=Summary.=--In most towns and villages the oldest building now in use is usually the church. Some churches have remains of Saxon[5] work in them. The style was very plain: the chancel usually had an apse or semicircular end; the windows were round-headed and sometimes had pillars with bulging shafts; doorways were round-headed or triangular. King Edward the Confessor prepared the way for Normans and Norman ways of building. The Saxons had strongholds, but they were not castle-builders. Ordinary houses were usually of wood, and consisted of a room or hall, with a hearth in the middle; in this room the family slept. Most of the cooking was done in the open air. CHAPTER XVI IN NORMAN TIMES 1. When Duke William of Normandy became King of England, the power of the Crown was greater than it had ever been before. All the old folk-land had become =king's land=. Many knights had followed Duke William from Normandy into England, and expected to be provided for by their leader. The lands belonging to King Harold, and those of the Saxon eorls who had died fighting at Senlac, King William regarded as his own. These he granted to his followers, on condition that they acknowledged him as their overlord, and followed him in war when required. This was a stricter condition than had ever before been required in England. The Normans were used to it, and it did not seem at all strange to them. 2. Neither was it so very strange to the Saxon nobles and thanes. Most of them were allowed to keep their estates if they took the =oath of allegiance= to the king, as the Normans did. Of course they grumbled: it was only natural that they should do so; but if they did not acknowledge the king in this way they were looked upon as rebels, and lost their lands. 3. King William was very careful, in the grants which he made, not to put too much power into the hands of his nobles. The old =vills= of Saxon times were now pretty generally called =manors=. When the king granted land, it was not given in huge slices--whole counties, halves, and quarters of counties--to this great follower of his or to that one. Between the old vills, or manors, there were often wide stretches of the king's own land, the old folk-land. If he had granted to a Norman knight a quarter of a county, or so, he would have been giving away much of his own land. Besides that, the king did not mean his followers to become too powerful.