Traill, I, 201-209. continent to fill the church windows with radiant light. Embroiderers made up gorgeous vestments, and gold-workers adorned God's altars with cross and image, or wrought marvellous shrines for the relics of the saints. The first Saxon churches were built of wood, and soon perished by fire or by natural decay. Stone-work was not introduced till the seventh century, when the Abbot Benedict undertook to build a church at Jarrow (680) "in the Roman manner,” and sought masons in France. Trade. The revival of industries and the growing demand for luxuries served to promote trade. Many articles that could not be produced at home, such as salt, spices, fine cloth, iron, millstones, must be brought from a distance. Merchants made their way up the river-courses to the valley settlements, and then by the long-disused streets into the interior. Market towns were rebuilt at the cross-ways and by the river-fords,' while at the saints' shrines, where men gathered on feast days, great fairs were held. Commerce over-sea, interrupted by the centuries of warfare, revived with the interval of peace secured by the successors of Alfred. Gloucester was the meeting-place of Welsh and English merchants, Bristol and Chester divided the Irish trade, Exeter and the Cinque Ports were in direct communication with France. Norwich, Dunwich, Ipswich, and especially London, secured the Channel traffic. Commerce brought increase of wealth and population to the towns. The thirty cities of Alfred's day had become eighty, with two hundred thousand inhabitants, by the eleventh century. The later Anglo-Saxon kings offered every encouragement to commerce. Ample protection was afforded to strange "chapmen" sojourning in the land, and Englishmen were incited to engage in foreign trade by the law providing that 'every merchant who fares thrice across the wide sea at his own cost is of thegnright worthy." Britain exported, as in Roman days, cattle and grain, tin and lead, horses and slaves. The addition of certain manu 1e.g. Cambridge and Oxford. factured articles, as gold-work and embroidery, indicates that considerable industrial advance had been made in spite of five centuries of well-nigh perpetual war. The slaves were for the most part the conquered Welsh, but there is evidence that the slave-trader did not eschew English blood. The boys on sale in the Roman market who attracted the pitying attention of Pope Gregory, were Angles from Deira. Five centuries later the biographer of Wulfstan records that "the people of Bristol had an odious and inveterate custom of buying men and women in all parts of England, and exporting them to Ireland for gain." The church used its influence to discourage slavery. St. Patrick condemned the practice of selling Christians to the pagan English, and the laws of Ine (688-728) forbade that "Christian men and uncondemned be sold out of the country, especially into a Green, Thorpe, p. 193. Traill, I, heathen nation." Political Organization. The Anglo-Saxon system of government came to its full development under Edgar. 134-140. The king had become the supreme authority, not only in military but in civil affairs. He presided in the Witenagemot, the assembly of wise men (thegns, ealdormen, and bish- Bright, I, ops), summoned to advise the king and to legislate for the 28-36. realm. The kingdom was grown too extensive for the assembly of the whole body of freemen as in the ancient folk-moot. The troubled years of the Danish invasions had witnessed a Commendadecline in the status of the ceorl or small landowner. Unable tion. to defend his possessions single-handed, he was fain to attach himself to the military leader of his neighborhood, surrendering somewhat of his personal independence in return for the promised protection. By Edgar's law, the practice was made obligatory. Every man below the rank of thegn must find himself a lord who should be responsible for him. A considerable degree of popular government persisted side by side with the growth of the royal authority. Every village had its tungemot, where the heads of houses met to determine affairs of common interest, the number of cattle each man might turn into the common pasture, the time when the hay should be cut or the corn-fields reaped. Each tun sent its reeve and four best men to the hundred court, where minor offences and disputes between men of the hundred were dealt with. The same representatives met in the shire-court with the greater folk of the county, and there more serious offences and cases appealed from the hundred court were tried in the presence of the ealdorman, the bishop, and the king's THE ROMAN OCCUPATION, 43-411 A.D. THE SAXON CONQUEST, 449-607 A.D. The Jutes take possession of Kent, 449+. The Saxons take possession of Sussex, Wessex, Essex, 477+. The Britons are defeated at Old Sarum, 552; at Deorham, Important Events THE TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY. Monastery at Iona founded by Columba, 565. Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, 668-690. THE STRONG KINGS OF WESSEX. Egbert attains to overlordship, 802-839. Edward recovers lost territories, 901-925. Edgar, the Peaceful, emperor of Britain, 959-975. Saxon Elements in the People and Institutions of England. Framework and most essential portions of the language. Conception and form of local self-government. National characteristics of independence and pertinacity. 55 Johnson, pp. 1-14. CHAPTER III FOREIGN RULE Books for Consultation SOURCES Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Florence of Worcester. Henry of Huntingdon. Ordericus Vitalis. Eadmer, Historia Novorum. SPECIAL AUTHORITIES Anderson, Norse Mythology. Johnson, Normans in Europe. Church, St. Anseim. Freeman, Norman Conquest, abridged edition. IMAGINATIVE LITERATURE Yonge, The Little Duke. Bulwer, Harold, the Last of the Saxon Kings. Kingsley, Hereward the Wake, the Last of the English. Rossetti, The White Ship. Migrations of the Northmen. Little is known of the early history of the Scandinavian peninsulas whence came the conquerors of England. To the Saxon chronicler, recounting the long and losing struggle against the Danes, the invaders are wild barbarians for whom no epithet is too scathing. They are "wolves," "foxes," "pagans,” “children of Satan." Yet the Scandinavians were near of kin to the English and possessed the best characteristics of the Teuton inheritance. The bitter struggle for existence in a |