mere pleasure, for many perils beset the way.

The rich went

short journeys in heavy waggons, and longer journeys on horseback—the ladies riding on side-saddles as at present.* But most travelling was performed afoot. Horsemen carried spears for defence against robbers or against wild beasts; pedestrians held a stout oak staff, which did double work in aiding and in defending the traveller. The stirrup was of an odd triangular shape; the spur was a simple spike. A cover wrapped the head, a mantle the body, of travellers. That they sometimes carried umbrellas, we know; but these were probably very rare, being confined, like gloves, to the very highest class.

Plenty of ale-houses, in which too much time was spent, filled the towns, but in country districts inns were scarce.† The hospitality of the Anglo-Saxons, implanted both by custom and by law, caused the lack of inns to be scarcely felt, except in the wilder districts of the land. No sooner did a stranger show his face at the iron-banded door of an Anglo-Saxon dwelling than water was brought to wash his hands and feet; and when he had deposited his arms with the keeper of the door, he took his place at the board among the family and friends of the host.

The central picture in Anglo-Saxon life the great event of the Anglo-Saxon day-was noon-meat or dinner in the great hall. A little before three, the chief and all his household, with any stray guests who might have dropped in, met in the hallthe principal apartment of every Saxon house. Clouds of wood-smoke, rolling up from a fire which blazed in the middle of the floor, blackened the carved and gilded rafters of the arched roof before it found its way out of the hole above, which did duty as a chimney. The only articles of furniture always in the hall were wooden benches, some of which, espe

* Anne of Bohemia, queen of Richard II., did not introduce the side-saddle into England, for it was known there centuries before her birth.

↑ Inn, an Anglo-Saxon word, means 'lodging." Other names for the same thing were Gest-hus (compare the German Gast-haus), and Cumena-hus, "the house of

comers."

cially the high settle or seat of the chieftain, boasted cushions, or at least a rug.

While the hungry crowd, fresh from woodland and furrow, were lounging near the fire, or hanging up their weapons on the pegs and hooks that jutted from the wall, a number of slaves dragged in a long, flat, heavy board, and having placed it on trestles, spread on its upper half a handsome cloth. Then were arranged, with other utensils for the meal, some flattish dishes, baskets of ash-wood for holding bread, a scanty sprinkling of steel knives shaped like our modern razors, platters of wood, and bowls for the universal broth. The ceremony of "laying the board," as the Anglo-Saxon phrased it, having been completed, the work of demolition began. Great round cakes of bread, huge junks of boiled bacon, vast rolls of broiled eel, cups of milk, horns of ale, wedges of cheese, lumps of salted butter, and smoking piles of cabbages and beans, melted like magic from the board under the united attack of greasy fingers and grinding jaws.

With the washing of hands, performed for the honoured occupants of the high settle by officious slaves, the solid part of the banquet ended. The board was then dragged out of the hall; and the drinking began. Mead, and in very grand houses wine,* was passed round in goblets of gold and silver, or of wood inlaid with those precious metals. Most of the Anglo-Saxon drinking-glasses had rounded bottoms, like our soda-water bottles, so that they could not stand on the table -a little thing, which then, as in later times, suggested hard drinking and unceasing rounds. In humbler houses, storytelling, and songs sung to the music of the harp by each guest in turn, formed the principal amusement of the drinking-bout. In great halls the music of the harp-which, under the poetic

* The use of wine among the Anglo-Saxons was limited to the highest class. It was either imported from the Continent or made of home-grown grapes, which since Roman days had ripened in the lower basins of Severn and Thames. Many monasteries, alive to the delights of grape-juice, contrived to have a vineyard of their own.

name of "glee-wood," was the national instrument-of fiddles played with bow or finger, of trumpets, pipes, flutes, and horns, filled the hot and smoky air with a clamour of varied sounds. Meantime the music and the mead did their maddening work ; the revelry grew louder; riddles, which had flown thick round the board at first, gave place to banter, taunts, and fierce boasts of prowess; angry eyes gleamed defiance; and it was well if in the morning the household slaves had not to wash blood-stains from the pavement of the hall.

