Local Administration

William did not interfere with local affairs, but his policy broke up the old earldoms, which had been a great danger to monarchy in Anglo-Saxon times. He reduced the office of earl to a merely honorary dignity, and gave chief power into the hands of the sheriff. In consequence, the position of sheriff increased tremendously in importance, and during the reign of the Norman kings was sought by men of high rank. The sheriff collected the revenues, sat in the shire court as its presiding officer, and summoned to war all the men of the shire, except the knights, who were, of course, led by their lords, the tenants-in-chief, at the demand of the king. The period of English history when the sheriff was most important, fairly equalling the old earls in power, was during the reigns of the Norman kings. At a later time he abused his position and lost most of his authority.

Though William in substituting the sheriff for the earl strengthened the central authority, in other respects he left local institutions much as they had been before. He retained the laws of Eadward the Confessor, because he wished to reign as an English king. He preserved the courts of the shire and the hundred, made the hundred responsible for the murder of Normans, enforced the custom of having witnesses present at the sales of cattle, required that every freeman should have a surety, and forbade the sale of men into slavery and punishment by mutilation.

Sources of Revenue

The Norman kings were eager for money, and in their manner of obtaining it were hard masters. William, who, like the Anglo-Saxon kings, received revenues from the old royal lands, had obtained by confiscation a very large number of new lands in England. In addition to the income from this source, the king received the usual feudal payments from his tenants-in-chief; that is, from those who held their lands directly of him. He had also a share of the fines and fees from the courts of the shire and the hundred in all cases where the latter had not fallen into the hands of private persons; and he received all the fines and fees imposed by the great council, sitting usually three times a year. It was to the king's advantage that as many cases as possible should be brought before the great council, and we are not surprised that the pleas of the crown, that is, cases specially reserved for the king or his court, should have largely increased under the Normans. William was a famous hunter, and made severe forest laws, breaches of which brought in a large revenue.

Most valuable of all was the money received from the old Anglo-Saxon national land-tax, Danegeld, which William willingly renewed. Three times he levied it, and at the last time; (1083-1084) made it six Norman shillings from each hide of land. It was an enormously heavy tax, though many lands were exempted from it. That the levy might be fair and systematic, he caused a great survey of the kingdom to be made. This, the most famous of all William's acts, resulted in the drawing up of Domesday Book, than which no single source of information for English history is more important.

Domesday Book

In 1085 William held a meeting of his councillors at Gloucester. As a result, commissioners were sent out into the shires to get information upon which to base the levying of the tax. The commissioners were instructed to go to each shire or county town and to summon before them the chief men of the shire, certain sworn freemen of each hundred, and villagers from each vill in the hundred, all for the purpose of answering questions. This method of inquiry was new to England. It had probably never been employed by the Anglo-Saxons, but was introduced by the Normans. Such an inquiry was called an inquest, and out of it two centuries later developed trial by jury. The commissioners, remaining in the shire town, got all the information they could about the lands. They asked by whom the lands were held, how many hides there were to be taxed, what lands (as, for example, some of the old crown lands) were exempt from taxation, how many villeins there were, how many cattle, how many ploughs, and the like. They made the inquiry hundred by hundred and vill by vill.

When all had been finished and written down in Latin, the record was sent to the king at Westminster. There the returns were entirely rearranged; the items were separated and set down, not as originally by hundreds and wills, but under the names of the tenants-in-chief who held the lands within each shire. The final form in which Domesday Book has come down to us is not geographical, but feudal. Thus it is clear that this book, though it throws a great deal of light upon local customs and local law, is a tax book, designed for the purpose of increasing the revenue of the king. But it is more. In its original form it is a witness to the continued existence of the old Saxon local institutions, the shire, the hundred, and the will; while in its final form, though still preserving the division into shires, it emphasizes the new system of feudal tenures introduced by the Conqueror.