scene.

On the same bench with these sub-kings, distinguished from them by
height of stature, and calm collectedness of mien, no less than by
their caps of maintenance and furred robes, are those props of strong
thrones and terrors of weak--the earls to whom shires and counties
fall, as hyde and carricate to the lesser thegns. But three of these
were then present, and all three the foes of Godwin,--Siward, Earl of
Northumbria; Leofric of Mercia (that Leofric whose wife Godiva yet
lives in ballad and song); and Rolf, Earl of Hereford and
Worcestershire, who, strong in his claim of "king's blood," left not
the court with his Norman friends. And on the same benches, though a
little apart, are the lesser earls, and that higher order of thegns,
called king's thegns.

Not far from these sat the chosen citizens from the free burgh of
London, already of great weight in the senate [88],--sufficing often
to turn its counsels; all friends were they of the English Earl and
his house. In the same division of the hall were found the bulk and
true popular part of the meeting--popular indeed--as representing not
the people, but the things the people most prized-valour and wealth;
the thegn landowners, called in the old deeds the "Ministers:" they
sate with swords by their side, all of varying birth, fortune, and
connection, whether with king, earl, or ceorl. For in the different
districts of the old Heptarchy, the qualification varied; high in East
Anglia, low in Wessex; so that what was wealth in the one shire was
poverty in the other. There sate, half a yeoman, the Saxon thegn of
Berkshire or Dorset, proud of his five hydes of land; there, half an
ealderman, the Danish thegn of Norfolk or Ely, discontented with his
forty; some were there in right of smaller offices under the crown;