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Hello 1066 William of Normandy. Was it as the verse has it? Normans saw on English oak on English neck a Norman yoke

Norman spoon in English dish and England ruled as Normans wish

Taken from Walter Scott's novel Ivan her these words encapsulate the idea of the Norman yoke that the battle of Hastings sparked the cruel

oppression of Anglo-Saxon liberties by a foreign ruling class

Certainly William the Conqueror writ large is occupying power in castles and cathedrals

But how true is the idea of a Norman yoke or were tales of beastly normers and suffering Saxons invented by later generations

Looking for the origins of Englishness with me to discuss the Norman yoke Richard Gamerson

Professor in the Department of History at Durham University Matthew Strickland professor of medieval history at the University of Glasgow and

Sariford Registrar professor of ecclesiastical history at Christ Church Oxford

Sariford, can you flesh out the received idea of the Norman yoke for us?

The Northern Norman yoke is really a myth at an historical construct that argues that when the Normans

colonized England after their victory at Hastings in 1066 that they then deprive the free

Anglo-Saxons of their native historic liberty that they didn't just take their lands away from all the noble ruling classes

But even lesser people who had previously held land by right of inheritance now held land of Norman lords by

Through service or or by contract that they took away the free laws of the Anglo-Saxons imposed their own

tyrannical constructs and unjust

Judges that women lost the

Native and freedoms that Germanic women had historically had in in terms of law and land owning that the church was taken over

Anglo-Saxon Saints relics were thrown out and burnt and that foreign

Normans came in and and took over English churches so that it's a whole

...