The Norman Conquest
One battle replaces England's ruling class and rebuilds its language.
- When
- Era
- Post-Classical, Holocene
William of Normandy defeats Harold at Hastings on 14 October 1066 and within a few years has dispossessed almost the entire Anglo-Saxon aristocracy. The Domesday Book of 1086 surveys the kingdom's landholding in extraordinary detail for taxation. French becomes the language of the court and law for three centuries, which is why English has both a Germanic core and an enormous Romance vocabulary — and why we eat pork and beef but farm pigs and cows.