Aelfric to Chaucer, and the east Midland and London dialect of Chaucer emphasises the break from the West Saxon past.
We praise the Norman for order and universality, for the concentration of wealth in the economy, for mottes and baileys, for preservation of internal peace, and protection from outside foes. They plundered their subjects, but they did indeed protect them from others. We must not forget the loss. And one consequence of the plundering was the stifling of the precocious vitality of the standardised Old English literary culture.
ealdorman: a man of noble rank in charge of an important office under the king, normally in the reign of Alfred, a single shire. Later in the tenth century his sphere of authority could extend to several shires;
frith and grith: terms for personal peace;
hundred: a subdivision of a shire. In parts of the Danelaw the corresponding division was known as a wapentake;
motte and bailey: a fortified mount with attached enclosure, the commonest form of fortification in the century after the Norman Conquest;
reeve: a superior servant in charge of an estate (Anglo-Saxon gerafa);
sake and soke: rights of jurisdiction (literally cause and suit);
thegn: originally a term meaning servant, but by the end of the Anglo-Saxon period a nobleman with a special wergeld (q.v.);
wergeld: blood-price, the sum paid in compensation for the death of a man. This was normally reckoned at 200s for a simple freeman, and 1,200s for a nobleman.