Lanfranc becomes Archbishop of Canterbury

1070

The Lombard scholar and abbot of Caen, William the Conqueror's trusted adviser, was enthroned at Canterbury and began reforming the English church wholesale: replacing Anglo-Saxon bishops with Normans, moving sees to fortified towns, and aligning the kingdom with the papal reform movement led from Rome. His reorganization was so thorough that the institutional framework he imposed survived essentially intact for four hundred years.