So, from the off, he was having to disinherit Englishmen Anglo-Saxons. Initially dead Englishmen, but, increasingly, as the rebellions against him went on, living Englishmen too. And so more and more Englishmen found themselves without a stake in society. That led to great change within English society because, ultimately, it meant that the entire elite of Anglo-Saxon England was disinherited and replaced by continental newcomers.
And that process took several years. The other reason for the constant rebellions against William — and this is the surprising bit — is that he and the Normans were initially perceived by the English as being lenient. Now, that sounds strange after the bloodbath that was the Battle of Hastings. But after that battle was won and William had been crowned king, he sold the surviving English elite back their lands and tried to make peace with them.
At the start he tried to have a genuinely Anglo-Norman society. But if you compare that to the way that the Danish king Cnut the Great started his reign, it was very different. Keeping some aspects of the Anglo-Saxon government would help him to achieve this continuity.
But, in addition, many of those systems were effective and so there was little need for change. Sign up to Comment. Similar History resources: Edward the Confessor. On his land, the Lord owned a hearth-hall, within which he housed his retinue of warriors.
His tenants brought their produce to this hall, feeding and maintaining the retinue. In return, the Lord provided all on his land with security. It was when he was unable to provide that security that the lord got worried: lack of security was the defining trait of 'bad' lordship.
This is best exemplified in the epic Saxon poem Beowulf, in which the adventurer Beowulf is drawn to the hearth of the Danish king Hrothgar by the king's famed generosity. There, he rids Hrothgar of the monsters which are threatening the security of his hearth and is generously rewarded.
Beowulf finally dies trying to win a treasure hoard from a dragon threatening his own land - a potent combination of security and gold, the two driving forces of lordship in his time.
In 10th Century Anglo-Saxon England, this dynamic had been complicated by a highly chequered history. In administrative terms, it meant that pre-Norman England had become the most 'organised' state in Western Europe. The king controlled a land divided into shires and hundreds, on which taxation was assessed and levied. These taxes were collected in coin from the burhs and fresh coin was minted 3 times a year in 60 royal mints arranged throughout the country.
In this respect, it was a very Roman system. It is even likely though not certain that Edward the Confessor had a Chancery headed by the clerk Regenbald. The whole system was run by a set of royal officers, the shire reeves sheriffs , with individual reeves looking after each hundred. Military service was still technically based on land 'loaned' from a lord in return for service. Yet by the 10th Century, this land had often been granted away in the form of 'bookland' which was a royal gift in perpetuity to a loyal retainer.
Alfred and his successors had dealt with the problem by instituting the fyrd and military obligation was measured in hides. In essence, the Anglo-Saxon kings had bypassed the problem of lordship by imposing duties on the land itself. Large landowners were now expected to bring a retinue of thegns with them, based on the hideage of their land, and the very definition of a thegn was someone who could afford to arm himself as a warrior with the proceeds of his land.
The more powerful thegns themselves had retinues of housecarls, old-style military retainers who served in the hope of being granted bookland and thegn status in return for their loyalty.
The land became known as Northmannia — meaning the land of the Northmen — which was later shortened to Normandy. The Viking settlers intermarried with the French and by the year , they were no longer Viking pagans, but French speaking Christians. A group of Normans conquered land in Italy in and by they had taken over most of Southern Italy — where they showed remarkable ability when it came to governing.
The Battle of Hastings marks the last time mainland Britain was invaded by a foreign power and saw the Normans sweep to victory over the old Anglo-Saxons. The event, in many ways marked the creation of the England and Britain we know today, with our Queen able to trace her lineage back to William the Conqueror.
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