The Independent reports on a project which claims to have identified the facts that Domesday Book was written by a Normandy born scribe who was probably a member of the monastic community attached to Winchester cathedral priory. The thing that is lacking is an actual name for the scribe.
That the writing up of Domesday occurred at Winchester should not surprise us - the city was a principal royal residence, the base for the Treasury, a long m-standing place associated with the processes of government. Recognising the text to be largely the work of one scribe is not suprising given the nature of the work and the desire for an accomplished, clear copy of the results of what we often today term the Domesday Inquest.
Whether a name can ever be attached to the scribe is another matter but intriguing. I imagine most medieval scribes, and particularly monastic ones, were usually content to remain anonymous. Anonymity was perceived as a virtue and an expression of humility. Indications of artistic or similar self-identification were rare at the time - hence the fame of Giselbertus at Autun or St Dunstan’s little pen-portrait of himself. What eventually became known as the Civil Service appear usually to have been and indeed are content with discreet and polite anonymity.
Nonetheless if this interpretation by the researchers is correct it adds to one’s appreciation of the austere Norman work of the transepts in Winchester Cathedral - for the monastic scribe must have witnessed their building.
The article can be read at Revealed: the trusted monk behind Domesday Book
4 comments:
Perhaps this scribe was King Edward the Confessor's former chief scribe, Regenbald.
Although one might expect that next to nothing was known about Regenbald besides his name, whose survival in itself was a miracle, amazingly there is quite a long Wikipedia article on him, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenbald
However, re-reading that article, a couple of points make me somewhat doubt my own suggestion.
Firstly, he would have been seriously cogging on by 1086, when the Domesday Book was written up. So by then his eyesight, steadiness of hand, and endurance were probably not all what they once had been.
He also seems to have held quite exalted positions after the Conquest, such as chancellor and judge, which makes one wonder if he would be an appropriate choice for months of exacting and laborious donkey work.
But perhaps King William specifically required a highly trusted senior scribe would would not be tempted or bribable to amend any entries as they were being written, and who was fairly familiar with land tenure data from the Confessor's time and who could read and understand Saxon records from then.
But in support of my idea, with tongue in cheek, Regenbald sounds like a German name, and Germans always have been notorious for writing long books!
John R Ramsden
https://highranges.com
Domesday Survey Mastermind
I once read that the handwriting in Great Domesday was that of a scribe for William de St Calais, Bishop of Durham. Is that claim no longer in favour?
On several grounds, I am inclined to identify Alan Rufus as the mastermind behind the Domesday survey. He had high standing with both William I and William II to both of whom he was unimpeachably loyal (but not to a fault), and he was quite the polymath and innovator.
Among his creations were Richmond Castle, St Mary’s Abbey York (which he designed and oversaw the construction of), the first High Court of Parliament (by that name), the Sheriff’s Levy, prosperous markets and ports such as at Ipswich and Boston, and a domestic free trade agreement covering all of his tenants and employees that persisted until the English Civil War.
Alan Rufus’s father Count Eudon (c.999-1079) was a regent of Brittany, an elder first cousin of King Edward and an elder double-cousin of King William’s father Duke Robert. Eudon’s eldest brother Duke Alan III was a guardian to the young Duke William.
Scenes of the Bayeux Tapestry set circa 1064 depict Alan Rufus as the captain of Duke William’s palace guard and as one of William’s two emissaries to Count Guy of Ponthieu. Orderic Vitalis records Count Alan as the captain of King William’s household knights at the Siege of Sainte Suzanne in 1083.
Professor Katherine Rohan cites a charter that Alan issued in 1066x1067 stating that Duke William had gifted him two Rouen churches (St Pelletier and St Sauveur) and that Alan was now donating them to the Abbey of St Ouen.
Alan was an associate of Yves de Bellême, Bishop of Séez, as is shown by a charter issued by Yves dated 1047x1067, wherein Alan witnesses as ‘Alan Rufus, son of Count Eudon’. Yves, incidentally, was the only member of the House of Bellême for whom Orderic Vitalis had no ill word.
