Psalter, Harleian 603, are several illuminations in which walled towns and gates are represented. But we do not gather that they were very skilful either in the attack or defence of fortified places. Indeed, their weapons and armour were of a very primitive kind, and their warfare seems to have been conducted after a very unscientific fashion. Little chance had their rude Saxon hardihood against the military genius of William the Norman and the disciplined valour of his bands of mercenaries. CHAPTER II. ARMS AND ARMOUR, FROM THE NORMAN CONQUEST DOWNWARDS. The Conquest and subsequent confiscations put the land of England so entirely into the hands of William the Conqueror, that he was able to introduce the feudal system into England in a more simple and symmetrical shape than that in which it obtained in any other country of Europe. The system was a very intelligible one. The king was supposed to be the lord of all the land of the kingdom. He retained large estates in his own hands, and from these estates chiefly he derived his personal followers and his royal revenues. The rest of the land he let in large lordships to his principal nobles, on condition that they should maintain for the defence of the kingdom a certain number of men armed after a stipulated fashion, and should besides aid him on certain occasions with money payments, with which we have at present no concern. These chief tenants of the crown followed the example of the sovereign. Each retained a portion of the land in his own hands, and sub-let the rest in estates of larger or smaller size, on condition that each noble or knight who held of him should supply a proportion of the armed force he was required to furnish to the royal standard, and contribute a proportion of the money payments for which he was liable to be called upon. Each knight let the farms on his manor to his copyholders, on condition that they provided themselves with the requisite arms, and assembled under his banner when called upon for military suit and service; and they rendered certain personal services, and made certain payments in money or in kind besides, in lieu of rent. Each manor, therefore, furnished its troop of soldiers; the small farmers, perhaps, and the knight's personal retainers fighting on foot, clad in leather jerkins, and armed with pike or bow; two or three of his greater copyholders in skull caps and coats of fence; his younger brothers or grown-up sons acting as men-at-arms and esquires, on horseback, in armour almost or quite as complete as his own; while the knight himself, on his war horse, armed from top to toe--_cap-à-pied_--with shield on arm and lance in hand, with its knight's pennon fluttering from the point, was the captain of the little troop. The troops thus furnished by his several manors made up the force which the feudal lord was bound to furnish the king, and the united divisions made up the army of the kingdom.