Conquest and Colonisation: the Normans in Britain, 1066-1100, and: The English and the Norman Conquest (review)

Reviews 111 'You ought to love as I have loved !' In general, the translators present a sensitive rendering and were wise not to attempt a literal translation (pp. 21-6). But an opportunity was lost in the Index where allegorised characters are omitted, along with references to the four feathered predators and to common nouns from which emanate ambiguities. K. V. Sinclair Department of M o d e m Languages James Cook University Golding, Brian, Conquest and Colonisation: the Normans in Britain, 10661100 (British History in Perspective), Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1994; paper; pp. xiv, 227; R.R.P. AU$25.95. Williams, Ann, The English and the Norman Conquest, Woodbridge, The Boydell Press, 1995; cloth; pp. xiii, 264; R.R.P. £35.00. Still perhaps the most studied event in British history, the Norman Conquest continues to attract new books and new scholarship. Though these works by Golding and Williams appeared within twelve months of each other, they are very different in purpose. Golding offers a synthesis of recent scholarship, intended presumably (though not explicitly) as a textbook, whereas Williams provides a much more detailed and original study, dealing with the reaction of the English to the experience of being conquered. Interestingly, however, they both emphasize much the same theme: the continuity between AngloSaxon and Norman England, and the complexity of relations between the English and their Norman conquerors. Williams focusses her attention on those people who came below the great lords and magnates: the vassals, knights, sergeants and servants on the Norman side, and the tenants and commended men on the English. By careful analysis of the sources, and particularly by a close reading of Domesday Book, she shows the extent to which 'English families of modest rank' survived and prospered under William the Conqueror and the extent to which the median thegns of Edward the Confessor's time—and even some of his kinsmen—continued to hold landed estates. The very words 'English' and 'Norman' are closely analysed, if not deconstructed. Williams argues persuasively that the Normans who settled in England and depended mainly on their English possessions quickly came to be regarded as English, or at 178 Reviews least as 'Normangli'—Normans of England as opposed to Normans of Normandy. Somewhat more speculatively, she suggests that, by the second generation after the Conquest, an 'English' identity was emerging, as a result of intermarriage in knightly families and in the towns. This is not to ignore the sense of bitterness at the treatment of the conquered English which is present in so many chroniclers and historians of the early twelfth century: Eadmer, Orderic, William of Malmesbury and others. In many ways, however, an affirmation of English tradition and history went hand-in-hand with an acceptance of the Norman settlers. Williams examines the various manifestations of this process in the later eleventh and earlier twelfth centuries: compiling lives of the English saints, overhauling ecclesiastical archives, reviving Northern monasticism, determining and writing down the customary law. Assimilation is also clearly evident in changing patterns of name-giving. The English gradually adopted Norman first names, while the Normans increasingly chose to use English toponymies, just as they chose to be buried in English churches rather than Norman ones. Williams' case is put with great care and detail. If she occasionally appears to push the evidence too far, and her general conclusions are sometimes drawn less clearly than they might be, this does not detract from the value and subtlety of her work. Golding's book, in contrast, is broader in scope, in that it aims to cover the entire process of Norman conquest and settlement up to 1100. As well as giving a chronological survey of this period, Golding offers a thematic analysis of government, church, and military organisation, as well as of the pattern of settlement. His approach, on the whole, is to emphasize the continuity between pre- and post-Conquest England, and the extent of cultural assimilation and intermarriage. O n the question of the king's role and status, for example, he argues against Loyn's view that a new, 'feudal' kingship was established by the Normans which was fundamentally different from what had gone before. H e...