The popular meetings of the Anglo-Saxons, those of the hundred and the shire, were held in the open air. Since many of those who attended them had to travel far, some sign was necessary to mark out the place of meeting, and some striking feature, such as a hillock, or a particular tree, or an ancient barrow, was chosen. Thus we have the Shire Oak, near Leeds, which gives its name to the wapentake of Skyrack; and in a charter of Edgar we find the _mot-beorh_ mentioned, and translated _Congressionis Collem_ = the meeting barrow. (_M. A._, ii., 324.) It does not appear that a hillock was an essential feature of these meeting-places, though this is popularly supposed to be the case, because the "Thing-wall" in Iceland and the "Tynwald" in the Isle of Man have hillocks from which laws were proclaimed. The Thingwall, or field of meeting in Iceland had a natural rock just above it, isolated by a stream, and though proclamations were made from this rock, deliberations took place on the level. (Gomme's _Primitive Folk-Moots_, 31.) The Tynwald Hill, in the Isle of Man, which is also still used for the proclamation of new laws, was probably an ancient barrow, as there are other barrows in the immediate neighbourhood. (Kermode and Herdman, _Illustrated Notes on Manx Antiquities_, pp. 23 and 61.) At Thingwall, near Liverpool, and Thingwall in Wirral, both probably Norse settlements, there is no hillock. In Scotland, the use of a former motte as a meeting-place for the baronial court appears to have been much more common than in England. Mr George Neilson's explanation of this fact is referred to in Chapter X., p. 307. APPENDIX B WATLING STREET AND THE DANELAGH It has been pointed out by Schmid (_Gesetze der Angelsachsen_, xxxviii.) that the document called _Alfred and Guthrum's Peace_ cannot belong to the year of Guthrum's baptism at Wedmore; and Mr J. R. Green (_Conquest of England_, p. 151) goes further, and doubts whether the boundaries laid down in this deed refer to anything except to the East Anglian kingdom of Guthrum. But Mr Green gives no adequate reason for rejecting the generally accepted conclusion that the Watling Street was the boundary between English and Danish Mercia, which is borne out by the following facts: (1) the Danish confederacy of the five boroughs, Lincoln, Stamford, Leicester, Nottingham, and Derby, pretty well covers the part of Mercia north of Watling Street, especially when Chester is added, as it sometimes is, to the list; (2) the division into wapentakes instead of hundreds, now believed to be of Danish origin, is found in Lincolnshire, Notts, Derbyshire, Rutland, Leicestershire, and Northamptonshire. Staffordshire, it is true, is not divided into wapentakes, but it was apparently won by conquest when Ethelfleda fortified the town. Chester was occupied by her husband in 908. Watling Street furnishes such a well-defined line that it was natural to fix upon it as a frontier. APPENDIX C