'Fools or Charlatans'

Arthur Wright

Description

'Fools or Charlatans' The Reading of Domesday Book is a statistical analysis of Domesday Book and an exposure of a hoax that appears to have poisoned higher education for over a century. If it was a novel then you wouldn't believe it was possible, laughable yet tragic, here is the proof - England's unique national treasure, Domesday Book, cannot be read. A 900 year old statistical archive which modern scholars cannot put into modern terms, therefore they claim that it never made sense. If so, why was it ever compiled? Arthur Wright delves into the present state of knowledge before asking why relevant, original passages in Domesday Book, and those in coetaneous archives which provide the necessary information, have been hidden from historians and other researchers by Domesday scholars? In a final attempt to understand why such indefensible decisions have been made, Arthur Wright analyses every unit and whole landscapes in order to prove that the whole book can be read like any modern document. Long ago, he maintains, a toxic asset and Trojan was allowed to corrupt higher education and he exposes it and also the lies, denials and cyber attacks made by 'experts' who wished to silence him. This informative read will interest readers of history, politics, economics and methodology. "I have been impressed by Henry Loyn, Oliver Rackham and Mark Overton, but most of all by F. W. Maitland", says Arthur Wright. This is a convincing and compelling argument which also reveals some of the shameful cover-ups in our society's history. What does Domesday Book really say about Saxon England and its landscapes, inhabitants, economies and politics? Readers will be shocked and surprised by this detailed historical account and they will certainly discover it was not an acultural "Dark Age" of ignorance and poverty.

Sujets

• Inglaterra
• Economic history
• Historiography
• England

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 mai 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783066483
• Langue: English

Extrait

“Fools or Charlatans”

