Domesday Book () – the
Middle English
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English ...
spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as
William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by the
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
name ''Liber de Wintonia'', meaning "Book of
Winchester", where it was originally kept in the royal treasury. The ''
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' states that in 1085 the king sent his agents to survey every shire in England, to list his holdings and dues owed to him.
Written in
Medieval Latin
Medieval Latin was the form of Literary Latin used in Roman Catholic Western Europe during the Middle Ages. In this region it served as the primary written language, though local languages were also written to varying degrees. Latin functione ...
, it was
highly abbreviated and included some vernacular native terms without Latin equivalents. The survey's main purpose was to record the annual value of every piece of landed property to its lord, and the resources in land, manpower, and livestock from which the value derived.
The name "Domesday Book" came into use in the 12th century.
Richard FitzNeal
Richard FitzNeal ( c. 1130 – 10 September 1198) was a churchman and bureaucrat in the service of Henry II of England.
Life
In 1158 or 1159 Nigel, Bishop of Ely paid Henry II to appoint his natural son, Richard FitzNeal, as the king's tre ...
wrote in the ''
Dialogus de Scaccario'' ( 1179) that the book was so called because its decisions were unalterable, like those of the
Last Judgement
The Last Judgment, Final Judgment, Day of Reckoning, Day of Judgment, Judgment Day, Doomsday, Day of Resurrection or The Day of the Lord (; ar, یوم القيامة, translit=Yawm al-Qiyāmah or ar, یوم الدین, translit=Yawm ad-Dīn, ...
, and its sentence could not be quashed.
The manuscript is held at
The National Archives at
Kew
Kew () is a district in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. Its population at the 2011 census was 11,436. Kew is the location of the Royal Botanic Gardens ("Kew Gardens"), now a World Heritage Site, which includes Kew Palace. Kew is a ...
, London. Domesday was first printed in full in 1783; and in 2011 the Open Domesday site made the manuscript available online.
The book is an invaluable primary source for modern historians and historical economists. No survey approaching the scope and extent of Domesday Book was attempted again in Britain until the
1873 Return of Owners of Land (sometimes termed the "Modern Domesday") which presented the first complete, post-Domesday picture of the distribution of landed property in the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
.
Content and organisation
Domesday Book encompasses two independent works (originally, in two physical volumes): "Little Domesday" (covering
Norfolk,
Suffolk, and
Essex
Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and Grea ...
), and "Great Domesday" (covering much of the remainder of England – except for lands in the north that later became
Westmorland,
Cumberland,
Northumberland, and the
County Palatine of Durham – and parts of Wales bordering, and included within, English counties). Space was left in Great Domesday for a record of the
City of London and
Winchester, but they were never written up. Other areas of modern London were then in Middlesex, Surrey, Kent, and Essex, and have their place in Domesday Book's treatment of those counties. Most of Cumberland and Westmorland and the entirety of the County Palatine of Durham and Northumberland were omitted. They did not pay the national land tax called the geld, and the framework for Domesday Book was geld assessment lists.
"Little Domesday" – so named because its format is physically smaller than its companion's – is more detailed than Great Domesday. In particular it includes the numbers of livestock on the home farms (demesnes) of lords, but not peasant livestock. It represents an earlier stage in processing the results of the Domesday Survey, before the drastic abbreviation and rearrangement undertaken by the scribe of Great Domesday Book.
Both volumes are organised into a series of chapters (literally "headings", from Latin ''caput'', "a head") listing the
manors held
Held may refer to:
Places
* Held Glacier
People Arts and media
* Adolph Held (1885–1969), U.S. newspaper editor, banker, labor activist
*Al Held (1928–2005), U.S. abstract expressionist painter.
