The English and the Norman Conquest Book

Most books on the Norman Conquest concentrate on the conquerors, the Norman settlers who became the ancestors of the medieval English baronage; the English experience tends to be confined to works on economic or social history, which deals with the peasantry and the development of villeinage, thus projecting a picture of Norman lords and English serfs. This book seeks to present a subtler but more accurate view by examining the more truly representative experience of the lesser lords and landowners among the English, who survived the Conquest and settlement, adapted to foreign customs and, in the process, preserved much of the native tradition and culture. Though the great earls amd magnates fell with King Harold II, or in the English revolt which followed, some of their dependants managed to secure a place in the entourages of their supplanters, or were too useful in the royal administration to be completely displaced. In the Church too, especially in the great Benedictine houses, a reservoir of English sentiment survived to inspire the Anglo-Norman historians who chronicled the Conquest. Their testimony is an important source for our knowledge of how the lesser aristocracy and the free landholders felt about their new masters; others include the Domesday Book, the brainchild of a Norman king and his council, but the production of the system of local government developed by his English predecessors.Read More