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The nature of the relationship between England and the continent, and a fortiori the consequences of the Norman conquest, has haunted British historiography. To understand the impact of the conquest on this relationship, it is important first to evaluate it before 1066: Anglo-Saxon England was not isolated; it had been subject to Carolingian influence and had also seen the early stages of feudalism and Gregorian reform, even if they quickly evolved as a result of the conquest. But beyond military events and political and administrative changes, the essential transformation it led to was the establishment of a new ruling class. However, the bipartite structure of this class produced by the redistribution of the domains of Anglo-Saxon elites paradoxically allowed a rapid re-Anglicization of the aristocracy and its involvement in the administrative and judicial institutions of the kingdom, gradually turning its members away from the continent from which they came.