Every man carried a horn slung on his shoulder as he went about his work so that he could at once send out a warning to his fellow villagers or call them in chasing a thief or other offender. The forests were full of outlaws, so strangers who did not blow a horn to announce themselves were presumed to be fugitive offenders who could be shot on sight. An eorl could call upon the ceorl farmers for about forty days to fight off an invading group.
The houses of the wealthy had ornamented silk hangings on the walls. Brightly colored drapery, often purple, and fly-nets surrounded their beds, which were covered with the fur of animals. They slept in bed-clothes on pillows stuffed with straw. Tables plated with silver and gems held silver candlesticks, gold and silver goblets and cups, and lamps of gold, silver, or glass. They used silver mirrors and silver writing pens. There were covered seats, benches, and footstools with the head and feet of animals at their extremities. They ate from a table covered with a cloth. Servants brought in food on spits, from which they ate. Food was boiled, broiled, or baked. The wealthy ate wheat bread and others ate barley bread. Ale made from barley was passed around in a cup. Mead made from honey was also drunk.
Men wore long-sleeved wool and linen garments reaching almost to the knee, around which they wore a belt tied in a knot. Men often wore a gold ring on the fourth finger of the right hand. Leather shoes were fastened with leather thongs around the ankle. Their hair was parted in the middle and combed down each side in waving ringlets. The beard was parted in the middle of the chin, so that it ended in two points. The clergy did not wear beards. Well-to-do women wore brightly colored robes with waist bands, headbands, necklaces, gem bracelets, and rings. Their long hair was in ringlets and they put rouge on their cheeks. They were often doing needlework. Silk was affordable only by the wealthy.
Most families kept a pig and pork was the primary meat. There were also sheep, goats, cows, deer, rabbits, and fowl. Fowl was obtained by fowlers who trapped them. The inland waters yielded eels, salmon, and trout. In the fall, meat was salted to preserve it for winter meals. There were orchards growing figs, nuts, grapes, almonds, pears, and apples. Also produced were beans, lentils, onions, eggs, cheese, and butter. Pepper and cinnamon were imported.
Fishing from the sea developed in the 1000s A.D., and yielded herrings, sturgeon, porpoise, oysters, crabs, and other fish. Whale skins were used to make ropes.
It was usual to wash one's feet in a hot tub after traveling and drying them with a rough wool cloth. Traveling a far distance was unsafe as there were robbers on the roads. Traveling strangers were distrusted. There were superstitions about the content of dreams, the events of the moon, and the flights and voices of birds were often seen as signs or omens of future events. Herbal mixtures were drunk for sickness and maladies.
In the peaceful latter part of the 600s, Theodore, who had been a monk in Rome, was appointed Archbishop and visited all the island speaking about the right rule of life and ordaining bishops to oversee the priests. There was a bishop for each of the kingdoms. The bishops came to have the same wergeld as an eorldorman: 1200 s., which was the price of about 500 oxen. A priest had the wergeld as a landholding farmer [thegn], or 300s. The bishops spoke Latin, but the priests of the local parishes spoke English. Theodore was the first archbishop whom all the English church obeyed. He taught sacred and secular literature, the books of holy writ, ecclesiastical poetry, astronomy, arithmetic, and sacred music. The learned ecclesiastical life flourished in monasteries. Theodore discouraged slavery by denying Christian burial to the kidnapper and forbidding the sale of children over the age of seven. Hilda, a noble's daughter, became the first nun in Northumbria and abbess of one of its monasteries. There she taught justice, piety, chastity, peace, and charity. Several monks taught there later became bishops. Kings and princes often asked her advice.
There were several kingdoms. Kings were selected from the royal family by their worthiness. A King had not only a wergeld to be paid to his family if he were killed, but a "cynebot" that would be paid to his kingdom. A King's household would have a chamberlain, marshall to oversee the horses and military equipment, a steward, and a cupbearer. A queen could possess, manage, and dispose of lands in her name. Great men wore gold-embroidered clothes, gilt buckles and brooches, and drank from drinking horns mounted in silver-gilt or in gold. Their wives had beads, pins, needles, tweezers of bronze, and work-boxes of bronze, some highly ornamented.
Danish Vikings made several invasions in the 800s for which a danegeld tax on land was assessed on everyone every ten to twenty years. It was stored in a strong box under the King's bed. King Alfred the Great unified the country to defeat them. He established fortifications called "burhs", usually on hill tops or other strategic locations on the borders to control the main road and river routes into Wessex. The burhs were the first towns. They were typically walled enclosures with towers and several wooden thatched huts and a couple of churches inside. Earthen oil lamps were in use. The land area protected by each burh became known as a "shire". The country was inhabited by Anglo-Saxons and was called "Angle-land", which later became "England".
Alfred gathered together fighting men who were at his disposal, which included eorldormen's hearthband (men each of whom had chosen to swear to fight to the death for their eorldorman, and some of whom were of high rank), shire thegns (local landholding farmers, who were required to bring fighting equipment such as swords, helmets, chainmail, and horses), and ordinary freemen, i.e. ceorls (who carried food, dug fortifications, and sometimes fought). Some great lords organized men under them, whom they provisioned. These vassals took a personal oath to their lord "on condition that he keep me as I am willing to deserve, and fulfill all that was agreed on when I became his man, and chose his will as mine." Alfred had a small navy of longships with 60 oars to fight the Viking longships.