34 English and Continental Backgrounds

earliest times of which we have any important knowledge.
But even while the boroughs were coming into existence,
and, in its beginnings, probably antedating them, a pro-
found change was taking place in Anglo-Saxon society
and local government. It has been shown that, in their
conquest and occupation of the country, the Anglo-
Saxons produced different types of settlement: in the east,
the compact villages; in the west, the elongated villages,
scattered hamlets, and isolated farmsteads; also that in
the west there were more slaves.1 By the end of the
Anglo-Saxon period, some improvement in the condition
of the slaves had taken place, but many freemen were
losing their rights in the land and were lapsing into a con-
dition of more or less dependence upon great landholders.
In the east, certainly, the land had gotten into the hands
of fewer men, and manorial organisation was growing
within the old townships. In a manor, one man, the lord,
was getting a hold on the land which approached owner-
ship; and lord and tenants formed an agrarian organisa-
tion in which the latter, some of them typically servile,
worked co-operatively on the lord's demesne, and besides
made payments in kind and money as rents for their land-
holdings as well as for protection and guidance. The lord
also held a court which the men of the manor were bound
to attend and in which they were tried.2

Economic and semi-governmental forces shared in the
change which brought forth manors, forces which, at the
start, are hard to distinguish and which tended constantly
to coalesce. In many parts of western Europe, as well
as in England, populations that had been wandering
tribes were becoming stationary, denser, more civilised.
As a result, a more efficient government and new economic
arrangements were needed; but it would have required a

* See above, pp. 9-12.

2 -rv . c. ' * ^ -*

tot-

coincide remToriaiLy wren tiie townsnip. When tiie central government
had dealings with the local units it was with the township, not the manor,
as for example in police measures.

* See above, pp. 9-12.
* But after manors developed, the township idea and organisation were
not wholly lost. ^ The manor was an economic unit, and might or might not
coincide territorially with the township. When the central government