*Alexander Held (born 1958), German television ...
by each named
tenant-in-chief directly from the king. Tenants-in-chief included bishops, abbots and abbesses, barons from Normandy, Brittany, and Flanders, minor French serjeants, and English thegns. The richest magnates held several hundred manors typically spread across England, though some large estates were highly concentrated. For example,
Baldwin the Sheriff
Baldwin FitzGilbert (died 1086-1091) (''alias'' Baldwin the Sheriff, Baldwin of Exeter, Baldwin de Meulles/Moels and Baldwin du Sap) was a Norman magnate and one of the 52 Devon Domesday Book tenants-in-chief of King William the Conqueror, of wh ...
had one hundred and seventy-six manors in
Devon
Devon ( , historically known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South West England. The most populous settlement in Devon is the city of Plymouth, followed by Devon's county town, the city of Exeter. Devo ...
and four nearby in
Somerset and
Dorset. Tenants-in-chief held variable proportions of their manors in
demesne, and had
subinfeudated to others, whether their own knights (often tenants from Normandy), other tenants-in-chief of their own rank, or members of local English families. Manors were generally listed within each chapter by the
hundred
100 or one hundred (Roman numeral: C) is the natural number following 99 and preceding 101.
In medieval contexts, it may be described as the short hundred or five score in order to differentiate the English and Germanic use of "hundred" to des ...
or wapentake in which they lay, hundreds (wapentakes in eastern England) being the second tier of local government within the counties.
Each county's list opened with the king's demesne, which had possibly been the subject of separate inquiry. Under the feudal system, the king was the only true "owner" of land in England, by virtue of his
allodial title. He was thus the ultimate overlord, and even the greatest magnate could do no more than "hold" land from him as a
tenant (from the Latin verb ''tenere'', "to hold") under one of the various contracts of
feudal land tenure. Holdings of bishops followed, then of the
abbeys and
religious houses, then of
lay tenants-in-chief
In medieval and early modern Europe, the term ''tenant-in-chief'' (or ''vassal-in-chief'') denoted a person who held his lands under various forms of feudal land tenure directly from the king or territorial prince to whom he did homage, as oppos ...
and lastly the king's serjeants (''servientes''), and thegns.
In some counties, one or more principal boroughs formed the subject of a separate section. A few have separate lists of disputed titles to land, called ''clamores'' (claims). The equivalent sections in Little Domesday are called ''Inuasiones'' (annexations).
In total, 268,984 people are tallied in the Domesday Book, each of whom was the head of a household. Some households, such as urban dwellers, were excluded from the count, but the exact parameters remain a subject of historical debate. Postan for instance contends that these may not represent all rural households, but only full peasant tenancies, thus excluding landless men and some subtenants (potentially a third of the country's population). Darby, when factoring in the excluded households and using various different criteria for those excluded (as well as varying sizes for the average household), concludes that the 268,984 households listed most likely indicate a total English population between 1.2 and 1.6 million.
Domesday names a total of 13,418 places.
Apart from the wholly rural portions, which constitute its bulk, Domesday contains entries of interest concerning most of the towns, which were probably made because of their bearing on the fiscal rights of the crown therein. These include fragments of
custumal
A custumal is a medieval-English document that stipulates the economic, political, and social customs of a manor or town. It is common for it to include an inventory of customs, regular agricultural, trading and financial activities as well as l ...
s (older customary agreements), records of the
military service
Military service is service by an individual or group in an army or other militia, air forces, and naval forces, whether as a chosen job ( volunteer) or as a result of an involuntary draft (conscription).
Some nations (e.g., Mexico) require ...
due, of markets,
mints
A mint or breath mint is a food item often consumed as an after-meal refreshment or before business and social engagements to improve breath odor. Mints are commonly believed to soothe the stomach given their association with natural byproducts ...
, and so forth. From the towns, from the counties as wholes, and from many of its ancient lordships, the crown was entitled to archaic dues in kind, such as
honey.
