stone were used. Cloth was woven for clothes. Pottery was made
from clay and used for food preparation and consumption. During
the period of "lent" [from the word "lencten", which means
spring], it was forbidden to eat any meat or fish. This was the
season in which many animals were born and grew a lot. The
people also made boats.

Circles of big stones like Stonehenge were built so that the
sun's position with respect to the stones would indicate the day
of longest sunlight and the day of shortest sunlight. Between
these days there was an optimum time to harvest the crops before
fall, when plants dried up and leaves fell from the trees. The
winter solstice, when the days began to get longer was cause for
celebration. In the next season, there was an optimum time to
plant seeds so they could spring up from the ground as new
growth. So farming gave rise to the concept of a year. Certain
changes of the year were celebrated, such as Easter; the twelve
days of Yuletide when candles were lit and houses decorated with
evergreen; Plough Monday for resumption of work after Yuletide;
May Day when greenery was gathered from the woods and people
danced around a May pole; Whitsun when Morris dancers leapt
through their villages with bells, hobby-horses, and waving
scarves; Lammas when the first bread was celebrated; and Harvest
Home when the effigy of a goddess was carried with reapers
singing and piping behind.

There were settlements on high ground and near rivers. Each
settlement had a meadow, for the mowing of hay, and a mill, with
wooden huts, covered with branches or thatch, of families
clustered nearby. Grain was stored in pits in the earth. Each
hut had a garden for fruit and vegetables. A goat or cow might
be tied out of reach of the garden. There was a fence or hedge
surrounding and protecting the garden area and dwelling. Outside
the fence were an acre or two of fields of wheat and barley, and
sometimes oats and rye. Wheat and rye were sown in the fall, and
oats and barley in the spring. They were all harvested in the
summer. These fields were usually enclosed with a hedge to keep
animals from eating the crop. Flax was grown and made into linen
cloth. Beyond the fields were pastures for cattle and sheep
grazing. There was often an area for beehives.

Crops were produced with the open field system. In this system,
there were three large fields for the heavy and fertile land.
Each field was divided into long and narrow strips. Each strip
represented a day's work with the plough. One field had wheat,
or perhaps rye, another had barley, oats, beans, or peas, and
the third was fallow. These were rotated yearly. Each free man
was allotted certain strips in each field to bear crops. His
strips were far from each other, which insured some very fertile
and some only fair soil, and some land near his village dwelling
and some far away. These strips he cultivated, sowed with seed,
and harvested for himself and his family. After the year, they
reverted to common ownership for grazing.

The plough used was heavy and made first of wood and later of
iron. It had a mould-board which caught the soil stirred by the
plough blade and threw it into a ridge. Other farm implements
were: coulters, which gave free passage to the plough by cutting
weeds and turf, picks, spades and shovels, reaping hooks and
scythes, and sledge-hammers and anvils. With iron axes, forests
were cleared to provide more arable land.

The use of this open field system instead of compact enclosures
worked by individuals was necessary in primitive communities
which were farming only for their own subsistence. Each ox was
owned by a different man as was the plough. Strips of land for
agriculture were added from waste land as the community grew.

There were villages which had one or two market days in each
week. Cattle, sheep, pigs, poultry, calves, and rabbits were
sold there.

Flint workers mined with deer antler picks and ox shoulder blade
shovels for flint to grind into axes, spearheads, and
arrowheads. People used bone and stone tools, such as stone
hammers, and then bronze and iron tools, weapons, breast plates,
and horse bits, which were formed from moulds and/or forged by
bronze smiths and blacksmiths. Weapons included bows and arrows,
flint and copper daggers, stone axes, and shields of wood with
bronze mountings. The warriors fought with chariots drawn by two
horses. The horse harnesses had bronze fittings. The chariots
had wood wheels, later with iron rims. When bronze came into
use, there was a demand for its constituent parts: copper and
tin, which were traded by rafts on waterways and the sea. Lead
was mined. Wrought iroin bars were used as currency.

Corpses were buried far away from any village in wood coffins,
except for Kings, who were placed in stone coffins after being
wrapped in linen. Possessions were buried with them.

