You must imagine a population extraordinarily less numerous than it is now. Even in 1087, when Domesday Book, which contained a "census" of all England, was made, the population is given at 1,500,000. For the most part we may suppose the people living rather after the manner in which the Gothic tribes lived in their own country--in clearances, or what we might call villages, in the midst of the wild wood and in the river valleys. But there would be some towns, larger villages gradually growing, and these towns you would probably find beginning to be surrounded by a protecting wall of raised earth and palings with gates that were shut at nightfall. Generally the houses, both in the villages and in the towns, would be of timber and clay, built as I will shortly describe; but after a while the churches and the great men's houses, and the fortified castles would be of stone. There is what we call Saxon stonework still to be seen both in England and in other parts of Europe. Now through this green wood, which generally {97} covered our England, there would be roads and tracks. All the travelling by land would be on foot or on horseback. The use of wheels for vehicles was known even to the Britons before the coming of the English, for they had their war-chariots; but even where the Romans had made their fine roads it is not likely that, after all the years since the Romans left the island, these roads would not have fallen into such disrepair that no wheeled thing could go along them far without sticking in the mud. [Sidenote: Modes of travel] For another fact, that you have to realise about the country of that day, is that it was not only far more wooded than it is now: it was also far more marshy. The rivers ran more broadly, their banks were wider. All the neighbourhood of Westminster, for instance, was a swamp, and the Thames, because it was so wide, was far less deep and it was fordable there. Men and horses could walk through it, perhaps on some stones thrown into the bed, and certainly it must have been far less deep and far more wide than it is now.