The Norman Conquest and the Genesis of English Feudalism

Abstract

THE effect of the Norman Conquest upon English military institutions has long been a subject of intense controversy, evoking as it does the more general issue of continuity and catastrophe in history. Did English society weather the crisis of io66 without substantial change, or was it transformed radically and permanently by the Conquest? Does English history represent a gradual and continual development, or is it the product of a series of revolutions and catastrophes such as the invasions of the Anglo-Saxons, the Danes, and the Normans? In the controversy that has raged so long and often so bitterly over the effects of the Norman Conquest, certain facts have been conceded by both sides. Even those who support the catastrophic interpretation of the Conquest agree that it had little immediate effect upon English manorial forms,' for as Professor J. E. A. Jolliffe writes, We shall, in fact, misunderstand the course of history if we fail to realize the flow of the broad stream of English custom across the line of the Norman Conquest and into the Middle Ages.2 On the other hand, not even the most devout believer in historical continuity could deny that the Norman Conquest brought a new, foreign aristocracy into England which dominated the land and became assimilated only gradually. The question narrows down to the nature of the continental aristocracy which came to England with the Conquest, and the significance of the new institutions which it introduced. More specifically, did the Normans introduce feudalism into England, as a system of aristocratic military service superimposed upon the continuum of peasant society, or did they merely tighten up a feudal system that they found in England when they came?