Scenes and Signs of Saxon England page 2

It was, in fact, from villages such as these that the government of England was carried on. The king passed from one to another about the country, and with him went his court, his military companions, and his household priests. After the end of Old English history, Domesday Book shows that Edward the Confessor had possessed estates of this kind in most counties. In Yorkshire, for instance, he had been lord of Wakefield and Howden-on-Humber. But it was to the south of the Thames, in the heart of the ancient Wessex, that his chief territorial power lay. In Wiltshire he had possessed Great Bedwin, Warminster, Amesbury, Chippenham and Calne; in Dorset, among other places, Wimborne Minster, Pimperne, Burton Bradstock and Gillingham; in Somerset, Somerton, Cheddar, North and South Petherton, Milborne Port and Frome. In the east of Wessex he had been lord of Godalming, Ewell, Woking and Stoke by Guildford in Surrey, of Old Windsor, Cholsey, Reading, Blewbury and Wantage in Berkshire. At the present day, the motorist as he threads his way through Maidenhead High Street is passing along the boundary between King Edward's two great manors of Cookham tc the north of the road and Bray to the south.

King Edward died on January 5, 1066. On the next Christmas Day William the Conqueror was crowned king of the English in Westminster Abbey. Between these events two battles had been fought, and the site of each determined the course of the fighting. At Stamford Bridge, on the main road from York to Driffield and Bridlington, Harold II surprised the great Norwegian invader Harold Hardrada. The second battle of this momentous year was fought on the hill on which the town of Battle now stands. And there after a last confused struggle King Harold and all the English hopes fell. Four years were to pass before the Norman Conquest of England was completely accomplished, but the history of Saxon England was over.