The Norman Conquest was a cataclysm for the English people. After 1066, the country was clenched in a mailed fist. Castles, until then a rarity, sprang up everywhere. Many still stand, handsome and crenelated, their geographical situation advertising their grim purpose. For these were not defences against a foreign foe, but instruments of internal repression, from whose arrow-slits new proprietors peered out at a beaten people.

Having put down the North with terrifying savagery, leaving stretches of country depopulated, William began to rule as an absolute monarch. Quite how absolute can be seen from his compilation, some years afterwards, of a comprehensive inventory of the kingdom he now possessed. For there was no question in his mind that England was his to do with as he would. As the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle put it: