These vassals took a personal oath to their lord "on
condition that he keep me as I am willing to deserve, and fulfill
all that was agreed on when I became his man, and chose his will
as mine." Alfred had a small navy of longships with 60 oars to
fight the Viking longships.
Alfred divided his army into two parts so that one half of the men
were fighting while the other half was at home sowing and
harvesting for those fighting. Thus, any small-scale independent
farming was supplanted by the open-field system, cultivation of
common land, more large private estates headed by a lord, and a
more stratified society in which the king and important families
more powerful and the peasants more curtailed. The witan became
mere witnesses. Many free coerls of the older days became bonded.
The village community tended to become a large private estate
headed by a lord. But the lord does not have the power to encroach
upon the rights of common that exist within the community.
In 886, a treaty between Alfred and the Vikings divided the
country along the war front and made the wergeld of every free
farmer, whether English or Viking, 200s. Men of higher rank were
given a wergeld of 4 1/2 marks of pure gold. A mark was probably a
Viking denomination and a mark of gold was equal to nine marks of
silver in later times and probably in this time. The word "earl"
replaced the word "eorldormen" and the word "thegn" replaced the
word "aetheling" after the Danish settlement.
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