The _húscarlas_ were a kind of household troops, variously estimated at three thousand or six thousand men. They were formed on the model of the earlier _comites_, but probably not organized as a regular force till the time of Canute. To this prince, living as he was among a conquered and turbulent people, the maintenance of such a band, always well armed, and ready for the fray, was of the first necessity. Their weapons were the axe, the halbard, and the sword; this last being inlaid with gold. From the collocation of names among the witnesses to a charter of the middle of the eleventh century, we may infer that the _stealleras_, or marshals, were the commanding officers of the húscarlas[16]. In imitation of the king, the great nobles surrounded themselves with a body-guard of húscarlas, and they continued to exist as a royal establishment after the Conquest. Like his ancestors, the ancient Germans, of whom Tacitus tells us, "nihil neque publicæ neque privatæ rei nisi armati agunt," the Anglo-Saxon freeman always went armed; a circumstance, however, that proves, not so much the extent of his freedom, as the smallness of his civilization. The ancient Egyptians, on the contrary, always went unarmed; and in the _Kristendom's Saga_ we read, that among the Icelanders, about 1139, so great was the security, that "men no longer carried weapons at a public meeting, and that scarcely more than a single helmet could be seen at a judicial assemblage[17]." The mode of raising ships among the Anglo-Saxons we learn from an entry in the Saxon Chronicle under the year 1008:--"This year the king commanded that ships should be speedily built throughout the nation; to wit: from three hundred hides, and from ten hides, one vessel; and from eight hides, a helmet and a coat-of-fence." On especial occasions, the ships of war appear to have been decorated in a very costly manner; as we may gather from the present of Earl Godwin to Hardecanute, described by William of Malmesbury:--"Hardecanute looking angrily upon Godwin, the earl was obliged to clear himself by oath. But, in hopes of recovering entirely the favour of the king, he added to his oath a present of the most rich and beautiful kind. It was a ship with a beak of gold, having on board eighty soldiers, who wore two bracelets on either arm, each weighing sixteen ounces of gold. They had gilt helmets; in the right hand they carried a spear of iron; on the left shoulder they bore a Danish axe; in a word, they were equipped with such arms, as that, splendour vying with terror, might conceal the steel beneath the gold[18]."