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 Stubborn were all his people from cottar to overlord,

Not to be cowed by the cudgel, scarce to be schooled by the sword,

Quick to turn at their pleasure, cruel to cross in their mood,

And set on paths of their choosing as the hogs of Andred’s Wood.

Laws they made in the Witan, the laws of flaying and fine—

Common, loppage and pannage, the theft and the track of kine,

Statutes of tun and of market for the fish and the malt and the meal,

The tax on the Bramber packhorse, and the tax on the Hastings keel. Over the graves of the Druids and under the wreck of Rome,

Rudely but surely they bedded the plinth of the days to come.

Behind the feet of the Legions and before the Normans’ ire,

Rudely but greatly begat they the bones of state and of shire;

Rudely but deeply they laboured, and their labour stands till now,

If we trace on our ancient headlands the twist of their eight-ox plough.

 There was no king really powerful enough to rule the whole island. In a land of forest and swamp, where roads hardly exist for eight months of the year, it must always be difficult for armed men, judges or traders to pass from place to place, except on horseback; and the Saxons were no great horse-soldiers. I think we shall see that it was the knight and his horse, who, from the eleventh century onwards, first made the rule of one king possible over the whole island. Meanwhile, 