ing people to cure them of scrofula, a
disease which affected the glands, especially in the head and
neck. It was done in the context of a religious ceremony.

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. He was so greatly revered that a comet
was thought to accompany his death.

The king established the office of the Chancery to draft documents
and keep records. It created the writ, which was a small piece of
parchment [sheep skin] addressed to a royal official or dependent
commanding him to perform some task for the King. By the 1000s A.D.,
the writ contained a seal: a lump of wax with the impress of the
Great Seal of England which hung from the bottom of the document.
Writing was done with a sharpened goose-wing quill. Ink was obtained
from mixing fluid from the galls made by wasps for their eggs on oak
trees, rainwater or vinegar, gum arabic, and iron salts for color.

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
[possession of jurisdiction of a private court of a noble or
institution to execute the laws and administer justice over
inhabitants and tenants of the estate], toll [right to have a
market and to collect a payment on the sale of cattle and other
property on the estate] and team [probably the right to hold a
court to determine the honesty of a man accused of illegal
possession