The Corbet family is an aristocratic English family of Anglo-Norman extraction, who were amongst the early marcher lords, holding the barony of Caus. Following the extinction of the senior line the junior line based at Moreton Corbet Castle would go on to become one of the most powerful and richest of the landed gentry in Shropshire. The family trace their ancestry to two barons found in the 1086 Domesday Book and they probably came from the Boitron and Essay region, near Sées in Normandy.

The Anglo-Normans were the medieval ruling class in England following the Norman Conquest, and were primarily a combination of Normans, Frenchmen, Flemings, and Bretons who intermarried with the indigenous Anglo-Saxons and Celtic Britons. A small number of Normans had earlier befriended future Anglo-Saxon king of England, Edward the Confessor, during his exile in his mother's homeland of Normandy in northern France. When he returned to England, some of them went with him; as such, there were Normans already settled in England prior to the conquest. Edward's successor, Harold Godwinson, was defeated by Duke William the Conqueror of Normandy at the Battle of Hastings, leading to William's accession to the English throne.