from our minds the ideas
derived from our own great and complex organisation, and bring ourselves
mentally into the attitude of a simple agricultural people, requiring
little beyond what was produced on each man's own farm or petty holding.
Such people are mainly fed from their own corn and meat, mainly clad
from their own homespun wool and linen. A little specialisation of
function, however, already existed. Salt was procured from the wyches or
pans of the coast, and also from the inland wyches or brine wells of
Cheshire and the midland counties. Such names as Nantwich, Middlewych,
Bromwich, and Droitwich, still preserve the memory of these early
saltworks. Iron was mined in the Forest of Dean, around Alcester, and in
the Somersetshire district. The city of Gloucester had six smiths'
forges in the days of Eadward the Confessor, and paid its tax to the
king in iron rods. Lead was found in Derbyshire, and was largely
employed for roofing churches. Cloth-weaving was specially carried on at
Stamford; but as a rule it is probable that every district supplied its
own clothing. English merchants attended the great fair at St. Denys, in
France, much as those of Central Asia now attend the fair at Kandahar;
and madder seems to have been bought there for dyeing cloth. In Kent,
Sussex, and East Anglia, herring fisheries already produced considerable
results. With these few exceptions, all the towns were apparently mere
local centres of exchange for produce, and small manufactured wares,
like the larger villages or bazaars of India in our own time.
Nevertheless, there was a distinct advance towards urban life in the
later Anglo-Saxon period. Baeda mentions very few towns, and most of
those were waste. By the date of the Conquest there were many, and their
functions were such as befitted a more diversified national life.
Communications had become far greater; and arts or trade had now to some
extent specialised themselves in special places.

A list of the chief early English towns may possibly seem to give too
much importance to these very minor elements of English life; yet one
may, perhaps, be appended with due precaution against misapprehension.

The capital, if any place deserved to be so called under the
perambulating early English dynasty, was Winchester (Wintan-ceaster),
with its old and new minsters, containing the tombs of the West-Saxon
kings. It possessed a large number of craftsmen, doubtless dependant
ultimately upon