ANGLO-SAXON VILLAGE COMMUNITY 7 



sidered. England in the early days of the Anglo-Saxon 

 period was ruled by a number of chiefs or kings, large 

 and small, independent or tributary ; with them were 

 associated their nobles, of whom the more important 

 were the ' eorls ' and the lesser were the * thegns.' The 

 kings seem to have made it a practice to select some 

 part of the land as their private estates, which were 

 often scattered throughout the kingdoms. In addition 

 to this they claimed, by right of conquest, a control over 

 the land they ruled. This control was exercised it 

 appears, in some districts, not so much by the kings 

 and those attached to them as by the leaders of the 

 groups that settled on the land. It never amounted 

 to private ownership as we understand it to-day, but 

 took in time the form of certain definite rights. These 

 rights may for sake of distinction, since they appertained 

 in the first instance to the rulers, be called ' the rulers' 

 rights.' Briefly, they were six : 



(1) The first was the right to tribute or services. In 

 earlier times this right was very varied. In many cases 

 it involved personal service, such as riding with messages, 

 forming one of an escort, taking charge of the king's 

 dogs or even teaching a king's daughter embroidery. 

 More commonly the tribute took the form of corn or 

 other food or of useful materials a provender rent 

 thus an area of land might be subject to the duty of 

 feeding the ruler and his retinue for a day and a night 

 in every year, or to providing food for his dogs, or 

 honey to sweeten his food and to make wax for his 

 candles, or fleeces to be spun and woven into material 

 for clothes. 



(2) The second was a very important claim that all 

 landholding men should conform to the * trinoda 

 necessitas' as it was called later, the famous threefold 



