The Norman conquest of England brought Britain and Ireland into the orbit of the European continent, especially what remained of Roman-influenced language and culture. If the earlier Anglo-Saxon England was tied to local traditions, the England emerging from the Conquest owed a debt to the Romance languages and the culture of ancient Rome, that was not so important before the Conquest, but was maintained at a high level by the English Catholic Church and the clerks of England. It transmitted itself in the emerging feudal world that took its place. That heritage can be discerned in language, incorporating shards of the French language and the Roman past, in architecture, in the emerging Romanesque (Norman) architecture, and in a new feudal structure erected as a bulwark against the chaos that overtook the Continent following the collapse of Roman authority and the subsequent Dark Ages. The England that emerged from the Conquest was a decidedly different place, but one that had been opened up to the sweep of outside influences.