out and expected taxes back, he needed to know who he was lending the land to, what they were doing with it, how much valuable crops they were growing on it, and therefore what he could ask them to give him in return.

So that's how the Domesday Book and the feudal system were very, very linked.

Okay, great job so far.

So hopefully we've got some idea as to how and why William decided to gather information for the Domesday Book.

So what you've got in front of you here is a very, very quick paragraph to consolidate the information that I have just gone over with you.

Now, what I've done, I've taken some of the keywords out of it and I've arranged them along the bottom of the screen.

So it's your responsibility in a moment to put the video on pause and to try and see if you can fill in the gaps.

Now, in order to do this, if you are not sure about what one of the words is, I suggest that you skip it, go to the next one and then try and work out as many of them as you can before you then go back and eliminate them.

Sometimes it helps to read the sentence out and see if the word fits in it.

For example, at the top, when William and the blank conquered England in 1066.

If I try and put one of the words in there, when William and the taxes conquered England in 1066, that sounds wrong, doesn't it? Let's try something else.

When William and the Normans conquered England in 1066, that sounds right.

I've given you your first answer for free.

Enjoy it.

So pop your video on pause.

See if you can work out the rest of them in the correct order.

And then we will go through and correct them together in a moment.

Off you go.

Well done, welcome back.

Let's see how we did.

Tick any of the answers that you got correct.

If you didn't get it correct, then go ahead and change it.

When William and the Normans conquered England in 1066, William claimed all the land in England as his.

From 1066 onwards, he and his Norman nobles set about taking control of every part of the country and reorganising it under the feudal system.

This allowed William and the Normans to control all of the Anglo-Saxon population and to gather taxes from them.

By 1085, William had firmly established his control and he wanted an accurate record of what he now owned.

Very well done if you've got those correct.

If you didn't, pause the video, take a moment to correct them.

We're going to move on now and think about why it is that William wanted to do this.

Have a think about that.

Hold it in your head, ready for the next activity.

So it's time for me to set you off on your written activity.

I'm going to read you the comprehension questions.

Then I'll direct you to the worksheet where you can complete them in full sentences.

Question one, what did William want to gather? Question two.

Why did William need to know exactly the right amount to gather? Question three.

What information was contained in the Domesday Book? Question four.

How was this information gathered? Question five.

What problems were there with the way that this information was gathered? Question six.

What did the Domesday Book show about England? Question seven, a challenge question.

Why was the Domesday Book so useful to William? And you can make use of my sentence starters here if you find them helpful.

Remember, try and challenge yourself by writing in full sentences.

And if you're not sure what the answer is, check the worksheet carefully because these have all been designed to go with the worksheet and the information to help you is in there.

If you aren't sure, then we can check them together in a moment.

So go ahead, put your video on pause, go to the worksheet and answer the comprehension questions to the best of your ability.

Come back and resume the video once you're done.

Off you go.

Well done, welcome back.

Let's have a look at how we did.

Question one.

What did William want to gather? The correct answer is taxes, A more detailed answer in full sentences is William wanted to gather taxes from his Anglo-Saxon subjects in order to fund his building of castles and to feed and pay his soldiers.

Very well done.

If your answer looks anything like that, give it a big tick.

Remember your answers and my answers are likely to be different and yours can still be correct.

If you think what you've written is incorrect at any point, then please do put the video on pause, add to your notes and resume it before we move on.

Let's have a look at question two.

Question two.

Why did William need to know exactly the right amount to gather? The acceptable answer is to prevent rebellion.

A better answer with more detail, William wanted to get as much as possible without angering the Anglo-Saxons and causing them to rebel.

He wanted to try and tax them a similar amount to their previous king, Edward the Confessor to show that he respected their customs. Very well done if you used supporting detail and full sentences for that answer.

Let's move on and have a look at question three.

Question three.

What information was contained in the Domesday Book? The correct answer was the land and property in England.

A more detailed answer would look something like this.

The Domesday Book recorded all of the land in England and any valuable property on it.

It asked who owned the land, how many peasants worked on it and how much livestock there was.

It was so detailed that some said not even a single pig was left out.

Very well done if you added extra details about all the different things that were contained within it.

If you didn't quite get the answer right, then pause the video and add to your notes.