The Domesday Book lists 5,624 mills in the country, which is considered a low estimate since the book is incomplete. For comparison, fewer than 100 mills were recorded in the country a century earlier. Duby indicates this means a mill for every forty-six peasant households and implies a great increase in the consumption of baked bread in place of boiled and unground porridge. The book also lists 28,000
slaves, a smaller number than had been enumerated in 1066.
In the Domesday Book, scribes'
orthography was heavily geared towards French, most lacking k and w, regulated forms for sounds and and ending many hard consonant words with e as they were accustomed to do with most dialects of French at the time.
Similar works
In a parallel development, around 1100, the
Normans
The Normans ( Norman: ''Normaunds''; french: Normands; la, Nortmanni/Normanni) were a population arising in the medieval Duchy of Normandy from the intermingling between Norse Viking settlers and indigenous West Franks and Gallo-Romans. ...
in southern Italy completed their ''
Catalogus Baronum'' based on Domesday Book. The original manuscript was destroyed in the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
, but printed copies survive.
Name
The manuscripts do not carry a formal title. The work is referred to internally as a ''descriptio'' (enrolling), and in other early administrative contexts as the king's ''brevia'' (writings). From about 1100, references appear to the ''liber'' (book) or ''carta'' (charter) of
Winchester, its usual place of custody; and from the mid-12th to early 13th centuries, to the Winchester or king's ''rotulus'' (
roll).
[Hallam 1986, pp. 34–35.]
To the English, who held the book in awe, it became known as "Domesday Book", in allusion to the
Last Judgment and in specific reference to the definitive character of the record. The word "doom" was the usual
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...
term for a law or judgment; it did not carry the modern overtones of
fatality or disaster.
Richard FitzNeal
Richard FitzNeal ( c. 1130 – 10 September 1198) was a churchman and bureaucrat in the service of Henry II of England.
Life
In 1158 or 1159 Nigel, Bishop of Ely paid Henry II to appoint his natural son, Richard FitzNeal, as the king's tre ...
,
treasurer of England under
Henry II, explained the name's connotations in detail in the ''
Dialogus de Scaccario'' (1179):
The name "Domesday" was subsequently adopted by the book's custodians, being first found in an official document in 1221.
Either through
false etymology or deliberate
word play, the name also came to be associated with the Latin phrase ''Domus Dei'' ("House of God"). Such a reference is found as early as the late 13th century, in the writings of
Adam of Damerham; and in the 16th and 17th centuries,
antiquaries
An antiquarian or antiquary () is an aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with particular attention to ancient artifacts, archaeological and historic sit ...
such as
John Stow and Sir
Richard Baker believed this was the name's origin, alluding to the church in Winchester in which the book had been kept. As a result, the alternative spelling "Domesdei" became popular for a while.
The usual modern scholarly convention is to refer to the work as "Domesday Book" (or simply as "Domesday"), without a definite article. However, the form "the Domesday Book" is also found in both academic and non-academic contexts.
Survey
The ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' states that planning for the survey was conducted in 1085, and the book's
colophon states the survey was completed in 1086. It is not known when exactly Domesday Book was compiled, but the entire copy of Great Domesday appears to have been copied out by one person on
parchment (prepared sheepskin), although six scribes seem to have been used for Little Domesday. Writing in 2000, David Roffe argued that the inquest (survey) and the construction of the book were two distinct exercises. He believes the latter was completed, if not started, by
William II following his assumption of the English throne; William II quashed a rebellion that followed and was based on, though not consequent on, the findings of the inquest.
Most shires were visited by a group of royal officers (''legati''), who held a public inquiry, probably in the great assembly known as the shire court. These were attended by representatives of every township as well as of the local lords. The unit of inquiry was the Hundred (a subdivision of the county, which then was an administrative entity). The return for each Hundred was sworn to by 12 local jurors, half of them English and half of them
Norman.
