chariots had wood wheels, later with iron rims. When bronze came
into use, there was a demand for its constituent parts: copper
and tin, which were traded by rafts on waterways and the sea.
Lead was mined.

Corpses were buried far away from any village in wood coffins,
except for Kings, who were placed in stone coffins after being
wrapped in linen.

With the ability to grow food and the acquisition of land by
conquest, the population grew. There were different classes of
men such as eorls, ceorls [free farmers], and slaves. They
dressed differently. Freemen had long hair and beards. Slaves'
hair was shorn from their heads so that they were bald. Slaves
were chained and often traded. Prisoners taken in battle, e.g.
Britons, became slaves. Criminals became slaves of the person
wronged or of the King. Sometimes a father pressed by need sold
his children or his wife into bondage. Debtors, who increased in
number during famine, which occurred regularly, became slaves by
giving up the freeman's sword and spear, picking up a slave's
mattock [pick ax for the soils], and placing their head within a
master's hands. Children with a slave parent were slaves. The
slaves lived in huts around the homes of big landowners. Slaves
often were used as ploughmen, sowers, haywards, woodwards,
sheperds, goatherds, swineherds, oxherds, cowherds, dairymaids,
and barnmen. A lord could kill his slave at will.

The people were worshipping pagan gods when St. Augustine came to
England in 596 A.D. to Christianize them. King AEthelbert of Kent
and his wife, who had been raised Christian on the continent, met