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 2. Mercia, or Middle England, reaching from the Humber to the Thames and westward to the Severn.

3. Wessex, comprising all south of the Thames and as far west as Devon.

When they were tired of fighting the Britons the kings of these small kingdoms constantly fought each other.

There were laws, or rather deeply-rooted ‘customs’, mostly connected with fighting, or cows or ploughing. There were rude courts of Justice, which would fine a man so many sheep or so many silver pennies for murder or wounding or cow-stealing. The King had a council of ‘wise men’, who met in his wooden house to advise him, and to drink with him afterwards at his rude feasts. There were gods, called Tiu and Woden and Thor and Freya, from whom our Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday are derived. They lived in a heaven called Valhalla, where, our ancestors thought, there was an endless feast of pork and strong ale with no headaches to follow.

All this, as you see, was a barbarous business, after the well-organized, civilized Roman life; but at least it was a life with a good deal of freedom in it. Rome had stifled freedom too much; the Saxons went to the other extreme. It is quite possible to have too much freedom, and you will see what a price these Saxons, before the end of their six hundred years of freedom, had to pay for theirs.

 After the sack of the City when Rome was sunk to a name,

In the years when the lights were darkened, or ever St. Wilfred came,

Low on the borders of Britain (the ancient poets sing)

Between the cliff and the forest there ruled a Saxon King.