What is believed to be a full transcript of these original returns is preserved for several of the
Cambridgeshire Hundreds – the
Cambridge Inquisition – and is of great illustrative importance. The
''Inquisitio Eliensis'' is a record of the lands of
Ely Abbey. The ''
Exon Domesday'' (named because the volume was held at
Exeter) covers
Cornwall, Devon,
Dorset, Somerset, and one manor of
Wiltshire. Parts of Devon, Dorset, and Somerset are also missing. Otherwise, this contains the full details supplied by the original returns.
Through comparison of what details are recorded in which counties, six Great Domesday "circuits" can be determined (plus a seventh circuit for the Little Domesday shires).
#
Berkshire,
Hampshire
Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to two major English cities on its south coast, Southampton and Portsmouth, Hampshire ...
,
Kent
Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...
,
Surrey,
Sussex
#
Cornwall,
Devon
Devon ( , historically known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South West England. The most populous settlement in Devon is the city of Plymouth, followed by Devon's county town, the city of Exeter. Devo ...
,
Dorset,
Somerset,
Wiltshire
#
Bedfordshire
Bedfordshire (; abbreviated Beds) is a ceremonial county in the East of England. The county has been administered by three unitary authorities, Borough of Bedford, Central Bedfordshire and Borough of Luton, since Bedfordshire County Council ...
,
Buckinghamshire,
Cambridgeshire,
Hertfordshire,
Middlesex
#
Leicestershire,
Northamptonshire
Northamptonshire (; abbreviated Northants.) is a county in the East Midlands of England. In 2015, it had a population of 723,000. The county is administered by
two unitary authorities: North Northamptonshire and West Northamptonshire. It is ...
,
Oxfordshire,
Staffordshire,
Warwickshire
#
Cheshire, the land ''
Inter Ripam et Mersham'' ("between Ribble and Mersey", now much of south
Lancashire
Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly.
The non-metropolitan county of Lancash ...
),
Gloucestershire,
Herefordshire,
Shropshire,
Worcestershire – the
Marches
In medieval Europe, a march or mark was, in broad terms, any kind of borderland, as opposed to a national "heartland". More specifically, a march was a border between realms or a neutral buffer zone under joint control of two states in which diff ...
#
Derbyshire,
Huntingdonshire
Huntingdonshire (; abbreviated Hunts) is a non-metropolitan district of Cambridgeshire and a historic county of England. The district council is based in Huntingdon. Other towns include St Ives, Godmanchester, St Neots and Ramsey. The popu ...
,
Lincolnshire,
Nottinghamshire,
Rutland,
Yorkshire
Purpose
Three sources discuss the goal of the survey:
* The ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' tells why it was ordered:
After this had the king a large meeting, and very deep consultation with his council, about this land; how it was occupied, and by what sort of men. Then sent he his men over all England into each shire; commissioning them to find out 'How many hundreds of hides were in the shire, what land the king himself had, and what stock upon the land; or, what dues he ought to have by the year from the shire.' Also he commissioned them to record in writing, 'How much land his archbishops had, and his diocesan bishops, and his abbots, and his earls;' and though I may be prolix and tedious, 'What, or how much, each man had, who was an occupier of land in England, either in land or in stock, and how much money it was worth.' So very narrowly, indeed, did he commission them to trace it out, that there was not one single hide, nor a yard of land, nay, moreover (it is shameful to tell, though he thought it no shame to do it), not even an ox, nor a cow, nor a swine was there left, that was not set down in his writ. And all the recorded particulars were afterwards brought to him.
* The list of questions asked of the jurors was recorded in the ''Inquisitio Eliensis''.
* The contents of Domesday Book and the allied records mentioned above.
The primary purpose of the survey was to ascertain and record the fiscal rights of the king. These were mainly:
* the national land-tax (''geldum''), paid on a fixed assessment,
* certain miscellaneous dues, and
* the proceeds of the crown lands.
