Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest

Social and Economic History of England

by H.R. Loyn

This celebrated account of society and economy in England from the first Anglo-Saxon settlements in the fifth century to the immediate aftermath of the Norman Conquest has been a standard text since it first appeared in 1962. This long-awaited second edition incorporates the fruits of 30 years of subsequent scholarship. It has been revised expanded and entirely reset.

Genres: History, British Literature, Nonfiction, Anglo Saxon

Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Henry Royston Loyn (16 June 1922 – 9 October 2000), FBA, was a British historian specialising in the history of Anglo-Saxon England. His eminence in his field made him a natural candidate to run the Sylloge of the Coins of the British Isles, which he chaired from 1979 to 1993. He was Professor of Medieval History in the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire and afterwards Professor of Medieval History at Westfield College in the University of London.

The Sylloge's natural emphasis is on Anglo-Saxon numismatics. Loyn's mastery of an extensive and specialised literature in an often-contentious area of history produced over four decades a series of cautious, even conservative syntheses of continuity and evolving changes in late Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman England, universally well received in the academic press, which are still staples of student reading-lists.

Aside from numerous articles, occasional lectures such as The "matter of Britain": A historian's perspective (a Creighton Trust lecture), and his main publications (see below), he edited The Middle Ages: A Concise Encyclopedia. He has been praised for his "felicitous, economic writing style"

Reviews

[no]

1962 edition, or rather the 1981 ninth impression of the 1970 paperback, because that is the book I happened to buy for $5 a decade ago. I'm curious how much changed in the 1991 2nd edition, much less what would need to be updated from 1991 to bring it up to code. This is a history that trains its focus on the land and on commerce, on the movement and activity of people relatively anonymous to us, and spends little time on the established names and loud personalities of the period. Surely there would be more colour to add after 28 years of archaeological and numismatic research, and doubtless the place-name chronology stuff would need to be substantially rewritten. The citations seem sparse in Loyn's original, and his writing is consistent with the tendency of his generation of medievalists to construct convenient formulae from charters, which I feel has become deeply unfashionable since the 1970s or whenever "feudalism" became a shibboleth. So a little old-fashioned, but I have to imagine there are worse ways to lay foundations for further study, and Loyn's work remains deserving of whatever regard it may still enjoy as a standard in this field.

Takeaway:
"In one respect the Normans made conditions better. The institution of slavery declined to such an extent under their rule that within a generation or two it became socially negligible. A uniform serfdom took its place. It seems odd at first sight that the Normans, well-known for their stern government, should sacrifice advantages that would appear to accrue to a slave-holding society. Humanitarianism is not a quality normally associated with the great William, though one must always take into account strong feeling among more advanced ecclesiastical thinkers against chattel slavery. It appears that the thoroughgoing slavery of the Anglo-Saxon world was not familiar to the Normans. What is more, it was not necessary. Provided that manorial discipline was strong enough, the slave could be more nuisance than he was worth. To keep estates manned by a substantial portion of slave labour may well have been uneconomic in a time of unstable prices with much local variation of market. The servi had their food provided for them by the lords. They may have been much less profitable than the free peasants bound to give hard labour service on the lord's demesne. Indeed the emphasis in Norman days is thrown squarely o the peasants' obligation to the lord. [. . .] The Normans were not concerned with a man's standing towards his local community or with his legal obligations. Their concern lay in the economic field with a desire to benefit from his labour, to receive a share of the produce of his toil."