The Domesday Book, William’s inventory of the country, shows that by 1086, Englishmen owned only five per cent of the country’s land, and this proportion was reduced further in the following decades. William of Malmesbury, writing in the early 12th century, said: “England has become the dwelling place of foreigners and a playground for lords of alien blood. No Englishman today is an earl, a bishop or an abbot.”
Those who had survived the invasion, and the subsequent rebellions, went abroad, seeking out sanctuary in Scotland, Scandinavia, Ireland and further afield, sometimes much further afield to places like Byzantium. Emigrating Englishmen found employment with the emperor’s elite Varangian Guard, so much so that what was previously a Scandinavian unit became known as a largely Anglo-Saxon one.
They left behind a…
