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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2009
There can be no question that the redistribution of land after the Norman Conquest amounted to a tenurial revolution of the most far-reaching kind. It affected the lower classes of society less than their superiors. The Normans possessed no clear-cut system of manorial economy which could be applied as a whole to a conquered country. The later history of England proves that no attempt was ever made to apply a uniform method of estate-management to the various forms assumed by English rural life. The social differences between Anglo-Danish and Anglo-Saxon England were as strongly marked in 1150 as in 1066. But it is equally clear that the Conquest had come to the higher orders of English society as a catastrophe from which they never fully recovered. It was completed within twenty years from the landing of Duke William, and Domesday Book, which is its record, gives conclusive evidence of its intensity and range. In 1086, although many Englishmen were still in possession of considerable estates, it was the rarest of exceptions for an Englishman to hold a position which entitled him to political influence or gave him military power. Two Englishmen only, Thurkill of Arden and Colswein of Lincoln, held tenancies of the first order under the king himself. The English lords of 1086 are clearly survivals from a society which had been shattered by foreign conquest and their place in the new order which had superseded it was obviously insecure.
page 2 note 01 Chronicon Monasterii de Abingdon (Rolls Series), ii. 3.Google Scholar
page 3 note 01 Historia ecclesiastica, ed. A. le Prevost, ii. 194.Google Scholar
page 3 note 02 The name-group Bōt, for example, was introduced from England into Scandinavia about the middle of the eleventh century according to the evidence collected by von Friesen, O. in A philological miscellany presented to Eilert Ekwall (Uppsala, 1942), pp. 357–65.Google Scholar
page 4 note 03 Ailnoth of Canterbury, Historia Sancti Canuti RegisGoogle Scholar in Langebek, , Scriptores rerum Danicarum, iii. 373.Google Scholar
page 4 note 01 The word is used in ancient Russian sources as a general description of all the Scandinavian peoples known in the East.
page 5 note 01 Malaterra, Geoffrey, Historia Sicula.Google Scholar
page 5 note 02 Historia ecclesiastica, ed. Prevost, A. le, ii. 172–3; iii. 169.Google Scholar
page 6 note 01 The chief facts bearing on this tradition were collected by Freeman, , Norman Conquest, iv, Appendix G.Google Scholar
page 6 note 02 Monasticon Anglicanum, vii. 996.Google Scholar
page 6 note 03 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, MS. D, under 1079.Google Scholar
page 7 note 01 Historia Sancti Canuti Regis, ed. Langebek, , Scriptores, iii. 347.Google Scholar
page 7 note 02 Domesday Book, i, fo. 148b.
page 9 note 01 Vol. xvi, p. 284. The manuscript omits the initial of the king who issued the writ. It is assigned to William, II in Davis, ' Regesta regum Anglo-Normannorum, p. 112Google Scholar, where an abstract is given. It was pointed out by Round, English Historical Review, xxix. 354Google Scholar, that the writ may equally well belong to the reign of Henry I. But in any case it cannot be later than 1107.
page 9 note 02 His name represents the Old Norse name Ozurr, which was very common in the medieval Danelaw.
page 9 note 03 William of Ridware, Atsor's descendant, attests, as seneschal, many early charters of William II earl Ferrers.
page 9 note 04 Salter, H. E., Facsimiles of early charters in Oxford Muniment Rooms, 42.Google Scholar
page 10 note 01 The history of the family is traced from the Yorkshire standpoint by Clay, C. T., Early Yorkshire charters, v. 255–8.Google Scholar
page 11 note 01 Augmentation Office Miscellaneous Books, 46, no. 124.Google Scholar
page 11 note 02 Domesday Book, i, fo. 161.
page 11 note 03 Ibid., fo. 58. This, and other passages in Domesday Book which show Eilsi holding land at Faringdon and elsewhere twenty years later, are discussed by Round in the Victoria History of Berkshire, i, 292–3.Google Scholar
