A census of the English kingdom commissioned by William I (William the Conqueror) in 1085, The Domesday Book was completed in 1086.  Without equal as a public record in medieval Europe, the survey details the taxable potential of lands held by the King and those of allotted to his tenants-in-chief. It also records how land and revenue-producing customs had been distributed among those tenants. Though not without errors and omissions, the Domesday Book is a fairly complete record of conditions among the ruling class in late Anglo-Saxon and early Norman times. A document that looked to the future rather than the past, the Domesday Book legitimized the social changes imposed upon England by the Norman conquerors and provided the monarchy with a detailed account of the feudal financial resources that it could exploit in the future.

The Domesday Census was prepared by commissioners who traveled throughout the kingdom collecting information on the current status of the land, and making changes that had occurred since the beginning of William's reign. Their reports were compiled in two volumes: one, known as Great Domesday, was a summary of data from all the counties surveyed except for Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex. A more detailed description of those areas is contained in the second volume, Little Domesday. The northernmost parts of England were not surveyed.

The name Domesday, a reference to the Last Judgment, was given to the census because it was a record from which there was no appeal.

The Domesday Book is preserved in the Public Record Office, London.

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