Book contents
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 January 2010
Summary
Disputes and the inquest
One of the striking things about the legal information preserved in Domesday Book is just how much was in dispute at the end of the Conqueror's reign. Evidence concerning several thousand complaints can be found in the text, accusing those who had possession of land, or rights, or men of holding them outside the law. Sometimes these complaints in Domesday Book are both specific and double-sided and include the arguments of litigators and the responses of local witnesses and juries. The survey's Hampshire folios, for example, include a detailed description of a suit between William de Chernet and Picot the Sheriff:
Picot holds two and a half virgates from the King. TRE Vitalis held them as a manor in alod from King Edward … William de Chernet claims this land, saying that it belongs to the manor of Charford in the fee of Hugh de Port, through the inheritance of his antecessor. He brought his testimony for this from the better and old men from all the county and hundred. Picot contradicted this with his testimony from the villeins, common people, and reeves, who wished to defend this through an oath or the judgment of God, that he who held the land was a free man and could go where he wished with the land. But William's witnesses would not accept any law but the law of King Edward, until it is determined by the King.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Domesday Book and the LawSociety and Legal Custom in Early Medieval England, pp. 1 - 8Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998