Welcoming the Normans

All in all, The Anglo-Saxons ambled along rather satisfactorily, if somewhat violently, mostly either enduring, repelling, or buying off successive waves of other prospective migrants from across the North Sea, such as the Vikings. In 1066 however, all that was to change, when the Norman French, themselves Viking descendants, crossed the English Channel and defeated the last Anglo-Saxon King, the ill-fated Harold, at the Battle of Hastings. And given the demographics available to us about the Eldridges of Sussex, it is quite possible that there may have been Eldred's fighting for Harold as he made his tragic last stand.

From now on these Eldreds were to be second class citizens, subjects to a French speaking aristocracy with a dual penchant for ruthless conquest and a murderously efficient bureaucracy, as exemplified by the Domesday Book.

From: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hastings

The new policies of the Normans included an innovation however that remains with us today. They required all citizens to take surnames. Thus, the Aelfrics and Alrics and Edreds of the old days became the Eldreds and Aldridges and subsequently Eldridges of the new era, and started to work their way up in the world once more in an England where French was now the language of government and Latin the language of the church, and old English a second-class Germanic vernacular of the old Anglo-Saxon families. Out of this distillation, the modern English language was eventually to emerge. Furthermore, as we all know, cultural and religious change over the centuries had long since led to the displacement of old Brittonic and Germanic and Scandinavian belief systems, and the adoption of an entirely new but alien theology imported from the Middle East. The bond that was now to bridge prevailing divides, and instil social unity was Christianity, and, specifically, obeisance to Rome, and to the Pope.