How The Norman Conquest changed
England and Western Europe
The Norman Conquest changed the face of England and Western Europe forever:
The Norman Conquest broke England's links with Denmark and Norway, and
connected the country to Normandy and Europe.
William got rid of all the Saxon nobles and imposed the feudal system on England.
The new Norman landowners built castles to defend themselves against the Saxons
they had conquered. This gave them great power, and enabled some of them to
rebel against William in the late 1070s.
William reorganised the church in England. He brought men from France to be
bishops and abbots. Great cathedrals and huge monasteries were built.
The status of women in the Anglo-Saxon period had been relatively high, with the
opportunity for rights in land ownership, for instance. The Feudal system
introduced by the Normans reversed these changes.
Norman-French and Anglo-Saxon words make up the English language we use today.
For example, royal, law and pork come from Norman-French words, but king, rules
and pig come from Saxon ones.
Consequences Of The Conquest
The extent and desirability of the changes brought about by the
conquest have long been disputed by historians. Certainly, in
political terms, William’s victory destroyed England’s links with
Scandinavia, bringing the country instead into close contact with
the Continent, especially France. Inside England the most radical
change was the introduction of land tenure and military service.
While tenure of land in return for services had existed in England
before the conquest, William revolutionized the upper ranks of
English society by dividing the country among about 180 Norman
tenants-in-chief and innumerable mesne (intermediate) tenants, all
holding their fiefs by knight service. The result, the almost total
replacement of the English aristocracy with a Norman one, was
paralleled by similar changes of personnel among the upper clergy
and administrative officers.
Anglo-Saxon England had developed a highly organized central and
local government and an effective judicial system (see Anglo-Saxon
law). All these were retained and utilized by William, whose
coronation oath showed his intention of continuing in the English
royal tradition. The old administrative divisions were not
superseded by the new fiefs, nor did feudal justice normally usurp
the customary jurisdiction of shire and hundred courts. In them and
in the king’s court, the common law of England continued to be
administered. Innovations included the new but restricted body of
“forest law” and the introduction in criminal cases of the Norman
trial by combat alongside the old Saxon ordeals. Increasing use was
made of the inquest procedure—the sworn testimony of neighbours,
both for administrative purposes and in judicial cases. A major
change was William’s removal of ecclesiastical cases from
the secular courts, which allowed the subsequent introduction into
England of the then rapidly growing canon law.
William also transformed the structure and character of the church
in England. He replaced all the Anglo-Saxon bishops,
except Wulfstan of Dorchester, with Norman bishops. Most notably,
he secured the deposition of Stigand, the archbishop of Canterbury
—who held his see irregularly and had probably been
excommunicated by Pope Leo IX—and appointed in his
place Lanfranc of Bec, a respected scholar and one of William’s
close advisers. Seeking to impose a more orderly structure on the
English episcopacy, the king supported Lanfranc’s claims for the
primacy of Canterbury in the English church. William also presided
over a number of church councils, which were held far more
frequently than under his predecessors, and introduced legislation
against simony (the selling of clerical offices) and clerical marriage.
A supporter of monastic reform while duke of Normandy, William
introduced the latest reforming trends to England by replacing
Anglo-Saxon abbots with Norman ones and by importing numerous
monks. Although he founded only a small number of monasteries,
including Battle Abbey (in honour of his victory at Hastings),
William’s other measures contributed to the quickening of monastic
life in England.