After a great political convulsion such as the Norman Conquest, and the following wholesale confiscation of landed estates, William needed to reassert that the rights of the Crown, which he claimed to have inherited, had not suffered in the process. His Norman followers tended to evade the liabilities of their English predecessors. The
successful trial of
Odo de Bayeux at
Penenden Heath near
Maidstone
Maidstone is the largest town in Kent, England, of which it is the county town. Maidstone is historically important and lies 32 miles (51 km) east-south-east of London. The River Medway runs through the centre of the town, linking it wi ...
in Kent less than a decade after the conquest was one example of the Crown's growing discontent at the Norman land-grab of the years following the invasion. Historians believe the survey was to aid William in establishing certainty and a definitive reference point as to property holdings across the nation, in case such evidence was needed in disputes over Crown ownership.
The Domesday survey, therefore, recorded the names of the new holders of lands and the assessments on which their tax was to be paid. But it did more than this; by the king's instructions, it endeavoured to make a national valuation list, estimating the annual value of all the land in the country, (1) at the time of
Edward the Confessor's death, (2) when the new owners received it, (3) at the time of the survey, and further, it reckoned, by command, the potential value as well. It is evident that William desired to know the financial resources of his kingdom, and it is probable that he wished to compare them with the existing assessment, which was one of considerable antiquity, though there are traces that it had been occasionally modified. The great bulk of Domesday Book is devoted to the somewhat arid details of the assessment and valuation of rural estates, which were as yet the only important source of national wealth. After stating the assessment of the
manor, the record sets forth the amount of
arable land, and the number of plough teams (each reckoned at eight oxen) available for working it, with the additional number (if any) that might be employed; then the river-meadows, woodland, pasture, fisheries (i.e.
fishing weir
A fishing weir, fish weir, fishgarth or kiddle is an obstruction placed in tidal waters, or wholly or partially across a river, to direct the passage of, or trap fish. A weir may be used to trap marine fish in the intertidal zone as the tide reced ...
s),
water-mills,
salt-pans (if by the sea), and other subsidiary sources of revenue; the peasants are enumerated in their several classes; and finally the annual value of the whole, past and present, is roughly estimated.
The organisation of the returns on a feudal basis, enabled the Conqueror and his officers to see the extent of a baron's possessions; and it also showed to what extent he had under-tenants and the identities of the under-tenants. This was of great importance to William, not only for military reasons but also because of his resolve to command the personal loyalty of the under-tenants (though the "men" of their lords) by making them swear allegiance to him. As Domesday Book normally records only the Christian name of an under-tenant, it is not possible to search for the surnames of families claiming a Norman origin. Scholars, however, have worked to identify the under-tenants, most of whom have foreign Christian names.
The survey provided the King with information on potential sources of funds when he needed to raise money. It includes sources of income but not expenses, such as castles, unless they needed to be included to explain discrepancies between pre-and post-Conquest holdings of individuals. Typically, this happened in a town, where separately-recorded properties had been demolished to make way for a castle.
Early British authors thought that the motivation behind the Survey was to put into William's power the lands, so that all private property in land came only from the grant of King William, by lawful forfeiture. The use of the word ''antecessor'' in the Domesday Book is used for the former holders of the lands under
Edward, and who had been dispossessed by their new owners.
Subsequent history
Custodial history
Domesday Book was preserved from the late 11th to the beginning of the 13th centuries in the royal
Treasury at
Winchester (the Norman kings' capital). It was often referred to as the "Book" or "Roll" of Winchester.
When the Treasury moved to the
Palace of Westminster, probably under
King John, the book went with it.
The two volumes (Great Domesday and Little Domesday) remained in Westminster, save for temporary releases, until the 19th century. They were held originally in various offices of the
Exchequer
In the civil service of the United Kingdom, His Majesty’s Exchequer, or just the Exchequer, is the accounting process of central government and the government's '' current account'' (i.e., money held from taxation and other government revenu ...
