Others who are more expert in the modern period than I am will, I hope, come along to address the question of why British censuses start in 1801, but, in the meantime, I'd like to address the suggestion that Domesday Book was a census. It wasn't, and in fact it contains no meaningful enumeration of population at all.

Rather, Domesday Book is a survey of the English lands ruled by William the Conqueror, carried out in 1086, the last year of his reign. It was a massive undertaking – it has been reckoned that it must have been the product of hearing more than 60,000 witnesses – and it consists of more than 3,000 entries and is composed in a highly abbreviated form of medieval Latin. As written, the compendium has no title – the familiar “Domesday Book” is a label first mentioned to 1221 and given in reference to its thoroughness; it refers to the Day of Judgement.

Domesday looks not at population, but at resources. At root, it is a survey of how all landholdings (including church land) were organised in England, what they produced, and hence what they were worth. The survey is also a study of how the value of these resources had changed over time; it compares the situation at three points:

1. in Edward the Confessor’s time – meaning at the beginning of 1066, directly before the Conquest (and thus excluding the reign of Harold, who the Normans considered a usurper)
2. at the time that the current holder of the land received it from King William, if it had changed hands between 1066 and 1086
3. and finally, at the time of the survey, in 1086

Domesday did all this with regard to who owned the land and also what the land would generate: thus, what it was worth – and how it could be taxed.

Aside from having no name, Domesday also contains no precise record of its purpose, and university students studying this period still work their way through the main arguments that have been made in this respect. There are, in fact, two major unresolved controversies concerning Domesday Book, but both relate to how and why William ordered it to be created. The first, and more straightforward, dispute, asks to what extent Domesday the product of a new administration – the Norman one – and to what extent it depended on the pre-existing Saxon system? The second is concerned with what it was for, and there there are three options – none related to the concept of a census. Broadly, the options that are debated are:

1. Was Domesday special one-off survey of England’s wealth to allow the king to levy a large tax to fight off invaders – the survey was taken at a time when there was a significant threat of invasion from Denmark?
2. A new type of inquest designed to address the deficiencies of the existing financial system of England, and perhaps form the basis for an improved tax system – a survey intended to be repeated that became a one-off only because of William I’s death soon after?
3. Not a financial record at all, but rather a survey of the organisation of the kingdom that was intended to help the new Norman landholders solidify their claims, and record their titles to English land; that is, a document intended to be used as the basis for further imposing Norminisation – via imposition of the Norman administrative system – on England?