But there were yet distinctions of rank in the villages and in the loose
tribes formed by their union for purposes of war or otherwise. The
people were divided into three classes of _æthelings_ or chieftains,
_freolings_ or freemen, and _theows_ or slaves. The _æthelings_ were the
nobles and rulers of each tribe. There was no king: but when the tribes
joined together in a war, their _æthelings_ cast lots together, and
whoever drew the winning lot was made commander for the time being. As
soon as the war was over, each tribe returned to its own independence.
Indeed, the only really coherent body was the village or kindred: and
the whole course of early English history consists of a long and tedious
effort at increased national unity, which was never fully realised till
the Norman conquerors bound the whole nation together in the firm grasp
of William, Henry, and Edward.

In personal appearance, the primitive Anglo-Saxons were typical Germans
of very unmixed blood. Tall, fair-haired, and gray-eyed, their limbs
were large and stout, and their heads of the round or brachycephalic
type, common to most Aryan races. They did not intermarry with other
nations, preserving their Germanic blood pure and unadulterated. But as
they had slaves, and as these slaves must in many cases have been
captives spared in war, we must suppose that such descriptions apply,
strictly speaking, to the freemen and chieftains alone. The slaves might
be of any race, and in process of time they must have learnt to speak
English, and their children must have become English in all but blood.
Many of them, indeed, would probably be actually English on the father's
side, though born of slave mothers. Hence we must be careful not to
interpret the expressions of historians, who would be thinking of the
free classes only, and especially of the nobles, as though they applied
to the slaves as well. Wherever slavery exists, the blood of the slave