Domesday Book and the Law

Domesday Book contains the most comprehensive, varied and monumental legal material to survive from England before the rise of the Common Law. This book argues that it can--and should--be read as a legal text. Stripped of its statistical information, Domesday Book contains a remarkable amount of legal material, almost all of which stems directly from inquest, testimony, or from the sworn statements. This information, read in context, provides a picture of what the law looked like, the ways in which it was changing, and the means whereby the inquest was a central event in the formation of English law.