How, then, did the identity of the English emerge, given the imposition in 1066 of a continental governing class? Some, such as William the Conqueror's archbishop of Canterbury, said they hoped to learn to be Englishmen. However, such immediate and deliberate adoption of a culture - even if it was whole-hearted - appears uncommon. Rather the assimilation was more gradual, and had many causes of which the following are just three. In part, assimilation resulted from aristocratic families dividing their lands between different branches, with separate English and Continental branches developing. In part it stemmed from inter-marriage with the English. In the late 1170s the royal treasurer could write that 'with the English and Normans living side-by-side and intermarrying, the peoples have become so mingled that no-one can tell - as far as free men are concerned - who is of English and who of Norman descent.'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/no ... n_01.shtmlTogether with epics such as The Song of Roland, churches and castles have been essential in forming our vision of the Middle Ages. They are the built images of the first two of the three orders into which writers in the Middle Ages often divided their society: those who pray, those who fight, and those who work. The Normans had an enormous influence on the development of both castles and churches in England. There had been large scale fortified settlements, known as burghs, and also fortified houses in Anglo-Saxon England, but the castle was a Norman importation. Numbers are uncertain, but it seems plausible that about 1,000 had been built by the reign of Henry I (1100-1135).
