The mere statement which has been made of its contents, is• enough., to show the immense value of D. B. for all • purposes of inquiry into the ancient condition of England. "It will ever," says Dr.. Lappenherg, -" be found an inexhaustible source of information respecting the Anglo-Saxon and Norman constitutions, particu larly the rights and revenues of the kings and their vassals, the relations of cities and towns, statistic accounts of various kinds, families and their landed members, together with innumerable matters highly interesting to inquiring posterity, but unnoticed by the chroniclers of those times, either as too well known or as worthless. An intimate acquaint ance with Domesday should supply the basis of every historical account of England, pz:rtieularly of its special history during the middle age." No other country of Europe c a:i show such a work. It was fit, therefore, that it should have been the first great English record published at the national cost. It appeared in 1783 in two folios, being printed with types cast for the purpose, so as to represent the contractions of the original and having been ten years in passing through the press. In 1816, two sup plementary volumes were published, the one containing an excellent general introduc tion, by sir Henry Ellis of the British museum, with indices of the names of places and of the tenants in chief mentioned in the work; the other containing four other records of the same nature: 1. The Exon Domesday, already mentioned; 2. The Inquisitio Eliensis, a record closely resembling the Exeter Domesday, containing the survey of the lands of the monastery of Ely, in the counties of Cambridge, Hertford, Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Huntingdon; 3. The Winton Domesday, containing two surveys of the
city of Winchester, one made between 1107 and 1128, the other in 1148; and, 4. The Boldon Book, a survey of the possessions of the see of Durham, made in 1183. This last work is especially valuable, as partially supplying a deficiency in the survey for D. B., which did not extend to the counties of Durham, Northumberland, West moreland, and Cumberland, either, it would seem, because they had been lately laid waste by the conqueror, or because his dominion was not fully established in them. A new and better edition of the Boldon Book was issued in 1852 by the Sluices society, which, in 1857, printed Bishop Hcstfeld's Surrey, another record of the possessions of the see of Durham, compiled between 1345 and 1381. A new and enlarged edition of sir Henry Ellis's General Introduction to Domesday Book, was published in 1833, in 2 vols. 8vo. See also Stubb's Select Charters, and Freeman's .Yorman Conquest (vol. v., 1876). In 1861, a facsimile copy of that part of D. B. which relateS to Cornwall, was pub lished by the ordnance survey, as an example of what can be done by the new process of engraving called photozincography. This experiment proving successful, govern ment has gone on publishing the rest of the D. B., county by county, in the same way. In 1872, government ordered a general return of owners of lands, to be prepared by the local government board. This new "Domesday Book" was published in 1874-76.