The Ely Inquiry or ''Inquisitio Eliensis''
'IE''was a satellite of the 1086
Domesday
Domesday Book () – the Middle 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 manusc ...
survey. Its importance is both that it gives a more detailed account of the local area than Domesday Book itself, and that its prologue offers an account of the terms of enquiry of the Domesday survey.
Origins
According to
David C. Douglas, the Ely Inquiry was the product of an ecclesiastical landlord using the Domesday survey to produce a record of his own estates – something supported by the way it records the lands of one tenant-in-chief across ''many'' different Domesday circuits.
Prologue
The prologue to ''IE'' gives an account of the methods of the Domesday inquest, working by way of reports (under oath) of sheriffs, Barons "and of their Frenchmen and of the whole
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 d ...
, of the priest, the reeve, and six villeins of each
vill
Vill is a term used in English history to describe the basic rural land unit, roughly comparable to that of a parish, manor, village or tithing.
Medieval developments
The vill was the smallest territorial and administrative unit—a geographical ...
". It records a series of questions to be asked with respect to each manor, adding that all the answers were to be given in triplicate – "hoc totum tripliciter" – so as to cover three distinct times: Edward the Confessor's day, the time of the Conquest (1066), and the present-day (1086).
While sometimes taken to fully reflect the actual Domesday process, the prologue is perhaps better seen as an abbreviated guide to the questions used, not as necessarily having a direct link to the official specifications.
Survey
The survey provides more information than its main equivalent,
Little Domesday. In particular it gives more details about the jurors behind it, as well as stressing the local roles of
sokemen.
Its summaries emphasise taxable capacities; while its closing schedules have been interpreted as records of early stages of the inquest (which had been edited out in the main work).
[D. Roffe, ''Domesday Now'' (2016) p. 20]
See also
*
Cambridge Inquisition
*''
Liber Exoniensis''
References
{{Reflist, 2}
Further reading
* ''
English Historical Documents, v. 2. 1042-1189'', (ed. David C. Douglas with George W. Greenaway). 1st ed. 1953, 2nd ed. 1981 No: 215
External links
Articles of Inquiry
12th-century documents
Domesday Book