Welcome to the British History Podcast. My name is Jamie and this is episode 418.

God's Chosen.

This show is ad-free due to member support and is a way of thanking members for keeping

the show independent, I offer members only content, including extra episodes and rough

transcripts. And right now, members are listening to an episode about the long-term effects

of the conquest because believe it or not, you can draw a straight line between figures

in the conquest and some of the wealthiest people in the UK today. And I'm not talking about

Charles. I'm talking about people who you might think are just business people and not

the direct inheritors of land that was stolen nearly a thousand years ago. But Z got

a wild hair and started to do some digging and it turned out that they still make money

the way that their ancestors did. Here's a clip.

There's this guy, as far as we know, shows up in 1067. Might have been there earlier,

but probably he's definitely there by 1067. William DePurse. So at the time of the

Doomsday book, he's holding 30 night's fees. So have you talked in the show what a night's

fee is yet? No, actually, we haven't. Do you want to run them through that really quick?

It's their term for the unit of land needed to support a night. And so that's not just

this one guy's diet. That's like his family, his servants. These are sort of minor estates.

So significant. And you know, he wasn't born into them. William gave it to him. Some of

these specifically... And what were they came up with? Well, wouldn't you ask? Some of them

came specifically from a Saxon lady. So she held them so you was... Well, that was nice

of her. Yeah. It doesn't seem like she gave them up. However, to assuage his guilt, he

married her later. So that's nice. So this guy's pretty rich just after the conquest. A little

...