His immediate need was to raise a tax, but the compilation of the Domesday Book was more than just a glorified audit. It was a complete inventory of everything in the kingdom, shire by shire, pig by pig, who had owned what before the coming of the Normans and who owned what now, how much it had been worth then and how much now. The King sent his men all over England into every shire, and had them find out how many hundred hides there were in each shire, what land and cattle the King himself had in the county. So very narrowly did he have it investigated, there was no single hide nor shame to relate it, but it seemed no shame to him, was there one ox or one cow left out and not put down in record. While some of the information was taken verbally by William's scribes, some must have owed its existence to Saxon records. In fact, the most extraordinary paradox about the Domesday Book is that what we think of as a monument to the power and strength of the Normans owed itself to the advanced machinery of government left in place by the old Anglo-Saxon monarchy. And it was thanks to this that the data was collected at such lightning speed, less than six months.


他的直接目的是提高赋税，但是《末日审判书》的编撰。《末日审判书》为加强管理收取地租而进行的全国土地调查情况的汇编，并非美化了的统计报告那么简单。它完整记录了国家的每一样东西，逐郡审查，连一头猪都不放过，每家每户在诺曼征服前，财产多少，现在又拥有多少。那时价值几何，现在又几何，国王派人至英格兰全境，深入到每一个郡。让他们统计出，每郡面积几何，国王在每个郡拥有多少王田和家畜。他的调查极为严格细致，既不敢藏匿也不会因丢脸而耻于记录，或说对他来讲不会耻于记录，是不是有一头牛，没有被记录下来。其中一些信息由威廉的书记员记录下来，而另一些定是出自撒克逊人之手。关于《末日审判书》最著名的悖论就是，它虽被视为诺曼权力与力量的象征，却是靠着盎格鲁撒克逊人的君主制，所留下的先进的政府运作系统，才得以完成。也是靠着它，所有信息几乎在不到六个月的极短时间内统计完毕。