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Originally Posted by david H
Could anyone please recommend some sources on how the Anglo-Saqxons were treated after they had been conquered bythe Normans? Even information on how the Celts were treated by the invading saxons would be helpful.
I contacted the English Companions but have had no reply.
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Good questions. I can answer the first in brief from the above cited book, which is much recommended. I quote from the first Chapter of this book about 'The Norman Yoke':
'But the myth (of the Norman Yoke) was surely a reflection of real events. Modern historians have compared the experience of the Conquest to that of Nazi-occupied Europe. The recurrent message in the sources is a sense of the horror of occupation. When we read in eleventh century sources of the killing of rebel communities, including their women and children, the analogies suggested are those with the 1990s world of ethnic cleansing...
For the English, 1066 was a shattering event - the most cataclysmic in their history - and like many shattering events, the story was handed down as a commununal memory. The terrible first decades were etched into the national experience: castles were built in every village, whole areas of towns demolished to make space for Norman garrisons, and resistance provoked ferocious reprisals.'