some of whom were of high rank), shire thegns (local landowning
farmers, who were required to bring fighting equipment such as
swords, helmets, chainmail, and horses), and ordinary freemen,
i.e. ceorls (who carried food, dug fortifications, and sometimes
fought). Alfred had a small navy of longships with 60 oars to
fight the Viking longships.

Alfred divided his army into two parts so that one-half of the
men were fighting while the other half was at home sowing and
harvesting for those fighting. Thus, any small-scale independent
farming was supplanted by the open-field system, cultivation of
common land, and a more manor-oriented and stratified society
with the King and important families more powerful and the
peasants more curtailed. The free coerl of the older days became
the bonded villein. The village community became a manor. But the
lord does not have the power to encroach upon the rights of
common that exist within the community.

In 886, a treaty between Alfred and the Vikings divided the
country along the war front and made the wer of every free
farmer, whether English or Viking, 200s. Men of higher rank were
given a wer of 8 1/2 marks of pure gold.

King Alfred gave land with jurisdictional powers within its
boundaries such as the following:
"This is the bequest which King Alfred make unequivocally to
Shaftesbury, to the praise of God and St. Mary and all the saints
of God, for the benefit of my soul, namely a hundred hides [a
hide was probably the amount of land which could support a family
for a year or as much land as could be tilled annually by a