Most histories of the changes following 1066 tend to focus on the major differences in land tenure - that all land was now owned by the king, and awarded to nobility in return for service. For your everyday person, however, this was unlikely to actually represent much of a significant change day to day. Anglo-Saxon kings also awarded land for service, and villagers simply now owed their service to a lord who owed to the king, instead of just to the lord. Many of the significant changes to village life and agriculture were already in progress by the mid-eleventh century, such as systems of field rotation and open field farming. The Domesday Book is a prime source for this period, and illustrates that in many areas, life continued largely as normal, albeit with a different man at the top. Freemen still continued to hold their land, as did religious houses. The exception, of course, being the areas which were ravaged and devastated as a result of the conquest and William's subsequent campaigns to pacify the country.

Where things do change significantly for everyday people is in the legal system and the legality of landscape use. With land tenure now stemming ultimately from the king, large areas of fen and forest became the royal demense, and were reserved as royal or noble hunting grounds and thus off-limits to the majority of the population. This would have represented a major change. Excavations at Anglo-Saxon productive sites such as Stafford (see Carver [2010], Stafford: The Birth of a Borough) indicate that a significant proportion of the meat processed at the burh came from game. The burh was a major site of cattle butchery and food processing for the Mercian army, but the townspeople seem to have supplemented their own diets with large amounts of deer and fowl. This seems to have been par for the course in many Anglo-Saxon settlements, but was now forbidden by particularly harsh laws, and was a very unpopular set of restrictions. Not only was hunting forbidden, but so was unsanctioned forestry, or even the collection of dead wood or letting animals graze the king's or lord's land.

The actual punishments under the legal system change significantly as well. The Anglo-Saxon legal codex, from the first laws recorded by Æthelberht of Kent in 597, through Ine of Wessex, Offa and Alfred the Great (much of which are accessible in Whitelock's English Historical Documents, Vol.1) largely follow what could be deemed a rehabilitative form of justice, with punishments based largely around a system of fines. Even murder could be punishable by the payment of weregeld to the victim's family. Trials took place at the "Hundred" (sub-county) level and could be by ordeal. Non-payment was punished by the forcible stripping of assets or by the matter being turned over to "The Avengers" - not the Marvel heroes, but rather the victim or their family would be allowed to exact whatever vengeance they saw fit. There were some exceptions. Æthelstan's Grately codex sets the punishment for any moneyers who defraud, debase or otherwise counterfeit the coinage as having their hand cut off and nailed above their forge, possibly because a fraudulent moneyer could not be trusted to reliably pay a fine, or perhaps for the symbolic value of a king dispensing biblical punishment. Æthelred II also punishes the treason of one of his ealdormen by having the man's son blinded - again a biblical punishment for oath-breaking. The death sentence was in effect, and could be dispensed quite liberally for minor crimes at the whim of the presiding reeve at a hundred court, and part of Æthelred's Grately codex in 926 seeks to codify punishments and fines more explicitly to curb what he sees as far too many young people being executed for "minor" crimes like stealing sheep.

The Anglo-Norman legal system is quite different, especially for lesser crimes, and is far more punitative in approach. Trial by ordeal is maintained until the Church outlaws it in the thirteenth century, but the Normans also add trial by combat. The scope of justice changed from being a collaborative effort within a community to being imposed from above. Fines are replaced by a series of mutilations - thieves for example would lose a hand - and the the number of crimes punishable by death was increased. Executions were now public affairs, and justice became a visible deterrent. Lesser crimes could be punished by being placed in the stocks for public humiliation and suffering. William I allowed the Church to establish its own courts under Canon Law to try transgressions by the clergy, often with lesser punishment than the secular courts.

The law also became much harsher on women than it had been - upon marriage, all of their possessions now transferred to their husbands, they could not inherit from their parents, and could now be punished for nagging their husbands.

Some additional reading:

Gillingham (2000), The English in the Twelfth Century

Oliver (2002), The Beginnings of English Law

Gates and Marafioti (2014), Capital and Corporal Punishment in Anglo-Saxon England

Grant (1991) The Royal Forests of England