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was the highest position the Church of England had to offer so he was duly rewarded.

Lanfranc considered the English church to be ill-disciplined. He set about reforming canon law and recasting monastic life. He oversaw all the administrative, judicial and ecclesial reforms with tact and patience. He appointed many Norman abbots to implement his vision in the English abbeys. Canterbury was given primacy over all the English dioceses, rather than York and Lanfranc became Primate of All England.

The new Norman bishops were soon dissatisfied with the appearance and size of the buildings they inherited. A massive building phase began and resulted in new cathedrals at Canterbury, St Albans, Winchester and York.

Towards the end of the 11th century Norman lords began to build new monastic houses, often in towns near their castles, emphasising the close relationship between government and religious power. Monastic buildings were considerably in advance of the primitive castles. Castle Acre Priory, Norfolk, has apartments, such as the refectory, dormitory, library, and writing-room with the church on the north side of the courtyard.

The Saxon system of government was not totally dismantled by William. He kept some of what he considered to be the good points. The geld system of tax and the process of local law were both retained. In fact, many of the administrative processes were left intact, that they remained meant in effect, that the Anglo-Saxon state formed the basis of the Anglo-Norman and early modern English state. William seems to have wanted to keep as much of the English way of life as possible.

The position of sheriff was introduced; sheriffs were officials of the Crown. They were primarily responsible for collecting rents from the royal estates in their county. They also collected taxes, such as the danegeld, presided over shire courts, delivered writs summoning litigants to appear before the royal courts and occasionally summoned local knights for military service on behalf of the crown. The term "sheriff" originates from the older office position of "shire reeve".

The Battle of Hastings also brought us The Domesday Book. Invading and conquering England had been expensive. However, a shortage of money was not William's only problem. By 1085 many Normans had begun to disagree amongst themselves over the land they had been given as a reward for helping conquer England. William wanted to settle these disputes once and for all.

In order to assess the resources of England for tax purposes William commissioned a survey of landholdings and their value throughout the kingdom. The Domesday Book provides extensive records of landholders, their tenants, the amount of land they owned, how many people occupied the land (villagers, smallholders, free men, slaves, etc.), the amounts of woodland, meadow, animals, fish and ploughs on the land (if there were any) and other resources, any buildings present (churches, castles, mills, salthouses, etc.).

The grand and comprehensive scale on which the Domesday survey took place and the irreversible nature of the information collected led people to compare it to the Last Judgement (Doomsday) as described in the Bible, when the deeds of Christians written in the Book of Life were to be placed before God for judgement. This name was not adopted until the late 12th Century. The Domesday Book is Britain's earliest public record, the foundation document of the national archives and a legal document that is still valid as evidence of title to land. Over 90% of the towns and villages in Domesday still exist as modern day communities.

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