Stephen, King of England succession. Stephen's new Anglo-Norman kingdom had been shaped by the Norman conquest of England in 1066, followed by the Norman expansion into south Wales over the coming years. Both the kingdom and duchy were dominated by a small number of major barons who owned lands on both sides of the English Channel, with the lesser barons beneath them usually having more localised holdings. The extent to which lands and positions should be passed down through hereditary right or by the gift of the king was still uncertain, and tensions concerning this issue had grown during the reign of Henry I.
The History of the Norman Conquest of England knowledge of their shortcomings [is] taken into consideration, his conclusions remain a powerful voice on behalf of a nation whose past and present gloried in liberty, democracy and constitutional government and they acknowledge that Freeman's views on the English national identity have had a lasting influence. The History of the Norman Conquest of England The History of the Norman Conquest of England: Its Causes and Its Results is a six-volume study of the Conquest by Edward A. Freeman, published between 1867 and 1879. Recognised by critics as a major work of scholarship on its first publication, it has since proved