A very large number of vills and tuns were under the lordship of the various bishops and monasteries. It was so with towns like Winchester, Reading, Bury St. Edmund's, and St. Alban's. The custom had grown up quite naturally and in the course of many years. It is pretty clear that the overlord did not always reside in his vill or tun. The tuns or vills of the bishopric of Winchester, for instance, were scattered about in the various parts of the diocese. It was the same with other overlords. But we find in every place a steward, and in each town the king's reeve or the lord's reeve. These acted for the overlord, whoever he was, and saw that the villeins and cottiers did their proper proportion of work at the right time; they saw that the lord's tolls at the markets, fairs, and ferries, were properly enforced. The steward was a most important officer in every town and village, and a great deal of power was in his hands. Then in the ordinary country vill there was the faber, or smith; the mason; the pundar, or man who looked after the fences and hedges and drove stray cattle into the pound. Then there was the carpenter, and even the bee-keeper, for honey was an important ingredient used in the making of the drink of the community. The simple ordinary trades were found in the country villages then, as they are now; but the craftsmen, the most skilled workmen, had become for the most part dwellers in the towns. Even in very early times we find craftsmen in towns formed into trades' unions or guilds, to protect their special trades. [Illustration: _Agriculture. From an eleventh-century manuscript in the British Museum_ _Below are shown the workers carrying their burdens home at the end of the day._] Now the land was shared amongst the villeins and cottiers in strips, usually containing an acre or halfacre, in the common fields of which we have heard before. The villein did not have all the strips belonging to his holding set out side by side--they lay in different parts of the great open field. Crops had to be sown according to the custom of the vill or tun, and according to a fixed order. Wheat and rye would be sown one year on a part of the great field; barley, oats, and beans the next year; and the third year the land must be left fallow. The lord's land had to be treated in the same way. On the pasture-land and in the meadows the villein and cottier had the right to turn out a certain number of cattle, according to the size of their holdings. The crops, whether of hay or corn, had to be cleared from the fields by certain fixed days, so that cattle might be turned out to graze. You will still find, in some towns, that certain of the freeholders, or burgesses, have the right to turn a certain number of cattle on certain lands for a part of the year between fixed dates.