They had a reason for calling it the book of doom

Governments bring bureaucracy wherever they arise. In the Old Testament God warned the Israelites after they clamored for a king so they could be like the other nations (that kind of reasoning almost never being good). They'd have to have armies, which would require something like a draft, and would require taxes to fund the armies, which would require more taxes to fund the government, which would ... well, you get the point. Oh, and you have to have information, lots of information.

Take William the conqueror, for example.

William I, king of Normandy, set his sights on England, and in 1066, England's reigning king, Edward the Confessor, died, giving William a chance to fill the vacuum. Of course no shortage of Englishmen wanted the spot, so William had to bring his armed forces over to make sure he sat on the throne. 

He was sort of closely related to the previous king, so he had sort of a claim to it. Never mind that Edward had already decided who his successor should be. William insisted that Edward had told him personally that he would be the successor and that the guy Edward had named on his deathbed had sworn allegiance to him. Sounds like those mystery stories where heirs all believe they will inherit because there's a will, but sister Joan swears the old man told her she would inherit, and cousin John shows up with a will naming him the heir and everyone winds up with a motive for murder.

And William followed the plot, defeating an killing Edward's choice, making it impossible for anyone to prove he wasn't the rightful heir. Then he gave himself a splendid Christmas present by being crowned on Christmas Day.

Now the problem for kings in England for hundreds of years was maintaining power after gaining it. To do that, William knew, he would have to put down uprisings and place loyal folks around the kingdom to watch over matters. In addition to native troubles, he worried about the Viking invasion threat. Defending his realm would require money, which would require taxes. 

So, about 20 years after taking control, he decided he needed to find out who owned land, how much they owned, and how much that was all worth and set up commissions whose job was to find out the information.

This sounds like a census, and it sort of is, but what distinguishes it from a regular census is that his minions weren't trying to find out who, how many, and where everyone lived in England, just the ones who'd be most useful in providing the funds he needed. The end result was a 13,000 page work in two volumes written in Latin that detailed a great deal about English life in the early part of the 11th century.

The commissioners asked a series of questions that had to be answered three times: once for the year 1066, once for the year William issued them grants for the lands, and once for the was things were in 1086, when the survey was taken. 

About a hundred years later, a book written about the Exchequer mentioned that the completed work was called the Domesday Book (Doomsday, in modern English) because was compared to the Book of Life in which the deeds of all humankind were noted and that would be opened on the Last Day. One contemporary observer noted that "there was no single hide nor a yard of land, nor indeed one ox nor one cow nor one pig that was left out" of the survey.

Not surprisingly one of the discoveries was that by the time the results were final, Normans owned most of the land in England -- only about 5 percent of the land was controlled by English noblemen.

The book has since been translated into English and is widely available, including a searchable version on the World Interwide Netweb.

Note: I have summarized this information from two primary sources -- the National Archives of England and a BBC website called Bitesize, designed to provide easily digested information for British school students.

Image: A page from the Domesday Book retrieved from historic-uk.com.