What determined the value recorded for a manor in the Domesday Book? This is a controversial question among scholars engaged in Domesday studies, and various arguments have been adduced as solutions to this problem. It has been suggested that the Normans calculated manorial value by using the quantity of a manor's sheep, its annual income, the amount of its tax units, or the number of its plow lands; but no one has proved which of these factors were used by the Normans in 1086 to compute manorial value. Many of these proposed solutions overlook the importance of agrarian agriculture, which was the basis of Domesday economy. Some historians disregard the contemporary meaning of Domesday terminology to advance their new and, as yet, unacceptable interpretations of how to compute the value of a manor. This article uses the contemporary meaning of Domesday terminology combined with traditional historical method and statistical analysis to argue that the Normans used plow lands as the basis for determining manorial value in Domesday Essex county.

Before the arrival of modern computers, the vast amount of available information in the Domesday Book obscured this simple solution to the problem. There was just too much data to be assessed accurately by pen and pencil. The unique qualities of the Domesday survey make it particularly suitable for a computerized statistical analysis of its database. This is because the survey employed a predetermined set of questions that yield data appropriate for statistical analysis, and manorial value is one of those questions.

With the collapse of presbyterian efforts to effect structural change in the Church of England in the 1590s, reformers were forced to realize that only widespread and sustained popular support could bring about further reform of the church. It is in this last decade of Elizabeth's reign that Christopher Hill sees the emergence of what he calls a “new Puritanism” designed to nurture such a broad base of support for further reform. This “new Puritanism,” which emphasized preaching and the cultivation of an individual piety rather than ecclesiastical reorganization, “with the household as its essential unit rather than the parish,” could also be described as a return to earlier values that had characterized Puritanism before the rise of the presbyterian party. Whether one chooses to interpret the trends of the late 1590s as “new” or “old,” what is important is that reformers by 1600 were making extensive use of both pulpit and press as instruments for influencing the hearts and minds of the English laity. An examination of the more frequently reprinted works of practical divinity in the first generation of the seventeenth century (which included much sermon literature) ought to reveal the themes that reformers hoped would strike a responsive chord with English readers.

Surveying such publications from the 1580s into the early 1600s, we may be surprised to find that two of the most popular works were Protestantized versions of Catholic works: Thomas Rogers's translation of De imitatione Christi (1580) and Edmund Bunny's A Booke of Christian exercise, appertaining to Resolution (1584), adapted from Robert Parsons's First Book of the Christian exercise (1582).

The depiction of influenza as a separate species of disease first became common during the eighteenth century. During that period, physicians developed competing theories about its etiology (causation) and transmission, including the theory that influenza was contagious. Theories of contagion were held by an increasing number of physicians during the course of the eighteenth century, although the issue remained a contested one, as symbolized by the publication of two separate reports on the epidemic of 1782 by the Royal College of Physicians and the Society for Promoting Medical Knowledge: reports that differed on the question of transmission.

It was because this issue was not settled by an overwhelming preponderance of the evidence that physician's views on this question had political implications that reflect the political and social fissures underlying medical practice in the eighteenth century. This article will examine the political, social, religious, and educational factors that influenced the initiative to investigate influenza as a separate disease, and will argue that these factors also influenced the readiness of some groups of physicians to entertain the hypothesis of contagion in the face of conflicting information. It will also suggest that the divergence of opinion on epidemic diseases reflected the social and educational differences between the graduates of English universities who were eligible for Fellowship in the College of Physicians, and the often equally distinguished “outsiders” who had obtained their medical degrees from other institutions, and who formed competing medical associations.