land than the ordinary freemen. Probably also he owned a few slaves, whether of English or British birth. There was also a smith and a miller, a swineherd to take the village pigs into the forest to feed, a shepherd and a cowherd, and a doctor who would be more or less of a wizard. After the conversion to Christianity in the seventh century there was also in most villages a priest. Of the freemen, every head of a family owned certain strips of land on which he grew corn, and each helped his neighbour to plough the land with teams of oxen. There was also a great common on which all freemen could pasture their cattle, and a wood wherein the pigs fed. There were few horses—there was no hay to feed them on—cows were only killed for food when they were too old to draw the plough, sheep were chiefly kept for wool, and so the pig was the real friend of hungry men.
The small Saxon kingdoms.There was in each district some sort of rude government by some sort of rude king, whose ancestor may have been a leading pirate of the first ship-load of Saxons who landed near that place. No doubt many tiny ‘kingdoms’ sprang up, as ship-load after ship-load of pirates explored and settled inland. Probably the first ‘kingdoms’ extended as far as an armed man could walk before a day's honest fighting, but these would naturally melt into, or be conquered into larger territories. In the seventh century there were at least seven little kingdoms, but, by the eighth, only three of any importance remained.
The three large Saxon kingdoms.1. Northumbria, stretching from the Forth to the Humber, and westwards to the hills that part Cumberland and Lancashire from Yorkshire and Northumberland.
