The English and the Norman Conquest

Most books on the Norman conquest concentrate on the conquerors, the Norman settlers who became the ancestors of the medieval English baronage. This book is different, setting out to examine the experience of the lesser English lords and landowners, which has been largely ignored. Ann Williams shows how they survived the conquest and settlement, adapted to foreign customs, and in the process preserved native tradition and culture. Though the great earls and magnates fell with Harold, some of their dependents secured a place in the entourages of their supplanters, or were too useful to the royal administration (based largely on English procedure) to be completely displaced; in the Church, too, a reservoir of English sentiment survived. The testimony of the Anglo-Norman historians who chronicled the Conquest, together with other evidence, including the Domesday Book (based on the English system of local government), are an important source for our knowledge of how the lesser aristocracy and the free landholders felt about, and reacted to, their new masters. Dr ANN WILLIAMS was until her retirement Senior Lecturer in medieval history at the Polytechnic of North London.