To understand what it meant to have lived through the Norman Conquest, you need to understand what the Conquest actually was, not just in its famous military event, the Battle of Hastings on October 14, 1066, but in its long and disruptive aftermath.

William, Duke of Normandy, crossed the English Channel with an army in the autumn of 1066 and defeated the Anglo-Saxon king Harold II at Hastings.

Harold was killed.

With the king dead and the army broken, William marched toward London, receiving the submission of the English nobility and being crowned on Christmas Day 1066 at Westminster Abbey.

This was the beginning, not the end, of the disruption.

The decade after Hastings was marked by repeated rebellions, punitive military campaigns, and the systematic redistribution of English land from the Anglo-Saxon nobility who had owned it to the Norman lords who had fought for William.