The Survey of Kent: Documents relating to the survey of the county conducted in 1086

ISBN-13: 9781407305417 / Angielski / Miękka / 2010 / 314 str.

Colin Flight

Opis

This volume contains transcriptions (but not translations) of the principal documents which relate to the Domesday inquest in Kent, accompanied by detailed commentaries. The three surviving texts are the Archbishop's response to the inquest, extracts preserved by the monks of St Augustine's Abbey, and the final report as it appeared in Domesday. The commentary aims to identify places as they appear, both named and unnamed. Other documents included are an early epitome of Kent Domesday, other documents in monastic cartularies related to landholding, early lists of parish churches in Kent, and documents setting out patterns of landholding in the thirteenth century.

The description of Kent contained in Domesday Book does not stand alone. At the time of the Survey of the whole of England - the survey conducted in 1086 by order of king William I - there were four ancient churches existing in Kent: Christ Church and Saint Augustine's in Canterbury, Saint Andrew's in Rochester, Saint Martin's in Dover. From the archives of three of them (all except Dover) copies of documents survive which are more or less closely related to the Survey. The aim of the present book is to bring together all the relevant written evidence, so as to enable a better understanding of it. A few documents are printed here which have not been printed before. For those which have, this book provides a more accurate text than any previous edition. For example, the transcription of the Domesday Book text given here includes a few words which have become undecipherable in the original, but which were still legible when a copy was made in the 1760s. That is the same copy used by Edward Hasted, whose History of Kent (1778-99) was the first serious attempt to reconnect the written evidence with the actual landscape. For anyone interested in the workings of the Survey, or in the topography of medieval Kent, this book will be indispensable.