freemen of the public frith-borhs. These two systems, with many
variations, existed side by side; but there was a general tendency for
the freemen to get fewer and for the lords to grow more powerful.

This growth of over-mighty subjects was due to the fact that a
government which could not protect the poorest could not restrain the
local magnates to whom the poor were forced to turn; and the weakness
of the government was due ultimately to the lack of political education
and of material resources. The mass of Englishmen were locally minded;
there was nothing to suggest national unity to their imagination. They
could not read, they had no maps, nor pictures of crowned sovereigns,
not even a flag to wave; none, indeed, of those symbols which bring
home to the peasant or artisan a consciousness that he belongs to a
national entity. Their interests centred round the village green; the
"best" men travelled further afield to the hundred and shire-moot, but
anything beyond these limits was distant and unreal, the affair of an
outside world with which they had no concern. Anglo-Saxon patriotism
never transcended provincial boundaries.

The government, on the other hand, possessed no proper roads, no
regular means of communication, none of those nerves which enable it to
feel what goes on in distant parts. The king, indeed, was beginning to
supply the deficiencies of local and popular organization: a special
royal peace or protection, which meant specially severe penalties to
the offender, was being thrown over special places like highways,
markets, boroughs, and churches; over special times like Sundays, holy
days, and the meeting-days of moots; and over special persons like
priests and royal officials. The church, too, strove to set an example
of centralized administration; but its organization was still monastic
rather than parochial and episcopal, and even Dunstan failed to cleanse