The Greatest Story in the World, Period 2 by Horace G. Hutchinson

The Normans who conquered England were far more different from the / English whom they conquered than the Danes, under Canute, had been. / And yet Danes and Normans, both being "Northmen," were closely akin. / But we have to note that the conquering Normans came, not from the / north, but from the south from Normandy; and some years of residence / there, among the Franks or French, had changed them. Moreover, we / have to remember that, according to the estimates of historians, only / about one-third of the force with which Duke William came to England / was really Norman. The larger part was of Franks and any others whom / the adventure attracted or whom William had hired to aid him.

The conquest must have made very much more difference to the upper / classes of the English people than to the lower. Many lords were / killed at that Battle of Hastings which decided England's fate. In / their places the conqueror put his own barons and army leaders, thus / rewarding them, at no expense to himself, for their services. Norman / lords soon superseded English lords throughout the land, but the / peasants, and also the townsfolk, would go on with their lives much / as before. The English system was not, as we have seen, so different / from the completely feudal system of France that the lower vassals / would know much difference in the change from one to the other. / {146} The English regarded the land as belonging in the first / instance to the people; the Normans regarded it as belonging to the / king. But in the practical result this different point of view did / not count for much, because the English had already lost all the land / rights which had once been valuable to them. We traced the way in / which that happened a chapter or two back.