course of time, however, the exigencies of their environment--the
aggressiveness of neighbours and foreigners, the incursions of invaders
and marauders--materially modified their views, and changed their habits
in this respect; and so it came about in the scheme of national defence
that the temple-crowned hill of Woden became Woden's burh (now
Wednesbury), a hill fortified by deep ditch and high stockade.

Presently the family tie gave way to the lordship, as certain chiefs,
under the stress of circumstances, acquired domination over others, and
hence arose the manor or residential lordship, the head of which took
pledges for the fidelity of those below him, and in turn became
responsible for them to the king above him--a system of mutual
inter-dependence from the head of the state downwards. Under these new
conditions Stow Heath became the head of a Saxon manor, in which were
involved Willenhall, Wolverhampton, Bilston, Wednesfield, Eccleshall, and
a number of other village settlements. Some of these, however, were in
the Hundred of Seisdon, and some in the Hundred of Offlow--a "hundred"
being originally the division of a county that contained a hundred
villages.

The unregenerate Teuton was a pirate and a plunderer; the settled Saxon
became an oversea trader and trafficker. The Anglo-Saxon merchant of
later and more settled times, raised by his wealth to the dignity of a
thane, became a landed man, and a lord over his fellows. Herein we have
the transition from a free village community to a Saxon manor.

At Wolverhampton was seated one Wolfric, said to have been an ancestor of
Wolfgeat, and a relation to Wulfruna; his manor house was situated on the
slope of the hill between the present North Street and Waterloo
Road--doubtless a large rambling mansion of low elevation, built of heavy
timbers on a low plinth of boulders and hewn stones.

Here at Hantun he kept his state--such as the luxury of the age permitted
to him. Seated in his great oaken hall, with its heavy roof timbers, at
the close of each day he drank deep draughts with his guests and his
numerous servants, in the flaring light of odorous resin torches stuck in
iron staples along the walls. The smoke from his fire of logs escaped as
lazily as it might through an aperture in the roof. The earthen floor
was strewn with rushes, more or less clean as it was littered by the
refuse of few or more feasts. The only furniture consisted of a long
trestle t