The monograph is devoted to the formation of ideas about the past of England at a turning point - the first century after the Norman Conquest of 1066. Who and why wrote history in England at that time; from which sources historical authors drew knowledge of the past; how they broadcast, corrected and used the previous historical tradition in their own needs, and sometimes created completely new pseudo-historical constructs. The collapse of the Anglo-Saxon state, the almost complete change of the political and church elite called into question the previously existing historical concepts, made it necessary to develop a new tradition, acceptable to both the Norman captors and the conquered British.