: the Chapel of the Pyx of
Westminster Abbey; the Treasury of Receipts; and the Tally Court. However, on several occasions they were taken around the country with the Chancellor of the Exchequer: to
York and
Lincoln
Lincoln most commonly refers to:
* Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), the sixteenth president of the United States
* Lincoln, England, cathedral city and county town of Lincolnshire, England
* Lincoln, Nebraska, the capital of Nebraska, U.S.
* Lincol ...
in 1300, to York in 1303 and 1319, to
Hertford in the 1580s or 1590s, and to
Nonsuch Palace, Surrey, in 1666 for a time after the
Great Fire of London.
From the 1740s onwards, they were held, with other Exchequer records, in the
chapter house of Westminster Abbey. In 1859, they were transferred to the new
Public Record Office
The Public Record Office (abbreviated as PRO, pronounced as three letters and referred to as ''the'' PRO), Chancery Lane in the City of London, was the guardian of the national archives of the United Kingdom from 1838 until 2003, when it was ...
, London. They are now held at
The National Archives at Kew. The chest in which they were stowed in the 17th and 18th centuries is also at Kew.
In modern times, the books have been removed from the London area only rarely. In 1861–63, they were sent to
Southampton for
photozincographic reproduction. In 1918–19, prompted by the threat of
German bombing during the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, they were evacuated (with other Public Record Office documents) to
Bodmin Prison, Cornwall. Likewise, in 1939–45, during the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
, they were evacuated to
Shepton Mallet Prison, Somerset.
Binding
The volumes have been rebound on several occasions. Little Domesday was rebound in 1320, its older oak boards being re-used. At a later date (probably in the
Tudor period) both volumes were given new covers. They were rebound twice in the 19th century - in 1819 and 1869, on the second occasion, by the binder
Robert Riviere and his assistant, James Kew. In the 20th century, they were rebound in 1952, when their physical makeup was examined in greater detail; and yet again in 1986, for the survey's ninth centenary. On this last occasion Great Domesday was divided into two physical volumes, and Little Domesday into three volumes.
Publication
The project to publish Domesday was begun by the government in 1773, and the book appeared in two volumes in 1783, set in "
record type" to produce a partial-
facsimile of the manuscript. In 1811, a volume of indexes was added. In 1816, a supplementary volume, separately indexed, was published containing
# The ''
Exon Domesday'' – for the south-western counties
# The ''
Inquisitio Eliensis''
# The ''
Liber Winton'' – surveys of Winchester late in the 12th century.
# The ''
Boldon Buke (Book)'' – a survey of the bishopric of Durham a century later than Domesday
Photographic facsimiles of Domesday Book, for each county separately, were published in 1861–1863, also by the government. Today, Domesday Book is available in numerous editions, usually separated by county and available with other
local history resources.
In 1986, the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
,'' the results of a project to create a survey to mark the 900th anniversary of the original Domesday Book. In August 2006, the contents of Domesday went online, with an English translation of the book's Latin. Visitors to the website are able to look up a place name and see the index entry made for the manor, town, city or village. They can also, for a fee, download the relevant page.
In the Middle Ages, the Book's evidence was frequently invoked in the law courts. In 1960, it was among citations for a real manor which helps to evidence legal use rights on and anchorage into the Crown's foreshore; in 2010, as to proving a manor, adding weight of years to sporting rights (deer and foxhunting); and a market in 2019.
Domesday Book is critical to understanding the period in which it was written. As
noted, "To the topographer, as to the genealogist, its evidence is of primary importance, as it not only contains the earliest survey of each township or manor, but affords, in the majority of cases, a clue to its subsequent descent."
Darby also notes the inconsistencies, saying that "when this great wealth of data is examined more closely, perplexities and difficulties arise."
One problem is that the clerks who compiled this document "were but human; they were frequently forgetful or confused." The use of
also led to countless mistakes. Darby states, "Anyone who attempts an arithmetical exercise in Roman numerals soon sees something of the difficulties that faced the clerks."