Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/501

1922 The following are some of the titles given in the thirteenth century to this roll:


 * 1) Magnus Rotulus Comitatus Cestrie qui vocatur Domesday.
 * 2) Rotulus qui vocatur Domesday.
 * 3) Magnus Rotulus Domini Comitis, or, after 1237, Regis.
 * 4) Domesday.
 * 5) Liber vocatus Domesday in Scaccario Cestrie.

The herald of 1580 called what he saw Rotulus antiquarum Chartarum vocatus Domesday. Stanley made extracts about 1591 from 'the booke called Domesday'. Booth or Vernon copied from 'the roll called Cheshyre Domesday'.

Ormerod's explanation of the title of this roll is that it was so termed by analogy with the great Survey of 1086, because it supplied equally decisive and irrefragable evidence upon the matters and transactions to which it bore witness. This explanation is in agreement with the definition in the New English Dictionary of the title of Domesday Book proper as 'a book by which all men would be judged', 'a popular appellation given to it as a final and conclusive authority on all matters on which it had to be referred to', the name being subsequently transferred to other like documents of standard authority. All this, however, rather begs the question why the returns to the great Inquest were called Domesday Book, and we do not doubt that the origin of the title of both the records is the same. A 'doomsday' was a day on which, at the public meetings of a county, 'dooms' (judgements and verdicts) were given. The replies given by the jurors to the inquiries made in 1086 were 'dooms' returned at these 'doomsdays' all over England. Hence, we think, the title of Domesday Book, and also that of the 'Domesday' Roll of Chester. For at these county assemblies, these 'doomsdays', besides current legal business, it was customary for charters and important documents to be read, and for persons to make solemn admissions and the like, for the purpose of preserving a record of transactions and facts. The tribunal at the plenus comitatus (which we think meant rather a public, open, meeting of the county than a full one) varied, but we often find the earl himself presiding, with beside him his justiciar, and grouped round them the steward, the constable, several of the 'barons', the abbot of Chester, the knights and freemen, including the 'judgers' and the suitors, with some stewards of absent magnates, while doubtless many spectators filled the hall. In early days, preservation of these records must have depended upon the memory of the tribunal, by means of appeals to the recollection of persons who had been present or by the hearsay evidence of those who had been told of the events by their neighbours or ancestors. Where actual documents were read or where oral statements