William the Conqueror commissions the Domesday Book. The first draft is completed in August 1086 and contains records for 13,418 settlements in the English counties south of the rivers Ribble and Tees (the border with Scotland at the time). William commissions the book to assess the extent of the land and owned in England at the time, and the extent of the taxes he could raise. The information collected is recorded in two huge books, in the space of around a year. William dies in 1087 before the Domeday Book is completed. It is considered to be the first census taken in England, and is preserved in London's Public Record Office in Kew.

It was called the Domesday Book because: "It was written by an observer of the survey that "there was no single hide nor a yard of land, nor indeed one ox nor one cow nor one pig which was left out." The grand and comprehensive scale on which the Domesday survey took place, and the irreversible nature of the information collected led people to compare it to the Last Judgement, or 'Doomsday', described in the Bible, when the deeds of Christians written in the Book of Life were to be placed before God for judgement. This name was not adopted until the late 12th Century."

Through the Arab conquest of North Africa and Southern Spain, papermaking first reaches the Moorish parts of Spain in the 11th century. A paper mill is recorded at Fez in Morocco in 1100, and the first mill on the Spanish mainland is recorded at Xativa in 1151.

"Paper seems to have advanced less rapidly in Europe than it had advanced either in China or in the Arabic world. The European parchment with which paper had to compete was a far better writing material than either bamboo slips or papyrus. Furthermore, there were few in Europe who read, and the demand for a cheaper writing matterial, until the advent of printing, was small. While it was the coming of paper that made the invention of printing possible, it was the invention of printing that made the use of paper general. After Europe began to print, first from blocks and then from type, paper quickly took its place as the one material for writing as well as for printing, though, strange to say, the first paper mill in England was not set up until seventeen years after Caxton began to print at Westminster." (Carter, Invention of Printing in China 2nd ed [1955] 137-38.)