Orderic Vitalis, after completing his long and compelling account of the perils overcome by William the Conqueror in 1069–70, paused to describe the hard-won rewards of some of the new king's most loyal followers. Hugh d'Avranches, so he tells us, received the county of Chester, Roger de Montgomery Arundel and later Shropshire, and Eudo of Champagne Holderness. Orderic goes on at length about the new lands of ‘earls and magnates too numerous to name’. He ends his catalogue of earldoms and fees, however, with a sobering remark, to remind his audience upon what hardships Norman prosperity in England was founded:

The Peterborough Chronicler, too, describes the lands acquired by William's companions. As the monk recounts the plagues, fires and famines of 1087, he writes: