William had to have recourse to stratagem before he could secure a victory. His present comparative success had been caused by the accidental over-eagerness of the English. He determined to try whether he could not again induce them to break their line. The Normans turned in apparent flight, the English, heated by the long fight, rushed forward in pursuit. The Norman cavalry turned round and rode down their pursuers, and, driving them before them, again charged up the hill; while the archers, whose skill had been somewhat foiled by the shields of the English, were ordered to drop a flight of arrows upon the heads of Harold and his men. The plan was fatally successful; the battle was still stubbornly contested, though no longer in serried ranks, when Harold fell, pierced in the eye by an arrow. With him disappeared all hope of English success. His body was found, and buried under a cairn by the sea, till afterwards removed to his minster of Waltham. STATE OF SOCIETY 449-1066 [Sidenote: The Mark system.] The chief interest in the Conquest is the change that it is always said to have exercised in the character of the institutions of England. It used to be asserted that the feudal system was introduced, and completed as a wholly new system to the English, after the Conquest; and Hume speaks of the division of the kingdom into so many knights’ fiefs, into so many baronies, as if there were complete reorganization of the whole constitution. Modern inquiry tends to confirm what would naturally have been supposed, that the whole of the elements of the feudal system existed in England as in other Teutonic countries before the arrival of the Normans. The form which the civilization of the Scandinavian and Teutonic nations took seems to have been that of a collection of village communities, such as may be seen at work at present in India. The district occupied by such community was called the Mark, and was divided into three parts, in each of which every free member of the community had his share, but which were cultivated in strict accordance with the customary system of agriculture which no one might break. There was first the village, then the arable mark (cultivated land), then the common pasture, and beyond that the waste. Every freeman had a share in the arable and in the common pasture, but he was bound to sow the same crops as his neighbours, and to follow the same arrangement, which appears to have been simple and barbarous. The common fields, or mixed lands as they are called, were divided into three strips by broad grassy mounds; one was sown with autumn crops, one with spring crops, and the third left fallow. In the same way, though under somewhat varying rules, the grass mark was partitioned. Frequently all enclosures were removed at the close of the hay harvest, and the cattle grazed in common, as they were allowed to do also in the stubble of the arable mark. Lands were probably redistributed at certain intervals