At seaports on the coast, goods were loaded onto vessels owned by English merchants to be transported to other English seaports. London was a market town on the north side of the Thames River and the primary port and trading center for foreign merchants. Wheat, meal, skins, hides, wool, beer, lead, cheese, salt, and honey were exported. Wine (mostly for the church), fish, timber, pitch, pepper, spices, copper, gems, gold, silk, dyes, oil, brass, sulphur, glass, and elephant and walrus ivory were imported. There was a royal levy on exports by foreigners merchants. The other side of the river was called Southwark. It contained sleazy docks, prisons, gaming houses, brothels, and inns.
Guilds in London were first associations of neighbors for the purposes of mutual assistance. They were fraternities of persons by voluntary compact to assist each other in poverty, including their widows or orphans and the portioning of poor maids, and to protect each other from injury. Their essential features are and continue to be in the future: 1) oath of initiation, 2) entrance fee in money or in kind and a common fund, 3) annual feast and mass, 4) meetings at least three times yearly for guild business, 5), obligation to attend all funerals of members, to bear the body if need be from a distance, and to provide masses for the dead, 6) the duty of friendly help in cases of sickness, imprisonment, house-burning, shipwreck, or robbery, 7) rules for decent behavior at meetings, and 8) provisions for settling disputes without recourse to the law. Both the masses and the feast were attended by the women. Frequently the guilds also had a religious ceremonial to affirm their bonds of fidelity. They readily became connected with the exercise of trades and with the training of apprentices. They promoted and took on public purposes such as the repairing of roads and bridges, the relief of pilgrims, the maintenance of schools and almshouses, and the periodic performance of pageants and miracle-plays.
Many of these London guilds were known by the name of their founding member. There were also Frith Guilds and a Knights' Guild. The Frith Guild's main object was to put down theft. Members contributed to a common fund, which paid a compensation for items stolen. Members with horses were to track the thief. Members without horses worked in the place of the absent horseowners until their return. The Knights' Guild was composed of thirteen military persons to whom King Edgar granted certain waste land in the east of London, toward Aldgate, for prescribed services performed. This concession was confirmed by Edward the Confessor in a charter at the suit of certain burgesses of London, the successors of these knights. But there was no trading privilege, and the Prior of Holy Trinity, Aldgate, became the sovereign of the Guild and the Aldermen ex officio of Portsoken Ward. He rendered an account to the Crown of the shares of tallage paid by the men of the Ward and presided over the wardmoots. Every week in London there was a folkmoot. Majority decision was a tradition. Every London merchant who had made three long voyages on his own behalf ranked as a thegn.
Later in the towns, there were merchant guilds, which were composed of prosperous traders, who later became landholders. Merchant guilds grew out of charity associations whose members were bound by oath to each other and got together for a guild-feast every month. Many market places were dominated by a merchant guild, which had a monopoly of the local trade. There were also some craft guilds composed of handicraftsmen or artisans. Escaped bonded agricultural workers, poor people, and traders without land migrated to towns to live, but were not citizens.
Towns were largely self-sufficient, but salt and iron came from a distance. It was the kings' policy to establish in every shire at least one town with a market place where purchases would be witnessed and a mint where reliable money was coined. Almost every village had a watermill.
Edward the Confessor, named such for his piety, was a King of 24 years who was widely respected for his intelligence, resourcefulness, good judgment, and wisdom. His educated Queen Edith, whom he relied on for advice and cheerful courage, was a stabilizing influence on him. They were served by a number of thegns, who had duties in the household, which was composed of the hall, the courtyard, and the bedchamber. They were important men, thegns by rank. They were landholders, often in several areas, and held leading positions in the shires, although they were not sheriffs. They were also priests and clerics, who maintained the religious services and performed tasks for which literacy was necessary.
The court was host to many of the greatest magnates and prelates of the land at the time of great ecclesiastical festivals, when the King held more solemn courts and feasted his vassals. These included all the great earls, the majority of bishops, some abbots, and a number of thegns and clerics. Edward had a witan of wise men to advise him, but sometimes the King would speak in the hall after dinner and listen to what comments were made from the mead-benches. As the court moved about the country, many men came to pay their respects and attend to local business.
The main governmental activities were: war, collection of revenue, religious education, and administration of justice. For war, the shires had to provide a certain number of men and the ports quotas of ships with crews. The King was the patron of the English church. He gave the church peace and protection. He presided over church councils and appointed bishops. As for the administration of justice, the public courts were almost all under members of Edward's court, bishops, earls, and reeves. Edward's mind was often troubled and disturbed by the threat that law and justice would be overthrown, by the pervasiveness of disputes and discord, by the raging of wicked presumption, by money interfering with right and justice, and by avarice kindling all of these. He saw it as his duty to courageously oppose the wicked by taking good men as models, by enriching the churches of God, by relieving those oppressed by wicked judges, and by judging equitably between the powerful and the humble.
A King's grant of land entailed two documents: a charter giving boundaries and conditions and a writ, usually addressed to the shire court, listing the judicial and financial privileges conveyed with the land. These were usually sac and soke [petty jurisdiction over inhabitants of the estate], toll and team The town of Coventry consisted of a monastery manor and a private manor. The monastery was granted by Edward the Confessor full freedom and these jurisdictions: sac and soke, toll and team, hamsocne [the authority to fine a person for breaking into and making entry by force into the dwelling of another], forestall [the authority to fine a person for robbing others on the road], blodwite [the authority to impose a forfeiture for assault involving bloodshed], fihtwite [the authority to fine for fighting], weordwite [the authority to fine for manslaughter, but not for willful murder], and mundbryce [the authority to fine for any breach of the peace, such as trespass on lands].