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Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English language.

This is episode 61, Earls and Charles.

In this episode, we're going to continue to look at the politics and culture of England in the first half of the 11th century, leading up to the Norman Conquest.

We'll explore the development of a new noble class in England, the Earls.

They were the most powerful nobles, second only to the king himself.

And with England being ruled by a Scandinavian king who was often out of the country, those Earls went a position to play an even greater role in English politics.

We're also going to look at the Anglo-Saxon commoners, the peasants who worked in the fields and on the farms.

These people were sometimes known as Charles, and we're going to look at their life in the countryside.

So we'll examine the many old English words associated with farming and the rural life in England.

But before we begin, let me remind you that the website for the podcast is historyofenglishpodcast.com.

And you can always reach me directly at Kevin at historyofenglishpodcast.com.

And I'm on Twitter at EnglishHistPod.

Now this time, we're going to continue to draw a little closer to the year 1066.

And I want to begin by emphasizing that the Norman Conquest didn't just change England politically and linguistically.

It also rearranged the social and economic system.

The Normans brought the so-called feudal system with them from France.

That included many of the things which we associate with medieval England, things like armored knights and massive castles,

the code of chivalry, and a highly regimented social structure.

By this point in our story, that system was already in place in much of the old Carrolynjian Empire, basically modern France and Germany.

But the situation was a bit different in England.

Now from a modern perspective, the two systems looked very similar.

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