New $2M Project Aims To Digitize 16th Century ‘Tudor Domesday’ Records
History nerds, rejoice!
An incredibly detailed land-use survey and census from the 1500s, commissioned by none other than Henry VIII, will soon be digitally available to everyone — including genealogists, educators, researchers and community groups — thanks to a new $2 million project.
The historic records, published under the title “Valor Ecclesiasticus,” or Value of the Church, were the Tudor equivalent of the Domesday Book, and often captured minute details of the everyday lives of children, slaves and landowners.
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In 1534, Henry VIII broke with Rome and made himself head of the Church in England. All church taxes were to be sent to the Crown rather than to the Pope and the Catholic Church. Henry and his ministers wanted to know what the church comprised in terms of buildings, land and activities.
Commissioners were sent out to every diocese in the land with the aim of obtaining every little detail. Above all, the Commissioners were to identify the exact value of taxable income to ensure that the Crown was receiving the correct amount.
The result was the “Valor Ecclesiasticus” listing 8,000 parish churches, 650 monasteries, 22 cathedrals and numerous chapels, chantries, colleges, schools, hospitals and poor houses. It listed buildings and grounds, farmland and the commercial, industrial and residential property in which they were invested.
Valor Ecclesiasticus even recorded the names of many of the men and women who lived and worked with these ecclesiastical enterprises, as well as the children, elderly and sick who depended on them for their welfare. Commissioners were also tasked with identifying the state of the religious houses, seeking out evidence of corruption and bad behaviour.
Henry initially used this survey to decide which religious houses were earning less than £200 ($265) a year, and were of little use for the money they earned. This led to the first Act of Dissolution of the monasteries, followed eventually by the Dissolution of all other monasteries nationwide.
The National Archives holds the official manuscript. Until recently, this was all that was widely available. Recent research work involving private libraries has highlighted the existence of early drafts created by the King’s Commissioners. As a result, it is now possible to trace each step of the surveyors and establish exactly what they saw throughout Tudor England.
James Clark, a professor at University of Exeter, is co-leading the digitization project.
“‘Valor Ecclesiasticus’ is second only to Domesday Book as a three-dimensional snapshot of the realm, even surpassing it in the impression it gives of England’s landscape and the lives and occupations of local society,” he said. “It reveals the men, women and children who led, laboured for, or benefited from the great institutions of the day, and it offers a rare glimpse of what they saw, even a hint of the weather they endured.”
The level of detail within the survey is incredible. To take one example, Aylesbury Greyfriars was a house of Franciscan Friars founded in 1386. It was closed in 1538. The commissioners noted that it had seven members, and its value was £3 2s 5d (around $4). It was so poor that there was no money available to pay pensions for the friars even after its properties were sold as Dr John London indicated to Cromwell, “the house, beside the plate and lead was little worth, and scarce able to despatch them honestly, so he need be charged only with the lead, the house, and the iron in the windows.”
Rediscovering the Tudor Domesday project has been funded by a grant from the U.K. Research & Innovation’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). Led by the University of Exeter, the three-year-long project will be undertaken by an interdisciplinary team involving the University of Nottingham, the University of Reading, the National Archives, the National Trust and community groups throughout the country.
“The main task is to create digital content of valuable resource material by comparing the drafts with the fair copy that will be accessible and available to everyone,” commented Professor Jayne Carroll, professor in Early English and Name-Studies, School of English and Project Co-Lead at the University of Nottingham.
The researchers will map every detail by county, city, town, village and area of the countryside.
Carroll said the results will be extremely beneficial due to the sheer amount of information that is provided for each location. Not only does it give information on people, their names and occupations, it stresses the role the monasteries played in the community, such as the acreage of wood that a monastery possessed. It indicates how much timber would be available in each location, the number of water mills and harvest figures.
“That level of detail relating to wealth in the sixteenth century brings the changes in the environment and landscape into sharp focus,” she said. “Identifying how many acres of flooded land in Lincolnshire existed at that time could provide insights into modern life.”
Angela Youngman is a freelance journalist who has written for a wide range of British and international publications.