The Normandy countryside was flat, brown and still in the mailed fist of winter. Some hardy peasants, their russet cloaks belted around them, felt hats pulled over their eyes, attempted to break the ground for sowing: behind them, their families, women, even small children worked scattering marle, lime or manure to fertilise the soil. To Corbett, who had witnessed the ravages of war on the marcher counties during King Edward's Welsh wars, the land seemed prosperous enough. Nevertheless, he remembered the saying of Jacques of Vitry, 'what the peasant gains by stubborn work in a year, the lord will devour in an hour'. Justice was harsh, the lords of the manor in their walled, moated homes of wood and stone, exercised more justice than they did in England and every crossroad had its scaffold or stocks.
The villages were a collection of cottages, each with a small garden surrounded by a hedge and shallow ditch but Corbett was particularly struck by the number of towns, some old but others only in existence for decades; each was walled, the houses clustered around an abbey, cathedral or church. Sometimes the English stayed in one of these places, such as Noyon and Beauvis, where there was a welcoming priory or tavern spacious enough to host them. On other occasions, a variety of manors, royal or otherwise, were compelled to accept them.