French chivalry in twelfth-century Britain?

Abstract

The year 1066 - the one universally remembered date in English history, so well-known that banks advise customers not to choose it as their PIN number - opened the country up to French influence in spectacular fashion. During the ’long twelfth century’ (up to King John’s death in 1216) that followed the Norman Conquest, English society was transformed while one French dynasty after another came to power: the house of Normandy in 1066, the house of Blois in 1135, and the house of Anjou (the Plantagenets) in 1154. England received a new francophone ruling class and a new culture.