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The Domesday Book was the record of the great survey of England completed in 1086, executed for William I of England, or 'William the Conqueror'. The survey was similar to a census by a government of today. While spending Christmas of 1085 in Gloucester, William "had deep speech with his counsellors and sent men all over England to each shire ... to find out ... what or how much each landholder had in land and livestock, and what it was worth" (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle). One of the main purposes of the survey was to determine who held what, and what taxes had been liable under Edward the Confessor; the judgment of the Domesday assessors was final—whatever the book said about who held the material wealth, or what it was worth, was the law, and there was no appeal. It was written in Latin, although there were some vernacular words inserted for native terms with no previous Latin equivalent, and the text was highly abbreviated. The name Domesday comes from the Old English word dom (of which the Modern English doom is descended), meaning accounting or reckoning. Thus domesday, or doomsday, is literally a day of reckoning, meaning that a lord takes account of what is owed by his subjects. In August 2006, a complete online version of Domesday Book was made available for the first time by the UK's National Archives. Despite its name, Little Domesday is actually larger — as it is far more detailed, down to numbers of livestock. It has been suggested that Little Domesday represents a first attempt, and that it was found impossible, or at least inconvenient, to complete the work on the same scale for Great Domesday.
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