I've often heard it said that the Berkeley, Alden, and Swinton families are the only ones with unbroken traceable lineages in the paternal line from pre-Norman English forebears. However, reading visitation pedigrees of the English gentry, they note many families coming into possession of their estates as far back as the time of the Plantagenets. My question is, how badly did the former English nobility lose when the Normans conquered the kingdom? Were former nobles and such reduced to the level of peasants and serfs? with the exception of those three aforementioned families? I've read that during the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland, a good deal of the former Catholic gentry were still able to keep their high social position, but were simply made head-tenants on their former estate, paying rent to an Anglican landlord. Was that the same situation in Norman England, or was the former English aristocracy completely socially erased?