From the reek and riot of the hall the ladies escaped to the bower, where they reigned supreme. When their needles were fairly set agoing on those pieces of delicate embroidery-known and prized over all Europe as "English work"--some gentlemen dropped in, perhaps harp in hand, to chat and play for their amusement, or to engage in games of hazard and skill, which seem to have resembled modern dice and chess. When, in later Saxon days, supper came into fashion, the round table of the bower was usually spread for evening food, as the meal was called.

CHAPTER XI.

GOVERNMENT AND LAW IN ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND.

The King The revenue-Other classes -Division of the land-The townsReeves and courts-The Witan-Law and punishment - Wer-gild— Compurgation-The ordeals.

HOUTING warriors in the German forests had been used

SHOUTING warriorly-chosen

to hoist their newly-chosen king* on a shield, and to bear him amid the smoke of sacrifices three times round the tribe he was to rule. But in Anglo-Saxon England more state adorned the coronation of a king, who had become a personage of considerably more importance than the simple forest chieftain. The soldier's sword, the judge's crown, the monarch's sceptre, the executioner's rod, he received them all as symbols and instruments of his great authority. Then, riding round his dominions, he renewed customary rights, and accepted the homage of his people. All public property and the entire jurisdiction over roads and rivers lay in his royal hands. The heaviest penalties fenced round his person and his life. He summoned the militia and issued the coinage. He alone possessed the right of convening the Witan,† but he could neither prevent nor dissolve the great assembly. His revenue came chiefly from six sources-1. The crown lands, which descended with the sceptre; 2. The custom tolls; 3. The wiht-gild, or man-price, a

*The king (Cyning) derived his name from Cyn, a tribe, and the suffix ing, meaning 'son of," or "belonging to;" the king being the elected chief of the people. So Ethel ing, the title of the heir-apparent of the crown, was the son of the ethel, or noble. Witan, an abridgment of Witena-gemot, the meeting of the wise men.

tax on crime; 4. The estates of those who died intestate and without heirs; 5. Succession dues, claimed from all estates; 6. Presents from his freemen, which gradually became an extorted tax. The reeves (geréfan), who collected the revenue, kept back a large share in the shape of fees for collection, in order that they might not lose the fruits of their labour. "Out of the surplus the king maintained his court, entertained strangers, paid his judicial commissioners, and contributed to public works. The church, the army, the fleet, the police, the poor-rates, the walls, bridges, and highways of the country, were all local expenses, defrayed by tithes, by personal service, or by contributions the guilds.'

among

Below the king stood the ealdorman or earl, who owned forty hides of land, and presided over the affairs of a shire. The Church had its own aristocracy, archbishops being ranked with ethelings or princes of the blood, bishops with earls, and mass-priests with thanes. After the earls came the thanes or gesith, nobles of a lower class, who, holding at least five hides, represented the gentry of our day; the ceorls (churls) or yeomen, who formed the lowest class of freemen; and the vast crowd of theowes or slaves, whom birth, or crime, or debt, or the fortune of war, had doomed to the lowest drudgeries of the land. In certain cases a slave might buy or receive his freedom; but while his slavery lasted he was a mere cipher in the state, could own no property, take no oath, complete no document. The ceorl, rejoicing in a freeman's right of bearing arms, could by industry and enterprise climb into the ranks of nobility. Alfred enacted that every merchant who made three voyages in his own ship should receive the rank and rights of a thane.

After the king had received his enormous share of the land conquered by a Saxon or Anglian army, a portion of the remainder, divided among his officers, became private property (boc-land).

* Pearson's Early and Middle Ages of England.

We do not know the size of a hide of land. Some conjecture thirty acres.