kingdoms by conquest reduced the size of this large county and confined
it to its present smaller dimensions. In several cases the name of the
county is derived from that of its chief town, _e.g._ Oxfordshire,
Warwickshire; these were districts which were conquered by some powerful
earl or chieftain, who held his court in the town, and called his newly
acquired property after its name.

We have seen the picture of an ordinary English village in early Saxon
times, the villeins and slaves working in the fields and driving their
oxen, and the thane dressed in his linen tunic and short cloak, his hose
bandaged to the knee with strips of cloth, superintending the farming
operations. We have seen the freemen and thanes taking an active part in
public life, attending the courts of the hundred and shire, as well as
the folk moot or parish council of those times, and the slave mourning
over his lack of freedom. But many other relics of Saxon times remain,
and these will require another chapter for their examination.


[1] Until the eighteenth century there stood a pollard oak in the parish
of Shelford, Berks, where the hundred court used to be held.

[2] Other theories with regard to the origin of the hundred have been
suggested. Some writers maintain that the hundred was a district whence
the hundred warriors were derived, or a group of townships. But the
Bishop of Oxford in his _Constitutional History_ states: "It is very
probable that the colonists of Britain arranged themselves in hundreds
of warriors; it is not probable that the country was carved into equal
districts. The only conclusion that seems reasonable is that under the
name of geographical hundreds we have the variously sized _pagi_, or
districts, in which the hundred warriors settled, the boundaries of