Copyright © 2014 Arthur Wright
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
For her unfailing assistance, patience and encouragement over many weary years of statistics and typing I can only say to my wife that these are yet further debts to you that I can never hope to repay.
I am also grateful to Chris Taylor for suggesting the title of this book.
Contents
Illustrations, maps and tabulations
Preface to the Second Edition
Introduction (The importance of D.B. as a foundation)
One: Identifying the Hoax
Two: Throwing off the Halter
Three: Occam’s Razor
Four: Pandora’s Box
Five: The Bones of a Kingdom
Six: “In Each Hide are Fourteen and a Half Carucates”
Seven: “Au Tens Plain de Felonnie…”
Eight: “On Either Side the River Lie…”
Nine: People Matter
Ten: “From Whence Cometh All This…” & Wither Shall it Go?
Eleven: Why Gloucester?
Twelve: Enlarging the Kingdom
Notes and Sources
Synoptic Index
Illustrations And Maps
1 “If all four acres………”
2 Principal Land Units in 1086
3 A Norman (timber) donjon
4 Chelmsford Hundred in Essex
5 Rochford Hundred in Essex
6 Foulness Island
7 Dengy Hundred in Essex
8 The Tribal Hidage – List One
9 The Tribal Hidage – Lists Two and Three
10 Berkshire in 1086 – fisheries
11 Berkshire in 1086 – meadows and woodlands
12 The Industries of Domesday Cornwall
13 Industry on the Essex & Suffolk Borders, 1086
14 Essex, 1086: Flocks of Sheep
15 Essex, 1086: Large Flocks of Sheep
16 Essex, 1086: Freemen remaining
17 Essex, 1086: Socmen remaining
TABULATIONS
1 Essex: The Witham Hundred
2 Essex: The Harlow Hundred
3 Essex: The Clavering Half-Hundred
4 Essex: The Chelmsford Hundred
5 Plough capacities 1086, 1875, 1938, 1953-55
6 The Burghal Hidage
7 Middlesex: (Swinewood) Totals Employed
8 Middlesex: Wood, Meadow and Arable as %
9 Essex: ‘Principal Inhabitants’
10 Gloucester in 1086
11 Summary of Buckinghamshire in 1086
12 Acres per 1 d Geld (Norfolk & Suffolk)
13 The Land Between the Ribble and the Mersey, 1086
Preface To The Second Edition
The original edition of this book (‘HOAX! The Domesday Hide’, 2009) proffered sops to Cerberus. In it I deliberately suggested that a clever hoax had been perpetrated and I avoided any suggestion that we might actually be exposing a fraud, any references to suppressed sources and made no accusation of deliberate deceit. Since then Chris Taylor has kindly presented me with the evidence in a nutshell: synoptically he declared that I, “claim that all historians of the subject, alive or dead, are or have been fools or charlatans”. I had said no such thing in my conspectus but his redaction seems apt and almost accurate so I will now pull no punches. If you will read this new edition with his perception in mind I think you will appreciate what it means and why he seemed (to me) so anxious to censor my evidence.
I will also do my best in this edition to explain more clearly the research I have undertaken during a significant part of my life and its results, accepting that I probably still display an “over compressed style”, the result of having too much to say and never enough space in which to say it. I have found it difficult, over the years, to understand how people can be blinded by the semblance of authority combined with false teachings, likewise the inability of supposed ‘experts’ to thoroughly read the sources they are quoting. Sadly I never got used to believing what I was told in the absence of some very good reason, such as evidence, for believing it. Such things can make one impatient of others. As the holder of heretical opinions I have never had a colleague who could make helpful suggestions or emendations, or even read the drafts for me, which has indeed been a disadvantage. Adopting the role of frondeur (exposing hoax or fraud) then you find all men’s hands raised against you, so I can only say that I hope those who are not “fools or charlatans” will just struggle through to the end.
It was, of course, Round (reinforced by Seebohm) who hoaxed everyone (well before Piltdown, note!) with the convenience of an indemonstrable hypothesis – the infinitely variable “geld hide” – an imaginary artefact which was also a logical antithesis being simultaneously both ‘A’ and ‘not A’. This was then further elaborated with a legerdemain “five hide unit” of tax (geld) which was always ‘local’ and of unspecified and indeterminate fiscal proportions! In fact so firmly has this unproven and speculative unit become embedded in the mythology of Domesday that no-one is allowed to consider an areal hide and the several direct references to it in Domesday Book, as both a land measurement and as 240 acres, are not known and never quoted. ‘Authorities’ even declare (now) that the sulung was twice a hide, though there is only evidence against this. I think the acceptance of 240 acres for the sulung is probably the result of my isolating the formula for it thirty years ago in the Kent folios, though I may be wrong, but the formula I isolated (repeated here in chapter two ) is not only proved by an overwhelming statistical case but has documentary reference which says of the manor of Wy – “swulungarum, id est hidarum” 1 . The hoax of a variable “geld hide” or “fiscal hide” has remained unshaken for over 100 years because a fixed 120 acre hide (as proposed most recently by the late Professor Morris in the Phillimore series of Domesday shires) or any of the many other guesses made by ‘experts’ cannot be made to work arithmetically. A proper reading of Domesday Book would have supplied the missing number, but apparently no one bothered to look! At least I hope not; if they did we have uncovered an outright fraud. I prefer to elect academic indolence.
All the typical, circular, a priori, arguments of Domesday scholars follow a pattern: having been informed (for example) by their mentors (who produce no certain or internal evidence for their ‘deductions’) that the “original yields and breeds” of Domesday differed enormously from later centuries (whatever relevance that has to areal measurement and such arguments as they use being drawn from 120 acre or variable “geld hide” speculations) they complain that my arguments do not acknowledge such ‘discoveries’, or themselves. In other words, someone claims a proven ‘fact’ drawn from a personal fancy (informed by Round’s teachings) which acolytes then accept as the starting point for their own speculations, and this is passed off as a higher education! In point of fact it is a religion and, as such, permits no evolution of thought. My first edition tried to offer a palatable re-appraisal but the savants still continue to try to draw the wool over any uncritical eyes. As they can no longer scoff and misrepresent my researches no doubt they will pretend that this new edition is only my first edition with a couple of chapters appended? If so it would be a good idea for them to actually read what I have written rather than inventing stories in order to vent their spite and instead of launching cyber attacks to destroy my computer. Yes, some people take the threat I pose very seriously. What a pity they do not have the courage to stand up and be recognised, the courage to stand up and make open defence of their nonsense.
The notion that the hide unit might involve a fiscal value, even to the exclusion of superficial quantity, apparently sprang from the Reverend R. W. Eyton. We shall see that the two are not mutually exclusive but actually dependent for defining the quantity actually defines the fiscal value. There is nothing that prevents the hide being an areal unit and a fiscal application, one merely has to find a reconcilable unitary value. Older scholars than Eyton had instinctively realised this, though in arguing that the hide had become divorced from areas of valuation Eyton himself was instinctively correct: as we shall see, the desire to evade the geld corrupted the application of geld to hides while alien logic from the Danelaw exacerbated the situation (or whichever came first!). However it was Eyton who also first suggested, most sensibly, that Domesday Book was an aggregation of social and economic statistics which, given the correct formulae and logic, could be used to reconstruct physical descriptions by comparison and evaluation with modern statistics (a contention particularly developed in his final work, “Domesday Studies: Staffordshire”, 1881). He was absolutely right this is exactly what I have done and accomplished beyond a shadow of a doubt. Once again, although Maitland and Round both declared Domesday Book to be a “geld book” whose values were divorced from realities (which Galbraith later challenged and Snooks and McDonald have helped expose) the use of statistics to record both “geld” (tax) and economic statistics (hides, etcetera) is not mutually exclusive but demonstrably, historically so, dependent. Here is the proof.
It was Round’s lack of logic, so often the source of his inadvert