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The early 12th century Prince of Gwynedd, Gruffudd ap Cynan, was praised by his biographer for his extensive church-building, and in Scotland the process seems to have been encouraged by David I. Bishops and abbots too were rebuilding their cathedrals and abbey churches on a much grander scale, sometimes modelling them on examples in the Norman homeland but also borrowing from elsewhere, in particular from the western Empire.
At the same time the Anglo-Norman aristocracy were also active in the founding of new monasteries, and though these were rarely as well endowed as the Anglo-Saxon communities some, like Shrewsbury or St Werburgh�s, Chester, became the dominant abbeys in their regions. By 1100 there were eight Cluniac priories in England, and others soon followed, while some Anglo-Norman lords chose to patronise native communities, such as Gloucester abbey which underwent considerable expansion at this time. Others were patrons of hermits, or even became hermits themselves, and some hermits� settlements soon formed the nucleus of Augustinian communities. The first house of this order was founded in Colchester in c 1100 and Augustinian priories were soon to be the foundation of choice for both Henry I and his court - and for David I, king of Scotland. The Cistercians took a little longer to arrive. Though Citeaux itself was founded in 1098, the Order�s first abbey was not established in England (Waverley) until 1128, Wales (Tintern) in 1131, Scotland (Melrose) in 1136, and Ireland (Mellifont) in 1142. There were also increasingly more opportunities for religious women. Anglo-Saxon nunneries, like their Continental counterparts, had been founded by and for the higher aristocracy, but in the century following the Conquest a number of new communities were established for women of lesser rank, the most interesting experiment being the Gilbertines, who were given their rule around 1148.
Such changes were not, of course, directly attributable to the new political order, and more profound and far-reaching structural changes within the English Church took their inspiration from Rome rather than Normandy. Until the mid-eleventh century papal authority was severely limited: popes were subordinate to the Western Emperors and often dominated by the Roman aristocracy at home, while ecclesiastical power in the regions was held by bishops. However, under the leadership of reforming and centralising popes, notably Gregory VII, the papacy acquired a harder ideological edge and began the extension of its temporal and spiritual authority that was to reach its apogee under Innocent III and Boniface VIII. These supranational ambitions were reflected in Urban ll�s preaching of the First Crusade in 1095, in the hope that a military expedition under papal leadership would free the Holy Places for Christendom and reassert papal hegemony over the Eastern Church. Several AngloNorman magnates had answered the papal call. In 1100, when William Rufus was killed, Duke Robert of Normandy himself was on his way home from Jerusalem. Papal influence was increasingly felt in other ways. Archbishop Lanfranc of Canterbury, though a conscientious reformer, had kept the papacy at arm�s length, always managing to avoid attendance at papal synods to which he was repeatedly summoned, and acting in close alliance with William I to create an ecclesiastical polity directed front Canterbury not Rome. His successor, Anselm, however, based his policy on close obedience to the papacy and had since 1097 been in self-imposed exile in protest at the King�s refusal to allow him to hold a Church Council or to consult the pope on ecclesiastical matters.
The reign of Henry I has traditionally been seen as a period of assimilation between native English and colonising Normans, an interpretation that is found at least as early as the last quarter of the 12th century. It was symbolised by the King�s own marriage in 1110 to Eadgith, the daughter of Malcolm III Canmore, king of Scots, and Malcolm�s English wife, Margaret, daughter of Edward the Atheling. Intermarriage was an effective strategy of conquest. Marriage to a native heiress could be used to legitimate the settlement and validate the appropriation of property. Yet the fact that Eadgith changed her name to a Norman one, Matilda, suggests a certain unease that may be connected to William of Malmesbury�s report that Henry and Eadgith were mockingly referred to by the archetypical English names, Godric and Godgifu, suggesting that the Norman Henry had �gone native� by marrying a woman of English descent. William, like his fellow contemporary historians, Orderic Vitalis and Henry of� Huntingdon, was himself the offspring of a mixed marriage. Like Eadgith, Orderic acquired a new, more acceptable Norman name when as a small boy he entered the Norman monastery of St Evroul. Such re-namings were not uncommon: the adoption by natives of more fashionable Norman names for themselves or their children was a strategy for social advancement in a changing world. No wonder the granting of miraculous bi- or even trilingualisin is found in several twelfth-century miracle collections. Nor is it surprising to find interpreters recorded in Domesday Book and elsewhere. Such specialists were essential in post-Conquest England: their skills valued by English and Normans alike. As the Normans began their colonisation of Wales, interpreters were also needed there and might similarly have enjoyed substantial rewards. Intermarriage, too, of course, contributed to bilingualism. Though it was rare during the 12th century for English men and women to understand Anglo-Norman, unless they belonged to the upper ranks of the Church, the reverse was no longer true. Though Anglo-Norman was the language of the dominant elite, that does not mean that the Norman aristocracy could not understand and speak English: the clerical aristocracy was often trilingual, while those with interests in Wales could even, like Gerald of Wales in the second half of the century, be quadrilingual.
In the 1130s, a Norman clerk, Gaimar, incorporated a translation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (written, of course, in the vernacular) into his Anglo-Norman verse romance, Estorie des Engleis (History of the English), written for Constance, the English wife of a Norman lord. What she or Gaimar or their contemporaries meant by �Engleis� is not entirely clear. What is certain is that Gaimar and Constance inhabited a world of social, cultural and linguistic fluidity where identities were rapidly shifting.
The Norman aristocracy increasingly identified with their conquered land; their estates on the English side of the Channel were, after all, normally worth far more than their ancestral properties. They gave their political loyalties to leaders who were likely to be the most successful protectors of their English lands; their religious loyalties, also, were increasingly focused on monastic foundations in England rather than Normandy, and it was within these English churches that they found burial. Conversely, not all the English had gone down in the wreckage of 1066. Whether specialists like huntsmen or interpreters, high-status moneyers who sometimes established themselves in urban patriciates, local administrators, or churchmen such as Samson, who became abbot of Bury St Edmunds at the end of the 12th century, some survived and prospered.
The extent to which changes in British society following 1066 were consequent upon the Conquest or merely coincidental remains a lively historiographic issue, but one thing is certain. For the first time (with the brief exception of 1016-35, when Cnut had made England part of his Scandinavian empire) the country was now part, and in many ways the dominant part, of a state divided by water. The English Channel could be both a barrier or a bridge, but the dynamics of government were transformed by the creation of the Anglo-Norman realm. Few political changes in British history have been more significant or enduring. Though Anglo-Norman kings would rule both territories only between 1066 and 1087 and again from 1106 to 1135, the French connection thus forged was to dominate foreign policy throughout the Middle Ages and well beyond. ENDS