70
THE SAXONS IN ENGLAND.
[book r.
distribution of the land as should content the various
small communities that made up the whole force,
could only be ensured by the joint authority of the
leaders, the concurrence of the families themselves,
and the possession of a sufficient space for their
extension, undisturbed by the claims of former oc-
cupants, and suited to the wants of its new masters.
What difficulties, what jealousies preceded the ad-
justment of all claims among the conquerors, we
cannot hope to learn, or by what means these were
met and reconciled : but the divisions themselves,
so many of whose names I have collected, prove
that, in some way or other, the problem was suc-
cessfully solved.
On the natural clearings in the forest, or on
spots prepared by man for his own uses ; in valleys,
bounded by gentle acclivities which poured down
fertilizing streams ; or on plains which here and
there rose, clothed with verdure, above surround-
ing marshes ; slowly and step by step, the warlike
colonists adopted the habits and developed the cha-
racter of peaceful agriculturists. The towns which
had been spared in the first rush of war, gradually
became deserted, and slowly crumbled to the soil,
beneath which their ruins are yet found from time
to time, or upon which shapeless masses yet remain,
to mark the sites of a civilization, whose bases were
not laid deep enough for eternity.. All over Eng-
land there soon existed a network of communities,
the principle of whose being was separation, as re-
garded each other : the most intimate union, as re-
spected the individual members of each. Agricul-
CH. π∙]
THE MARK.
71
tural, not commercial, dispersed, not centralized,
content within their own limits and little given to
wandering, they relinquished in a great degree the
habits and feelings which had united them as mili-
tary adventurers ; and the spirit which had achieved
the conquest of an empire, was now satisfied with
the care of maintaining inviolate a little peaceful
plot, sufficient for the cultivation of a few simple
households.