Historical background
The violent historical struggle for land, and the rent gained from it, is at the heart of our society.
In AD 43 England was invaded by the Romans who remained until the army withdraw to defend Rome itself. For almost 400 years the Romans extracted raw materials (gold, copper, tin, lead etc.), created vast agricultural estates and took tens of thousands of Britons as slaves. After they left, the stone from their villas, forts and towns was robbed out by the Britons for their own use – such stones can be found in many English churches!
So, the Romans “veni, vidi, vici” – they came, they saw, they conquered – then they went home!
They left with very little remaining of the social and physical structures they created. Following their exit, various tribes from Western Europe migrated to the British isles and assimilated with the Britons to form an Anglo-Saxon society
During the middle of the 11th Century a fairly small (probably no more than 8,000) but extremely violent gang of thugs on horseback and on foot was rampaging through Northern France, fighting wars with its neighbours and seizing land. In 1066, under their leader, William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy, they invaded England and defeated an Anglo-Saxon army at the battle of Hastings.
Within three months of the invasion William had crowned himself king, taken all the land of England as his person possession, “to use and abuse as he sees fit”, and had started to grant large parts of the country to those who had supported him. William retained the “ownership” of all land but he granted the right to hold land (the “freehold”) subject to certain conditions: military support in future battles and cash or goods. Those who failed to pay, or who rebelled against the king, found their land holdings revoked and assigned to someone else.
In 2025, as a society, we still “own” all the land through the crown.
This is why you purchase the “freehold” of land when you buy a property. You ”own” the bricks and mortar, but you “hold” the land.
The major beneficiary of William’s largesse was his half brother, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, who became Earl of Kent. Odo was a “warrior bishop” and, like William, was motivated by greed, fighting for land and rent, and, with land in over 23 counties, he became the second largest landholder after the king himself. He was involved in multiple violent episodes caused by his greed, including a plot to invade of Italy in an attempt to become pope and a rebellion in 1087 in England when he supported the wrong side after William’s death, He died in Palermo in Sicily while on the way to seize more land in the Holy Land as part of the first crusade.
For almost 1,000 years the Christian church remained important for keeping people in their place: “why use the sword when you can threaten them with hellfire and damnation!”
For almost 500 years the Church increased its share of land in England until 1536 when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries and distributed church land to those willing to pay for it.
Apart from in the South East, which gave in fairly quickly, rebellions again the Normans continued for decades - they had to build over 500 motte and bailey castles, initially wooden then stone, from which they could ride out to collect rent and crush rebellion. A major rebellion of 1069 resulted in the “Harrying of the North” when tens of thousands were killed, villages and towns were burnt to the ground and the land laid to waste.
The Normans did not seize full control of England and Wales until the building of Caernarfon Castle in 1283 by Edward 1st.
The Normans never left!
Unlike the Romans, the Normans never left and their impact on English society is still very visible today – especially in our unfair distribution of wealth.
Having seized land the new landholders wanted to ensure that they never lost control of the rents it generated. To do this:
they created laws to define their property rights. Landholders and their descendants became the law makers in parliament and the judges who interpreted those laws.
they controlled the means to enforce those laws. Landholders and their descendants controlled local militias and became the officer class that controlled the monopoly the state had over violence – its armed forces. Landholders used their local militias to put down any attempt to distribute wealth in favour of anyone except themselves. The donkeys who that led the lions in England’s wars were all descendants of landholders.
they created an education system that trained their sons as lawyers and law makers – this is still with us in our public school system.
Interpreting history
There are two guidelines when interpreting history:
Follow the money! This is good advice to anyone trying to understand history - find out who benefitted financially.
Who wrote it? What was the background of the author? What picture were they trying to paint? History is usually written by the victors.
English history is full of rebellions against the system created by Norman landholders, their descendants and those who have acquired land in different ways,. Henry VIII created new landholders by selling off church land and the English Civil War did the same. Oliver Cromwell, himself a land holder at the start of the war, gained even more land after it ended.
Rebellions are often overlooked when history is taught in our schools. The Great Revolt of 1381, if it is taught at all, is often described as The Peasants Revolt when most of those who fought were certainly not peasants! Anyone educated in a public school, or in a state school earlier than the last few decades, is unlikely to have heard of most revolts - and there are dozens, if not hundreds of them, all ruthlessly put down in the interests of landholders.
Have we moved on?
In the 2020s, following on from 1066, we still have kings, dukes, marquesses, earls, counts, viscounts, barons, baronets and knights. The aristocracy still holds over 30% of our land.
Following on from Bishop Odo, by 2023 the majority of the population had turned against religion. Among young people 71% of 18 to 24 year olds said they had no religion, only 2% said they were CofE and only 37% want Britain to remain a monarchy.
Twenty six unelected bishops, representing the 0.9% of the population that attends C of E services, sit in the House of Lords pontificating about our laws yet our system of representation means that most people do not have their views heard in parliament. Less than 21% of the electorate voted for the Labour Party in 2024.
No government has ever secured the support of the majority of the electorate.
But this was 1,000 years ago, things are different today!
There are over 15,000 people in England who are older than 100 and just ten of those lifetimes take you back to 1066 - so, it's not that long ago!
It's not William and Odo we are concerned about, it is the social structure that has been developed since the start of the Norman occupation. Our legal system developed to protect property and wealth and our education system developed to train the sons and daughters of landholders to make and defend the law.
There is no tax on land.
Landholding families have always done everything to hang on to their land, so much so that the first son was the heir, the second became a lawyer or MP (to protect land holdings), the third went into the military (to enforce the law) or became the local rector to take the 10% tithe on everything produced on the land. Keeping rent and tithes in the same family made obvious sense!
In England today many (most?) large landholdings are in the name of a company or trust to avoid tax. In some cases, those companies and trusts are registered in tax havens to further avoid tax. In some cases (Chatsworth for example) trusts have become charities to benefit from tax-free income.
Legitimising the theft
If you have seized land through violence you need to legitimise your ownership (after all, you are not a common criminal, you used a sword not a jemmy) so you need to change the law, or create a new legal system, and you need to enforce that law through a judiciary (recruited from your social class) backed up by the threat of further violence (using an army led by your social class).
In the 2020s in England 83% of the population is urban while 17% is rural - only 301,000 people work in agriculture but the Norman occupation is glaringly obvious in the countryside. Many large estates still remain in the hands of Norman descendants and most others have passed through very few hands since 1066. Hundreds of aristocratic and upper middle class families still send their children to public schools and live extremely well from rent taken from land seized through violence.
“Why work when you can live off rent and pass it on, tax free, on a silver spoon?”
Gerald Grosvenor, Duke of Westminster, was asked for advice on how to get on in the world, his reply was telling:
“have an ancestor who was good friends with William the Conqueror.”
His son, Hugh, the current Duke, is now worth £9.42 billion.
Screaming out for reform
Our landholding laws are impenetrably complex - that's why lawyers love them! There are times when the best way to solve a problem is to scrap things and start again - and this is certainly the case with laws relating to land and property.
If you can register ownership of a car through DVLA, and you can sell your car with no lawyers involved, why can't you do the same with land and property?
William of Normandy did it in 1066, we can do it now!
