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Columbia fönftwwtftp LIBRARY 0 ttt C 0fr ft Dil FOE, SHROPSHIRE. THE ORIGINAL TEXT EDITED AND TMNSLATED INTO ENGLISH. BY THOMAS WRIGHT, ESQ., M.A., F.S.A., fc. COEEESPONDINÖ MEMBEB OF THE INSTITUTE OF FKANCE, (ACADEMIE DES INSCEIPTIONS ET BELLES LETTRES.) SHEEWSBUEY : PEINTED AND PTJBLISHED BY J. 0. SANDFOED, 25, HIGH-STEEET. LONDON: LONGMAN, GEEEN, & CO., PATEENOSTEE EOW; AND VACHEE & SONS, 29, PAELIAMENT STEEET. 1865. PREFACE. THE word Domesday, or Doomsday, (in Anglo-Saxon domes-dwg,) means literally the day on which the king, or other judge in his place, sat to hear trials and give judgment. Criminal causes were, in general, easily decided, bufc civil actions presented greafcer obscurity, from the variety of tenures of property, and the difficulty of arriving at a correct knowledge of the facts connected with them. It thus became necessary to form some general and authentic body of the Information which the Court required ; and the Domesday-Book was a register of such facts upon the authority of which judgment was to be given on those questions then of paramount importance, the value, tenures, and Services of land. It is the record of a census made under the infhienee and in the interests of feudalism. Amon'g all people, at a certain period of their advance in social progress, some such general inquisition was found necessary for the establishment of social order. Such was the census among the Eomans, which was first carried into practise under the reign of Servius Tullius, in the year of Rome 187. Ic was no doubt partly also for civil purposes that the Jews were from time to time " numbered," as recorded in the Scrip- tures.
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