Conquered: The Last Children of Anglo-Saxon England

Conquered: The Last Children of Anglo-Saxon England
By Eleanor Parker
Published in February 2022
272 Pages
Thibault’s Score: 3/5

Conquered is a history of various individuals who were born right before the Norman conquest of England, but displaced in the following years. It covers various remarkable people who survived, adapted, and eventually prospered despite the conquest.

The first figure is Hereward the Wake. Hereward (pronounced Hero-Wood) was an Anglo-Saxon rebel who fought a guerilla war against William the Conqueror for a decade after the conquest. He was a former noble, who after the conquest, spent most of his time living in swamps. Many of his contemporaries just saw him as a bandit. Despite this, after his death many folk tales and legends about his exploits spread far and wide. A large body of literature eventually appeared touting his exploits, both real and imagined.

Another fascinating figure covered in the book is Saint Margaret of Scotland. She was a relative of the former ruling dynasty of England from the House of Wessex. Due to various political events before and during the conquest, her family fled to Norway, then Russia, and finally settled in Hungary. Changing political events allowed her family to return to England on the eve of the Norman conquest - only to be displaced a second time. Her family eventually ended up in Scotland, where she married into the nobility, becoming queen of Scotland. She is credited with having helped standardize Scottish Christianity so it conformed more closely with the Catholic church. This work allowed her to become sainted.

The last person covered is a monk and chronicler called Eadmer of Canterbury. His life’s work was to attempt to reconcile pre Norman English notions of Christianity with the doctrines promoted by the Normans. Notably, there were many pre Norman English saints who had either been mocked by the Normans as false pretenders or rustic charletans, such as St Dunstan. Over the course of a 50 year long academic career, he rehabilitated ethnic English saints by writing their histories. His histories were written in a way designed to make them more appealing to Norman sensibilities. His work largely succeeded, and helped contribute to the preservation and eventual dominance of English culture over Norman culture.

The subject of the book is interesting, but the writing style is a tad too academic. I like history books that walk the very fine line between being earthy and accurate (without too many imaginary first person narratives). I found that the writing spent too much time focusing on “re-interpretation” rather than just focusing on accurately explaining historical events. The writing style wasn’t bad - but wasn’t for me.

This book would be very readable to anyone who has a basic understanding of the Norman conquest. I recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about the period, but do not recommend it for a general audience.

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