er, the old capital of the West Welsh, situated at the
tidal head of the Exe, had considerable trade. Oxford was a place of
traffic and a fortified town. Hastings, Dover, and the other south-coast
ports had some communications with France. The only other places of any
note were Chippenham, Bensington, and Aylesbury; Northampton and
Southampton; Bamborough; the fortified posts built by Eadward and
AEthelflaed; and the Danish boroughs of Bedford, Derby, Leicester,
Stamford, Nottingham, and Huntingdon. The Witena-gemots and the synods
took place in any town, irrespective of size, according to royal
convenience. But as early as the days of Cnut, London was beginning to
be felt as the real centre of national life: and Eadward the Confessor,
by founding Westminster Abbey, made it practically the home of the
kings. The Conqueror "wore his crown on Eastertide at Winchester; on
Pentecost at Westminster; and on Midwinter at Gloucester:" which
probably marks the relative position of the three towns as the chief
places in the old West Saxon realm at least. Under AEthelstan, London had
eight moneyers or mint-masters, while Winchester had only six, and
Canterbury seven.

As regards the arts and traffic in the towns, they were chiefly carried
on by guilds, which had their origin, as Dr. Brentano has shown with
great probability, in separate families, who combined to keep up their
own trade secrets as a family affair. In time, however, the guilds grew
into regular organisations, having their own code of rules and laws,
many of which (as at Cambridge, Exeter, and Abbotsbury) we still
possess. It is possible that the families of craftsmen may at first have
been Romanised Welsh inhabitants of the cities; for all the older
towns--London, Canterbury, York, Lincoln, and Rochester--were almost
certainly inhabited without interruption from the Roman period onward.
But in any case the guilds seem to have grown out of family compacts,
and to have retained always the character of close corporations. There
must have been considerable division of the various trades even before
the Conquest, and each trade must have inhabited a separate quarter; for
we find at Winchester, or elsewhere, in the reign of AEthelred,
Fellmonger, Horsemonger, Fleshmonger, Shieldwright, Shoewright, Turner,
and Salter Streets.

The exact amount of the population of England cannot be ascertained,
even approximately; but we may obtain a rough approximation from the
estimate