With the ability to grow food and the acquisition of land by
conquest, for instance by invading Angles and Saxons, the
population grew. There were different classes of men such as
eorls, ceorls [free farmers], and slaves. They dressed
differently. Freemen had long hair and beards. Slaves' hair was
shorn from their heads so that they were bald. Slaves were
chained and often traded. Prisoners taken in battle, e.g.
Britons, became slaves. Criminals became slaves of the person
wronged or of the King. Sometimes a father pressed by need sold
his children or his wife into bondage. Debtors, who increased in
number during famine, which occurred regularly, became slaves by
giving up the freeman's sword and spear, picking up a slave's
mattock [pick ax for the soils], and placing their head within a
master's hands. Children with a slave parent were slaves. The
slaves lived in huts around the homes of big landholders, which
were made of logs and consisted on one large room or hall. An
open hearth was in the middle of the earthen floor, which was
strewn with rushes. There was a hole in the roof to let out the
smoke. Here the landholder and his men would eat meat, bread,
salt, hot spiced ale, and mead while listening to minstrels sing
about the heroic deeds of their ancestors. Physical strength and
endurance in adversity were admired traits. Slaves often were
used as grain-grinders, ploughmen, sowers, haywards, woodwards,
shepherds, goatherds, swineherds, oxherds, cowherds, dairymaids,
and barnmen. A lord could kill his slave at will.

The people were worshipping pagan gods when St. Augustine came to
England in 596 A.D. to Christianize them. King AEthelbert of
Kent and his wife, who had been raised Christian on the
continent, met him when he arrived. The King gave him land where
there were ruins of an old city. Augustine used stones from the
ruins to build a church which was later called Canterbury. He
also built the first St. Paul's church in what was later called
London. Aethelbert and his men who fought with him and ate in
his household [gesiths] became Christian.

Augustine knew how to write, but King AEthelbert did not. The
King announced his laws at meetings of his people and his eorls
would decide the punishments. There was a fine of 120s. for
disregarding a command of the King. He and Augustine decided to
write down some of these laws, which now included the King's new
law concerning the church.

These laws concern personal injury, murder, theft, burglary,
marriage, adultery, and inheritance. The blood feud's private
revenge for killing had been replaced by payment of compensation
to the dead man's kindred. One paid a man's "wergeld" [worth] to
his kindred for causing his wrongful death. The wergeld [wer] of
an aetheling was 1500s., of an eorl, 300s., of a ceorl, 100s.,
of a laet [agricultural serf in Kent], 40-80s., and of a slave
nothing. At this time a shilling could buy a cow in Kent or a
sheep elsewhere. If a ceorl killed an eorl, he paid three times
as much as an eorl would have paid as murderer. The penalty for
slander was tearing out of the tongue. If an aetheling were
guilty of this offense, his tongue was worth five times that of
a coerl, so he had to pay proportionately more to ransom it.

The Law

"THESE ARE THE DOOMS [DECREES] WHICH KING AETHELBERHT ESTABLISHED
IN THE DAYS OF AUGUSTINE

1. [Theft of] the property of God and of the church [shall be
compensated], twelve-fold; a bishop's property, eleven-fold; a
priest's property, nine-fold; a deacon's property, six-fold; a
cleric's property, three-fold; church-frith [breach of the peace
of the church; right of sanctuary and protection given to those
within its precincts], two-fold [that of ordinary breach of the
peace]; m....frith [breach of the peace of a meeting place],
two-fold.

2. If the King calls his leod to him, and any one there do them
evil, [let him compensate with] a two-fold bot [damages for the
injury], and 50 shillings to the King.

3. If the King drink at any one's home, and any one there do any
lyswe [evil deed], let him make two-fold bot.

4. If a freeman steal from the King, let him repay nine-fold.

5. If a man slay another in the King's tun [enclosed premises],
let him make bot with 50 shillings.

6. If any one slay a freeman, 50 shillings to the King, as
drihtin-beah.

7. If the King's ambiht-smith [smith or carpenter] or laad-rine
[man who walks before the King or guide or escort], slay a man,
let him pay a half leod-geld.

8. [Offenses against anyone or anyplace under] the King's
mund-byrd [protection], 50 shillings.

9. If a freeman steal from a freeman, let him make threefold bot;
and let the King have the wite [fine] and all the chattels
[necessary to pay the fine].

10. If a man lie with the King's maiden [female servant], let him
pay a bot of 50 shillings.

11. If she be a grinding slave, let him pay a bot of 25
shillings. The third [class of servant] 12 shillings.

12. Let the King's fed-esl [woman who serves him food or nurse]
be paid for with 20 shillings.

13. If a man slay another in an eorl's tun [premises], let [him]
make bot with 12 shillings.

14. If a man lie with an eorl's birele [female cup-bearer], let