"Domesday Book is a vast mine of materials for the social and economical history of our country, a mine almost inexhaustible, and to a great extent as yet unworked. Among national documents it is unique. There is nothing that approaches it in interest and value except the Landnámabók, which records the names of the original settlers in Iceland and the designations they bestowed upon the places where they settled, and tells us how the island was taken up and apportioned among them. Such a document for England, describing the way in which our forefathers divided the territory they conquered, and how 'they called the lands after their own names,' would indeed be priceless. But the Domesday Book does, indirectly, supply materials for the history of the English as well as of the Norman Conquest, for it records not only how the lands of England were divided among the Norman host which conquered at Senlac, but it gives us also the names of the Saxon and Danish holders who possessed the lands before the great battle which changed all the future history of England, and enables us to trace the extent of the transfer of the land from Englishmen to Normans; it shows how far the earlier owners were reduced to tenants, and by its enumeration of the classes of population--freemen, sokemen, villans, cottiers, and slaves--it indicates the nature and extent of the earlier conquests. Thus we learn that in the West of England slaves were numerous, while in the East they were almost unknown, and hence we gather that in the districts first subdued the British population was exterminated or driven off, while in the West it was reduced to servitude." _I. Taylor, Domesday Survivals (Domesday Studies, volume 1)._ ALSO IN: _E. A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest, chapters 21-22 and appendix A in volume 5._ _W. de Gray Birch, Domesday Book._ _F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book (Dict. Pol. Econ.)._ {796} ENGLAND: A. D. 1087-1135. The sons of the Conqueror and their reigns.