The world of Domesday studies is divided between those who use Domesday data and those who merely worry about them. Some five years ago Chris Lewis asserted that a sure-fire way of finding out what you are in for is to look up the word ‘pig’ in the index. If you find it you know that you are in for a feast of figures and yields. If not, look out for texts and procedure. I do not know which he intended as a recommendation. I am going to hedge my bets here. I want to look at pigs but in a non-piggy way.

In the last fifty years or so there has developed a growing awareness that the Domesday inquest was concerned with lordship. Outside the estate agent's office and the lunatic fringe, Domesday Book is no longer seen as a comprehensive Rough Guide to Norman England. Paradoxically, in tandem with this acceptance of the limitations of the source, there has developed a new confidence in its thoroughness and scope within its own remit. In the last twenty years sophisticated statistical tools have been brought to bear on the Domesday data, notably by Professors McDonald and Snooks, and the results have been held to be significant (both in the statistical as well as in the everyday sense). High correlations are found between almost all the variables of Domesday Book. Thus, it has been shown that manorial resources increase in proportion to the assessment of estates and that values accurately reflect this reality.