Abstract
This chapter discusses attitudes towards ethnicity and cultural assimilation in medieval England following its conquest by Normandy, arguing that there was a loose bias towards ethnic concord and assimilation. There were also several ideological factors that indirectly supported the trend toward amity and unification. None of these attitudes were strongly held, and the effects of some ideologies were limited precisely because they were indirect. Equally important, however, there was also no ideology of ethnic purity or exclusion, despite the strong pre-conquest identities of both Normans and English. Yet there can be no doubt that the Norman kings and the invaders practised what is known as discrimination along ethnic lines in their restructuring of the secular elites and in their ecclesiastical appointments. This chapter examines the roots of this obvious and established prejudice and how it can be reconciled with the apparent swiftness and ease of assimilation.