Norman Conquest

Norman Conquest William the Conqueror's victory at the battle of Hastings in October 1066 was followed by six years of campaigning. In the succeeding decades, the Norman kings and their followers expanded their power into Wales and Lowland Scotland. A massive take‐over of English land and resources accomplished within a framework of notional legality was largely complete by 1086, the year when Domesday Book was made. On a longer‐term perspective, it is arguable that the Conquest itself had relatively little impact on a broader evolutionary process of economy, society, landscape, and language. The newcomers were a small military élite who were gradually assimilated into Britain. On the other hand, it is not unreasonable to think of the Norman Conquest as a decisive shift within this broader process; the England and the Britain which emerged from the Norman military take‐over were surely significantly different from the one which would have developed if Harold had won. There can be no doubt that William and his successors governed through mechanisms which were essentially those of the late Old English kingdom. The new aristocracy claimed to exercise the same powers over their peasants as their English predecessors had done. Not everyone, however, would accept this appearance of continuity at face value. William I, William II, and Henry I all intervened with increasing frequency in the shires. It was also the case that the Conquest's creation of the cross‐channel Anglo‐Norman realm can be linked over centuries to the outbreak of the Hundred Years War. The new connection with France also established cultural connections which ensured that England's place in the 12th‐cent. renaissance was more closely linked to developments in France than it would have been. The Conquest extracted England from the Scandinavian political orbit which had brought about the earlier conquest by Sweyn Forkbeard and Cnut. It is doubtful whether Wales, Scotland, and—ultimately—Ireland would have been as intensively colonized from England but for the presence of a new aggressive aristocracy.