In considering the immediate reaction to each eleventh-century conquest, it explains that historians in late eleventh-century England saw themselves, the people, and their kings as victims of conquest, and that historians at the time explained the disasters of invasion by employing traditional models of collective sin and providential will. The chapter discusses sources from the reign of King Alfred, in which we find early glimmers of the tensions among the responsibilities of kings which occur in a more pronounced fashion in the twelfth century.
It then goes back in time to examine Anglo-Saxon models for leadership from the time of Gildas (writing in post-Roman Britain) and Bede, up to the last versions of ASC written in the eleventh century.
Chapter 3 begins by providing an overview of the key events of eleventh-century England, to serve as a guide for comparing and evaluating both contemporary and twelfth-century retellings of this narrative.
