ABSTRACT
One set of Anglo-Saxon territorial units which was broken up following the Conquest was the earldoms. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reported that William: sent his men over all England into every shire and had them find out how many hundred hides there were in the shire, or what land and cattle the king himself had in the country, or what dues he ought to have in twelve months from the shire. When Reginald Lennard wrote Rural England 1086–1135 he began in this way: ‘when William the Conqueror seized the English Crown, he became the ruler of an ancient realm. England was already an old country.’ Every page of the Domesday Book hints at this, yet it is unrealistic to believe that it enables to reconstruct in detail English landscape in the late eleventh century. The conventional interpretation of Domesday woodland is that it reflects a countryside which was still fairly heavily wooded and into which settlers were still making inroads.
