princesses were married respectively to the emperor, to the king of
France, and to the king of Provence. Such alliances show a considerable
degree of intercourse between Wessex and the Roman world; and the relics
of material civilisation fully bear out the inference. The Institutes of
the city of London mention traders from Brabant, Liège, Rouen, Ponthieu,
France (in the restricted sense), and the Empire; but these came "in
their own vessels." England, which now has in her hands the carrying
trade of the world, was still dependent for her own supply on foreign
bottoms. We know also that officers were appointed to collect tolls from
foreign merchants at Canterbury, Dover, Arundel, and many other towns;
and London and Bristol certainly traded on their own account with the
Continent.

As a whole, however, England still remained a purely agricultural
country to the very end of the Anglo-Saxon period. It had but little
foreign trade, and what little existed was chiefly confined to imports
of articles of luxury (wine, silk, spices, and artistic works) for the
wealthier nobles, and of ecclesiastical requisites, such as pictures,
incense, relics, vestments, and like southern products for the churches
and monasteries. The exports seem mainly to have consisted of slaves and
wool, though hides may possibly have been sent out of the country, and a
little of the famous English gold-work and embroidery was perhaps sold
abroad in return for the few imported luxuries. But taking the country
at a glance, we must still picture it to ourselves as composed almost
entirely of separate agricultural manors, each now owned by a
considerable landowner, and tilled mainly by his churls, whose position
had sunk during the Danish wars to that of semi-servile tenants, owing
customary rents of labour to their superiors. War had told against the
independence of the lesser freemen, who found themselves compelled to
choose themselves protectors among the higher born classes, till at last