This is quite a hefty topic so I’m going to look at quite a few aspects here, and I’ll give them two broad sub-headings – cohesion and conflict. Just going to touch upon a couple of aspects of each.

COHESION

On a societal level, there was quite a lot of inter-mingling. There was some inter-marriage between the Normans and the English – though they represented a small part of the demography, at first at least, the Normans did assimilate with the locals. It was actually encouraged to help foster relations between the two groups, and at first it was largely unsuccessful (it is noted that many women would join nunneries in order to escape relationships with Normans), but inevitably the Normans integrated quite well. Orderic Vitalis, the renowned panegyrist of William the Conqueror, was himself the result of an Anglo-Norman relationship. Norman fashions were adopted to the point where it was not possible to distinguish between the English and the Normans on the street as it once was – in the Bayeux Tapestry for example, the Normans can be distinguished by their short hair hewn from neck to ears, whilst the English often sported long hair. This was soon no longer the case.

H. R. Loyn says that the Normans were ‘adaptable people’ who were willing to learn new languages and adopt local cultures, as they had done when they settled Normandy, for example. Moreover, the Normans did everything they could to promote continuity from the Anglo-Saxon rulership to the Norman rulership – this included continuation of the laws previously put in place by Edward the Confessor, Cnut, Alfred the Great and other various kings of England. The Normans began to replicate the English aristocracy in dress and lifestyle – once noted as brutish people, they quickly took to the lavish and pruned life led by the old Anglo-Saxons. Furthermore, much of what the Norman laws represented were just continuations of other laws put in place, and any preferential treatment of the Normans was largely a replacement of preferential treatment of the Danes in the Danelaw under Cnut. H. Thomas said that William the Conqueror was fulfilling a ‘commitment to maintain the laws of Edward’. However, the law codes do represent some change.

CONFLICT

The law codes of William and Henry I’s later Leges Henrici Primi did feature preferential treatment of the Normans – the English population were required to undergo an ordeal or swear an oath three times for exculpation, where a Norman was required to swear just one oath and be deemed not guilty. The Normans were not above the law, but were certainly above the English in law. As per William’s laws, if a Norman was killed by the English, the hundred in which he was killed was responsible for capturing the murderer and paying a hefty fine levied for his murder – this was known as the murdrum law. So, there wasn’t necessarily segregation, but there was a divide between the cultures. It’s noted by Frank Barlow (if memory serves) that women were treated differently – in Anglo-Saxon culture they were valued as equals, or at least near equals, but the Normans instituted their continental idea of the treatment of women, and women saw a marked decline in their rights and roles.

So to answer your question in broad terms: no, there was no segregation, but there was preferential treatment of the Normans; on the other hand, Normans did integrate where possible. The divisions became blurred.

I will post up a bibliography shortly, I’m just collating my sources.

Primary Sources:

• Douglas, D. (ed.), English Historical Documents 1042-1189 (London 1981).

• Downey, L. (ed. & trans.), Leges Henrici Primi (Oxford, 1972).

• Whitelock, D. (ed.), English Historical Documents 500-1042 (London, 1955).

• Wilson, D. M. and Le Carpentier, J., The Bayeux Tapestry (London, 1985).

Secondary Sources:

• Bartlett, R., England under the Norman and Angevin Kings 1075-1225 (Oxford, 2000).

• Green, J., The Aristocracy of Anglo-Norman England (Cambridge 1997).

• Loyn, H. R., Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest (London, 1962).

• Thomas, H., The English and the Normans: Ethnic Hostility, Assimilation, and Identity 1066-c1220 (Oxford, 2003).

• Whitelock, D., Douglas, D. C., Lemmon, C. H. and Barlow, F. (eds.), The Norman Conquest: Its Setting & Impact (Bungay, 1966).