Norman conquest of England in the context of "Old English poetry"

The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to Germanic settlers who became one of the most important cultural groups in Britain by the 5th century. The Anglo-Saxon period in Britain is considered to have started by about 450 and ended in 1066, with the Norman Conquest. Although the details of their early settlement and political development are not clear, by the 8th century an Anglo-Saxon cultural identity which was generally called Englisc had developed out of the interaction of these settlers with the existing Romano-British culture. By 1066, most of the people of what is now England spoke Old English, and were considered English. Viking and Norman invasions changed the politics and culture of England significantly, but the overarching Anglo-Saxon identity evolved and remained dominant even after these major changes. Late Anglo-Saxon political structures and language are the direct predecessors of the high medieval Kingdom of England and the Middle English language. Although the modern English language owes less than 26% of its words to Old English, this includes the vast majority of everyday words.

In the early 8th century, the earliest detailed account of Anglo-Saxon origins was given by Bede (d. 735), suggesting that they were long divided into smaller regional kingdoms, each with differing accounts of their continental origins. As a collective term, the compound term Anglo-Saxon, commonly used by modern historians for the period before 1066, first appears in Bede's time, but it was probably not widely used until modern times. Bede was one of the first writers to prefer "Angles" (or English) as the collective term, and this eventually became dominant. Bede, like other authors, also continued to use the collective term "Saxons", especially when referring to the earliest periods of settlement. Roman and British writers of the 3rd to 6th century described those earliest Saxons as North Sea raiders, and mercenaries. Later sources, such as Bede, believed these early raiders came from the region they called "Old Saxony", in what is now northern Germany, which in their own time had become well known as a region resisting the spread of Christianity and Frankish rule. According to this account, the English (Angle) migrants came from a country between those "Old Saxons" and the Jutes.

An overlord in the English feudal system was a lord of a manor who had subinfeudated a particular manor, estate or fee, to a tenant. The tenant thenceforth owed to the overlord one of a variety of services, usually military service or serjeanty, depending on which form of tenure (i.e. feudal tenancy contract) the estate was held under. The highest overlord of all, or lord paramount, was the monarch, who due to his ancestor William the Conqueror's personal conquest of the Kingdom of England, owned by inheritance from him all the land in England under allodial title and had no superior overlord, "holding from God and his sword", although certain monarchs, notably King John (1199–1216) purported to grant the Kingdom of England to Pope Innocent III, who would thus have become overlord to English monarchs.

A paramount lord may then be seen to occupy the apex of the feudal pyramid, or the root of the feudal tree, and such allodial title is also termed "radical title" (from Latin radix, root), "ultimate title" and "final title". William the Conqueror immediately set about granting tenancies on his newly won lands, in accordance with feudal principles. The monarch's immediate tenants were the tenants-in-chief, usually military magnates, who held the highest status in feudal society below the monarch. The tenants-in-chief usually held multiple manors or other estates from the monarch, often as feudal barons (or "barons by tenure") who owed their royal overlord an enhanced and onerous form of military service, and subinfeudated most to tenants, generally their own knights or military followers, keeping only a few in demesne. This created a mesne lord – tenant relationship. The knights in turn subinfeudated to their own tenants, creating a further subsidiary mesne lord – tenant relationship. Over the centuries for any single estate the process was in practice repeated numerous times.

Osman refers to two different names:

• Osman or Usman is the Turkish, Persian, and Urdu transliteration of the Arabic masculine given name Uthman.
• Osman is an English surname whose history dates back to the wave of migration that followed the Norman conquest of England in 1066, though it is pronounced with a long "o". Variant spellings include Osment and Osmond. The name comes from the Old English pre-7th-century masculine personal name Osmaer, "oss" meaning god and "maer" meaning fame; hence "god-fame". The name Osmar and Osmer (without surname) appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 for Leicestershire and Devonshire, respectively, but the surname did not appear until the early part of the 13th century. On July 15, 1571, Mary Hosmer, daughter of Richard Hosmer, was christened in Brenchley, Kent, and on September 18, 1580, Jane Hosmer was also christened there. In April 1635, clothier James Hosmer, his wife Ann and two daughters, Marie and Ann, embarked from London on the Elizabeth bound for New England. They were among the earliest recorded name bearers to settle in America. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of William Osmere, which was dated 1230, in the Pipe rolls of Devonshire, during the reign of King Henry III.

The House of Normandy (Norman: Maison de Nouormandie [mɛ.zɔ̃ d̪e nɔʁ.mɛnde]) was a noble family originating from the Duchy of Normandy. The House of Normandy's lineage began with the Scandinavian Rollo who founded the Duchy of Normandy in 911.

The House of Normandy includes members who were dukes of Normandy, counts of Rouen, as well as kings of England following the Norman conquest of England. It lasted until Stephen of the French House of Blois seized the Duchy of Normandy in 1135. The house emerged from the union between the Viking Rollo (first ruler of Normandy) and Poppa of Bayeux, a West Frankish noblewoman. William the Conqueror and his heirs down through 1135 were members of this dynasty.