nd--that is,
of the two Englands which were most fully in touch with the general
life of Europe--as small a thing as might be.

In the light of this prejudice, which is the more bitter because it is
closely connected with religion and with the bitter theological
passions of our universities, we are always safe in taking the larger
as against the smaller modern estimates of wealth, of population and
of influence, where either of these civilisations is concerned, and,
conversely, we are always safe in taking at the lowest modern estimate
the numbers and effect of the barbaric element in our history.

To return to the ground we have already briefly covered, and to
establish a comparison with Wallingford, the word "haga," which we saw
to be of such doubtful value in the case of Wallingford, is replaced
in Oxford by the word "mansio." The taxable units so enumerated are
just over 600, but of these much more than half are set down as
untaxable or imperfectly taxable under the epithets "Uasta," "Uastae."
What that epithet means we do not know. It may mean anything between
"out of repair," "excused from taxation because they do not come up to
our new standard of the way in which a house in a borough should be
kept up, and because we want to give them time to put themselves in
order," down to the popular acceptation of the word as meaning
"ruined," or even "destroyed."

We know that at the close of the eleventh century, or indeed at any
time before the thirteenth, the small man who lived under his own roof
would live in a very low house, and that, space for space of ground
area, the cubical contents of these poor dwellings would be less than
those of modern slums. On the other hand, we know that the population
would live much more in the open air, slept much more huddled, and
also that a very considerable proportion--what proportion we cannot
say, but probably quite half of a Norman borough--was connected with
the huge communal institutions--military, ecclesiastical, and for that
matter mercantile, as well--which marked the period. We know that the
occupied space stood for very much what is now enclosed by the line of
the old walls, and we know that under modern conditions this space, in
spite of our great empty public buildings, our sparsely inhabited
wealthy houses, and our college gardens, can comfortably hold some
5000 people. We can say, therefore, at a guess, but only at a guess,
that the Oxford of the Conquest must hav