follows: "In 904 A.D., I, Bishop Werfrith, with the
permission and leave of my honorable community in Worcester, grant
to Wulfsige, my reeve, for his loyal efficiency and humble
obedience, one hide of land at Aston as Herred held it, that is,
surrounded by a dyke, for three lives and then after three lives
the estate shall be given back without any controversy to
Worcester."

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. Streets
that probably date from this time include Milk, Bread, and Wood
Streets, and Honey Lane. There were open air markets such as
Billingsgate. There were wooden quays over much of the river front.
Houses were made of wood, with one sunken floor, or a ground floor
with a cellar beneath. Some had central stone hearths and earth
latrines. There were crude pottery cooking pots, beakers and
lamps, wool cloth, a little silk, simple leather shoes, pewter
jewelry, looms, and quernstones (for grinding flour). Wool, skins,
hides, wheat, meal, beer, lead, cheese, salt, and honey were
exported. Wine (mostly for the church), fish, timber, pitch,
pepper, garlic, spices, copper, gems, gold, silk, dyes, oil,
brass, sulphur, glass, slaves, and elephant and walrus ivory were
imported. Goods from the continent were sold at open stalls in
certain streets. Furs and slaves were traded. There was a royal
levy on exports by foreigners merchants. Southwark was reachable
by a bridge. It contained sleazy docks, prisons, gaming houses,
and brothels.

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