That's it, let's move on.

Question number four.

How has this information gathered? The correct answer is that William sent the Normans around to ask.

A more detailed answer is, William ordered Norman royal commissioners to visit every town in England.

They spent around a year visiting approximately 13,000 places and asking questions to work out the value of the property.

Anyone who lied to them would be killed.

Very well done if you used full sentences and key terminology, such as royal commissioners, or the use of key knowledge like 13,000 places.

This is how we write like a historian.

Don't worry if you didn't, you can add to your notes or give yourself a big tick if you wrote anything that looks like the acceptable answer either.

Well done.

Question number five.

What problems were there with the way that the information was gathered? The acceptable answer is they didn't visit everywhere or ask everyone.

I've written a more detailed answer.

There were several reasons that the information may not have been completely accurate.

Firstly, the Normans and the Saxons didn't always speak the same language.

Secondly, they didn't manage to visit every single part of the country.

Finally, they did not speak to women or children as part of their survey.

So they may have missed some information.

Very well done if you challenged yourself by writing more than one reason that there were problems with gathering this information.

Let's move on and look at the next one.

Question number six.

What did the Domesday Book show about England? The acceptable answer is the land was owned by Normans.

A more detailed answer.

The Domesday Book revealed that all of the land in England was owned and managed by only about 200 Norman barons.

This meant that no Saxons owned their own land anymore.

Very well done if you used full sentences and remembered the specific supporting detail of 200 Norman barons.

Give yourself a big tick if your answer looks anything like this.

Question number seven, challenge question.

Why was the Domesday Book so useful to William? The acceptable answer is that it helped him understand what he owned and how much to tax.

A better answer is it helped Williams keep control of the country as he had detailed records of all of the lands and property.

This enabled him to tax the Saxons enough for him to feed his army, but not too much in order to anger them.

Very well done if you managed to get the answer correct.

Give yourself a big tick and well done for completing the comprehension questions.

If you feel like challenging yourself, we've got a tougher question here, but I've got some support ready to help you with it.

The extension activity question is, according to the findings of the Domesday Book, how much had England changed under William the Conqueror? And here's some support that you can use in order to be successful answering this question.

So this question is all about how much England changed and you could talk in this answer about ways in which England had changed or ways in which it hadn't and things had stayed the same.

And I've provided sentence starters for both of those on the left-hand side.

On the right-hand side, I have given you some key words that you could use that will help point you in the right direction of what you need to include.

Remember, this is an extended answer so we're looking for full sentences.

Ideally, a few sentences with supporting information to help back up your answer.

So you're going to need to pause the video and go back to the worksheet in order to find the information to help you answer this question.

Resume it once you're finished and we can check over my answers.

Off you go.

Very well done for completing the extension and welcome back.

A reminder, my answer may well look different to yours, but yours could still be correct.

So be generous.

Give yourself a big tick if you've included anything along these lines.

In some ways England had changed a lot under William because of who owned the land.

The Domesday Book showed that all the land in England was now owned by about 200 Norman barons.

This meant that none of the Saxons owned their own land, which was a change from under Edward the Confessor.

In some ways, England hasn't changed because under Edward the Confessor, the land was organised in a similar way.

An example of this is that under Edward the Confessor, the land was all under the control of nobles.

This is important because although life had changed for the Saxon nobles who lost land, life for the peasants may not have changed much.

Very well done if you included any of those details.

You will note that I have included some ways in which England did change and some ways in which it didn't.

It's absolutely fine if you only chose to write about one or the other, as long as you supported it with detail.

Very well done for getting the extension question done.

Well done for getting today's lesson completed.

Really, really impressed.

We're very nearly at the end of this six-lesson inquiry on the Norman conquest.

We've done five out of six.

So I'm hoping to see you next time to get them all finished off.

Really, really great job.

Keep challenging yourself and I will see you next time.

Well done.

One last thing before you go, don't forget to complete the exit quiz in order to assess how much you managed to learn in today's lesson to double check your memory.

And if you would like to, you are very, very welcome to share your work with us so we can see what you've been up to.

If you want to do that, you need to ask your parent or carer to use Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter to share your work tagging @OakNational and using the #LearnwithOak.

Thanks very much, see you next time.