Of course there were some differences, and those who have studied the subject closely can indicate a good many points in which the Saxon and Danish land customs differed from each other. The dangers to which the Saxons had been exposed by the attacks of the Danes had put a great deal of power into the hands of the thanes and the king. Thus, by the time the Danes had settled in England, every vill and tun had got into the hands of some lord or thane, or was in the king's hands. In Danish settlements there seems always to have been an overlord, who led his people in war and ruled in time of peace; though there was a class of freemen amongst them which had special rights and privileges. You will remember that when King Alfred came to terms with the Danes at the Peace of Wedmore, in the year 880, it was agreed that the part of England east of the old Roman road, Watling Street, which ran from London to Chester, should be regarded as Danish territory. In that district you will find a good many Danish place-names as well as the older Saxon place-names—names which end in "by", "ey", "ness", "wic", and "thorpe". A great many will be found in Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, and farther north. But some will also be found in other parts of the country. For instance; there is in Hampshire, in the valley of the River Meon, quite a little nest of Danish place-names—a fact which shows that Danes settled in that district even in the midst of what may be called a Saxon stronghold.
But the Danes were something more than tillers of the soil; they were traders too, and "tuns" became in many places more like our "towns" and trading-places than ever they had been before. In time we find the largest towns in the Danish part of England—Leicester, Lincoln, Derby, Nottingham, and Stamford—binding themselves together to protect their trading interests.
Saxon Church at Bradford-on-Avon
This little building, one of the earliest stone churches, lay hidden for centuries, but was rediscovered in 1857. The monastery once attached to it has long since perished.
CHAPTER XIII
Towns and Villages in the Time of
Cnut the Dane
Now let us see what an ordinary village was like in the time of King Cnut, when Saxon and Dane were living pretty comfortably together, side by side, under good government.
We find that each vill or tun had a lord, an eorl, or thane, who practically owned the place and everything in it, though he could not do entirely as he liked. There was the land which belonged to him, and which was in his own hands, or occupation, as we say; that was called his demesne. The rest of the land was also his, but it was let out to people who had lived on the land from time out of mind—the cheorls or villeins. The lord's house was on his demesne. The villeins' houses were all together in the tun, with the grass yards for the cattle close to them, and the open fields and pasture-lands outside the tun, just as they had been in the olden days.