DIGITISED MANUSCRIPTS

monks. In time, as an ever-increasing demand arose for books, the copying of them was entrusted to lay- men, who worked at first only for the abbots, and subsequently for the King and the great nobles of the realm. Caligraphy became an art, and attained a pitch of excellence which is unknown at the pre- sent day. It is but a few months ago since I was invited by the Master of the Rolls to the Record Office, and there with much reverence I turned over the pages of a book than which none more remark- able or interesting has ever since been produced. This was the Domesday Book, a ponderous manu- script written in characters of extraordinary fineness and regularity. The Dom Boc, or the Book of Judgment, as it was originally called, was compiled by direction of William the Conqueror in the year 1086. It is, as you may be aware, a register of the possessions of every freeman throughout the country. As this register was compiled by the Norman Conqueror for the purposes of taxation, and as it was followed by the imposition of three distinct descrip- tions of land tax, the landlords of the day may not have regarded its completion with much gratification. For some centuries still all learning and edu- cation were in the hands of the clergy and the monks, but, learned and educated as they were, these clerical and literary gentlemen indulged in practices which were not always consistent with their religious B