Chapter V - ESSEX

Summary

Essex occupies a special place among Domesday counties. On the one hand, it is described in the Little Domesday Book, and it has, therefore, much in common with Norfolk and Suffolk. Its entries are far more detailed than those of the counties described in the main Domesday Book, although they are also more cumbrous and untidy. But, on the other hand, although Essex has so much in common with Norfolk and Suffolk, it is sharply differentiated from them in one way. Its assessment is stated, in a straightforward fashion, in terms of hides, and not by the peculiar method that distinguishes Norfolk and Suffolk from all other counties in England. As J. H. Round pointed out in his masterly study in the Victoria County History for Essex, this is one of the indications that separate Essex from the historic kingdom of East Anglia and links it with the rest of Saxon England.

The abbey of Ely held but few estates in Essex, and so there is no great opportunity, as in Norfolk and Suffolk, of comparing the figures of the Little Domesday Book with those of the Inquisitio Eliensis. The few parallel entries that there are seem to agree with one another except that the I.E. mentions a sokeman at Amberden in Chelmsford (p. 129) which the Domesday Book does not. A further opportunity for comparison is provided by the fact that the Essex folios of the Domesday Book itself occasionally duplicate an entry, and, in doing this, they sometimes convict themselves of inaccuracy.