ABSTRACT
In the ninth centenary of the Norman Conquest of England brought a kind of apotheosis of the Norman image. A king of Norman ancestry, ruling an empire in southern Europe, died; in the same year another succeeded to the English throne. Hegemony lay with the family of Count Rollo, but their power was little more stable than that of Norse or Danish jarls in their homeland. The second wife of Ethelred II was a Norman princess. In the late eleventh century, Archbishop Lanfranc of Canterbury had tried to build up a large ecclesiastical empire by claiming primacy over York and exerting influence in Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The Conqueror's wife, Matilda, was a descendant, in the female line, from King Alfred. Henry I was the ablest of the Conqueror's sons. In Apulia and Calabria the Greeks ruled. The kingdom of Sicily is more effectively grasped as an element in the Mediterranean world with close links with Byzantium and the crusades.
