[Sidenote: The English Village]

Of the temper and life of the folk in this older England we know little.
But from the glimpses that we catch of it when conquest had brought them
to the shores of Britain their political and social organization must
have been that of the German race to which they belonged. In their
villages lay ready formed the social and political life which is round us
in the England of to-day. A belt of forest or waste parted each from its
fellow villages, and within this boundary or mark the "township," as the
village was then called from the "tun" or rough fence and trench that
served as its simple fortification, formed a complete and independent
body, though linked by ties which were strengthening every day to the
townships about it and the tribe of which it formed a part. Its social
centre was the homestead where the ætheling or eorl, a descendant of the
first English settlers in the waste, still handed down the blood and
traditions of his fathers. Around this homestead or æthel, each in its
little croft, stood the lowlier dwellings of freelings or ceorls, men
sprung, it may be, from descendants of the earliest settler who had in
various ways forfeited their claim to a share in the original homestead,
or more probably from incomers into the village who had since settled
round it and been admitted to a share in the land and freedom of the
community. The eorl was distinguished from his fellow villagers by his
wealth and his nobler blood; he was held by them in an hereditary
reverence; and it was from him and his fellow æthelings that
host-leaders, whether of the village or the tribe, were chosen in times of
war. But this claim to precedence rested simply on the free recognition
of his fellow villagers. Within the township every freeman or ceorl was
equal. It was the freeman who was the base of village society. He was the