The underlying intention of this work is to provide a prosopographical key to the rich collection of administrative documents produced in the period 1066 to 1166, which England is so uniquely privileged to have produced and preserved. The basis of the Prosopography is therefore these administrative texts, viz. Domesday Book, the Pipe Rolls, the Cartae Baronum, as well as Surveys such as the Lindsey and Northants Survey (printed in the original Latin in Domesday People, App. I—II, pp. 77-117). A number of charter collections illustrating the material held in the base texts have been used in an integrated database system to produce the Prosopography printed below. Each item in the Prosopography is followed by a list of these ‘foundation’ references - that is, the base administrative texts and the selected charter collections. In the Bibliography the ‘foundation’ texts are marked with an asterisk. The bulk of the references for the Prosopography of Domesday Book are from Domesday Book itself. These are found in Domesday People in forename order.

The second part of the Prosopography is a list of persons in second-name or ‘surname’ order. Persons for whom no ‘surname’ has been identified are listed first. All name forms have been standardized and are given in Latin. Look-up tables of forenames and surnames are provided below.

Each commentary seeks to give basic information about birth and marriage family, regional origin, inheritance and descent of fees, founding or patronage of religious houses, and any career information which allows more precise dating of the subject's life. Reference will always be made to standard works such as Loyd, Origins, Sanders, Baronies, Complete Peerage, etc., wherever relevant. Where ‘(q.v.)’ follows a name within a commentary it means that there is an entry on that person, either here or in volume I (indicated by the date 1086), and it usually means that important supplementary information will be found there. Reference to charter collections is made according to charter numbers; to all other sources, reference is by page, unless stated otherwise; references in the form 35/100 are to charter number then page number. ‘Cf.’ before reference to a secondary source normally indicates a contrary opinion that I have rejected or otherwise regard as unreliable.