In speaking of our towns and villages we are obliged to make mention frequently of churches and monasteries. At the time when Cnut was king, each vill or tun had its church and its priest to minister in it. There were parts of the land, in the common fields and pasture, mixed up with the villeins' strips, set apart for the support of the services of the Church, the maintenance of the priest, and the care of the poor. In time various dues and customs were also paid to the priest for certain things which he was expected to do. There are very few churches still standing which have any parts of their structure dating from before the time of King Cnut. In the early days churches were very simple buildings, built mainly of wood, and in the Danish wars most of them were destroyed. In the tenth century there was a very general belief that the world was coming to an end at the end of the thousand years after the establishment of Christianity; so there was not much actual church-building going on. But in King Cnut's time a revival of interest in church-building took place, and there are in a good many of the old churches of England little bits of work in the walls, or very rude carvings over the doorways, which belong to this time. Unless such work is pointed out to you by one who understands something about these matters, you will not be likely to discover it for yourself, any more than you are likely to discover the traces of the pit-dwellings, of which we spoke in an early chapter. These parish churches and parish priests were under the control of the bishop, who had his chief church or cathedral in some important place in his diocese. Those cathedrals were generally served by colleges of clergy, called canons. [Illustration: _Wooden Church at Greenstead, Essex. Built in 1013 as a temporary shelter for the body of St. Edmund during its removal from London to Bury. The illustration is copied from an engraving dated 1748, when the building was entire, though much decayed_] These were the public churches. But besides them there were colleges and monasteries, which were private societies of men living together. Some of the religious houses were in towns, as we have seen, and others were in wild desolate places. Every religious house, whether a monastery for men or a nunnery for women, had its church, which was the private chapel of the house, and not open to the public. In the course of years these private chapels were built as huge churches, much larger than the parish church. Even now you may see standing close to a big college church a much smaller parish church; as, for example, St. Margaret's Church, which stands by the side of Westminster Abbey. As more land came into the possession of these religious houses, the monks had more business with the outside world; for, as landlords, they had to see that their lands were turned to good account, and cultivated according to the notions of the day.