Determining a place of origin for each of the landholders occurring in Domesday Book is a compIex process which requires a firm focus on the onomastics of both personal and place names. Success is by no means guaranteed, even if one can surmount the initial hurdles provided by missing surnames and unIocalizable tenants-in-chief. Even if one can localize a particular tenant-in-chief, or even if the onomastic evidence is free of the complication of ultimate ancestry outside Normandy, there may remain problems such as the common place-name which cannot be identified with precision within a given area. The difficulties notwithstanding, the value for understanding the composition of ‘Norman’ society in 1086 of putting a concern with region or nation of origin at the centre of an inquiry into Domesday prosopography has been demonstrated in Chapter 2 above, whilst the prosopography given at length below will confirm that value for the understanding of the English settlement and subsequent English tenurial history.

It is not possible in this Introduction to answer fully any of the questions I have posed as relative to Domesday prospography, or to attempt much in the way of analysis of the results I have obtained. Nevertheless, the results of the first full-scale inquiry into the continental origins of post-Conquest English landholders deserve some attention. Those relating specifically to the Normans will be given separate treatment below. Before venturing some summary statistics for continental origins, an important preliminary point needs to be made. No absolute certainty is claimed for any of the results summarized in the Domesday Prosopography. Indeed, the entire programme of research is based upon the idea of uncertainty, expressed as degrees of probability. The most frequently used words in the prosopography are probably, perhaps and possibly.