The effect of Norman lordship on English landholding at the local level is a well established theme in the historiography of the Norman Conquest. In recent years historians have tended to argue for elements of continuity across the Conquest, a notable example being David Bates's paper at the Spoleto Conference about the ‘feudal revolution’. It is now clearer than ever that the Normans arrived in a country which was already changing. Their role in speeding and directing change should not be underestimated, but, equally, the Normans should not be seen merely as predators, depriving native society as a whole of its privileges and rights. One particular example is Little Melton in Norfolk, supposedly taken by a Norman family from the abbey of St Benet of Holme. The case of Little Melton has been known to generations of scholars and students because it was chosen by Dorothy Whitelock to illustrate the theme of depredation in the second volume of English Historical Documents in 1956. By considering some other documents from St Benet's, however, we can see that the story is really rather different.

Little Melton lies ten miles west of Norwich and was a manor of the Norfolk Benedictine abbey of St Benet of Holme from the eleventh century until the sixteenth. Dorothy Whitelock chose five documents concerning Little Melton for the section of English Historical Documents about ‘land and people’.