COEL Database

COEL Database

This major research project had four principle goals: to establish the succession to Domesday fees, to establish the provenance (Norman or other, including English) of the first fee-holder, and to provide a prosopographical register of all persons occurring in English administrative documents written in the century after the Norman Conquest. The full Latin texts of over 4000 documents were included in the database and integrally linked to analysis about over the 9000 persons, and their families, who occur in them. Query and search facilites aimed to make easy work of finding, cross-referencing and interrogating a wealth of detail, and included visual aids such as dynamic family trees.

The project resulted in the publication of three essential reference books: K. S. B. Keats-Rohan and David E. Thornton (compilers.), Domesday Names: An Index of Latin Personal and Place Names in Domesday Book (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1997, reprinted 2007) ISBN: 0851154298.

K S. B. Keats-Rohan, Domesday People: A Prosopography of Persons Occurring in English Document: 1066-1166, Vol. I: Domesday Book (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1999) ISBN: 085115722X. [Out of Print], and Domesday Descendants: A Prosopography of Persons Occurring in English Document: 1066-1166, Vol. II: Pipe Rolls to Cartae Baronum (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2002) ISBN: 0851158633. Print-on-demand versions of these books are now available from the publisher.

The COEL database forms an essential complement to the books, which it eclipsed in wealth of detail and functionality. The database provides a rapid index facility for the tens of thousand of names and other data in the books. It provides in addition the Latin texts on which the English commentaries were based, family trees, full Latin and English text searching, querying and more besides.

Due to changes in technology since it was produced it is not currently possible to run the original COEL as an installable programme. A new version is currently under construction for delivery on the web. Updates will be posted here in due course.