In the early 12th century, he began to pen his account of the Conquest and its aftermath, and, in complete contrast to the others, Orderic never minces his words about what he thought of as a colonisation. Foreigners grew wealthy with the spoils of England, while her own sons were either shamefully slain, or driven as exiles to wander hopelessly through foreign kingdoms. His account conveys the traumatic magnitude of what happened in England in the years following 1066. Pre-Conquest England was an old country, as Orderic describes it. Afterwards, it was a completely new one. Of course, not everything changed, and to look at a list of governing institutions you might suppose that nothing had changed that one class of governors had kicked out another class of governors. Big deal.


十二世纪早期，他开始记录这场征服及其影响。但与他人截然不同的是奥尔德里克从未矫揉做作地解释过，他认为什么是殖民化，从英格兰掠夺的财富让外来入侵者变得富有。而她的子民却被受尽凌辱惨遭荼毒，或被驱逐，流亡国外，背井离乡，他的记录向我们传达了1066年后英格兰所经受的巨大创伤。照奥尔德里克所述，被征服前的英格兰是个古老的国家，被征服后的英格兰却犹如新生。当然，也不是所有东西都变了。看一看治理国家的制度，你可能会发什么也没变，只是新的统治者赶跑了原来的统治者而已。有什么了不起。