1066 is justifiably the most famous date in English history. England did not become Norman with the death of King Harold on 14 October in that year: the Norman Conquest and settlement was a protracted process that continued into the 1080s and beyond. Nevertheless, the Domesday inquest of 1086 affords a vantage point from which it can be seen that England had changed radically. An English aristocracy had been superseded by a predominantly Norman one. Traditionally, that transfer of power has been seen in essentially military terms. The imposition of ‘the Norman yoke’ was by right of conquest. and the feudalism that William the Conqueror introduced was a revolution in tenure. Recent analyses have been more nuanced. The conquest undoubtedly saw episodes of unbridled acquisitiveness, especially in the early days. But the settlement was essentially an ordered process. It was English laws and English customs that underpinned Norman tenure in 1086.

Ann Williams’ work on the English and the Norman Conquest has been central to this reassessment. It is to her that we owe a much greater understanding of the importance of Englishmen – the term is here used of all those with roots in England – to a successful Norman settlement. The evidence is often fragmentary, but, taken together, overwhelming. A conservative estimate puts the total number of English landowners in 1086, as recorded in Domesday Book, at 1000 or so individuals holding some 6% of the recorded land valued at 4.2% of the national income.