Domesday records the Lord of Wyken (Farm) in Suffolk on 5 January 1066 as ‘Alanus’. That this solitary pre-Conquest ‘Alan’ was Alan Rufus is made clear by the Bayeux Tapestry’s use of the rebus ‘red fox’ (a colloquial Breton reading of his name) at King Edward’s funeral and by Alan’s initial interment in the cemetery for Wyken’s parish.
Uniquely among the magnates, Alan retained as tenants a great many English lords, not only in his North Yorkshire lands (Richmondshire) but also in East Anglia. It therefore seems likely that he had learnt some English during his time as lord of Wyken.
Alan Rufus’s epitaph describes him as ‘dux’ and ‘precepto[r] legum’, so he was both a military commander and a teacher of law. A charter of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds describes Alan as ‘Earl of East Anglia’ while a charter of St Mary’s Abbey York calls him ‘Earl of Richmond’.
Alan held extensive lands in 11 counties, mainly in the north and east, as a tenant-in-chief, but he was a tenant of the king at several locations, notably Cambridge.
Alan also appears in counties far from his estates. He was the sole baronial witness for the foundations of the Lordship and of the Priory at Monmouth. During the Domesday Survey he was with the King at Exeter.
The surviving Domesday documents have a peculiar resonance with Count Alan. Little Domesday and the Ely and Cambridge Inquests concern areas where Alan was the leading baron. According to David Roffe’s analysis, the first text of Great Domesday to be recorded was for Yorkshire, again where Alan was the most prominent baronial landholder. It is in the Yorkshire folios that the prescription for conversion of the Domesday data between different forms is given.
Of the several candidates hitherto proposed for ‘Domesday mastermind’, I will mention connections that three had with Count Alan.
Ranulf Flambard’s holdings in 1086 were few: three as a tenant-in-chief in Hampshire, one as a TIC in Oxfordshire, and several elsewhere as a tenant of the King or of Malmesbury Abbey. Of his four major holdings, he shared Earl Godwin’s land at Funtley in Hampshire with Alan Rufus. (By the way, the name ‘Flambard’ occurs in Brittany prior to Ranulf’s appearance in England.)
The royal chaplain Samson (later Bishop of Worcester) was a brother of Archbishop Thomas of York with whom Alan was in continued close contact. Samson, Thomas, and William de St Calais all served as canons at Bayeux under Bishop Odo. The connections that Bishop Odo and his brother Count Robert of Mortain had with Alan Rufus and his father Count Eudon were longstanding and substantial, but that is another topic.
In Simeon of Durham’s ‘Libellus’ describing the treason trial in Autumn 1088 of William de St Calais, the Bishop has harsh words for King William II, Archbishop Lanfranc and the assembled barons. His clever defence fails against Lanfranc’s reasoned (if politically convenient) interpretation of the law. When Alan refers to the terms agreed when the Bishop handed over Durham castle to the royal army, the court explodes in uproar and the king demands that Alan abjure the document. The Count responds in carefully chosen words that if he were to break his faith with one man, then no man, not even the king, could ever trust him again, so his service in future would be of no value. While the king deliberates, St Calais is sent back to gaol under the strict condition that no bishop or earl visit him there. Alan does so anyway, and St Calais pleads with ‘my Lord Earl’ to help him and his men to escape across the Channel via ‘any ship at port between Exeter and Sandwich’. Alan asks the Bishop to be patient, as the King will surely release him eventually. Approaching Christmas, St Calais was exiled to Normandy as he had requested.
While in the ducal court, St Calais frustrated the plans of Bishop Odo, causing political paralysis and disorder in the duchy. In late January 1091, Count Alan was with William II at Dover, and a few days later an English army landed in Normandy. As it marched, crowds gathered along the roads to cheer it on. As the army advanced and more of Normandy fell to the English, the French king Philip grew alarmed and petitioned Pope Urban II to intervene in person to obtain a treaty.
In my first comment, I mis-stated a scholar's name: it should be Katherine (Stephanie Benedicta) Keats-Rohan.
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