The Normans and the Monasteries

Jervais of Canterbury claims that this plundering included the seizure of charters. William was systematically impoverishing English landowners through punitive gels, extortions, and now outright theft. If your father fought at Hastings and died there, he might have done it legally in his eyes. But in the eyes of William, your father was a rebel. And so, he had a legal claim to everything your father owned.