In private life the Anglo-Saxons are said to have been devout to the extreme of credulity, and hospitable to drunken extravagance. Their manners were rough, but social; their tables were plainly, but plentifully served. Large joints of roasted meat seem to have had the preference; salted victuals also were much in use. At table, the rank of the guests was strictly observed; and, by the laws of Canute, a person sitting above his proper station was to be pelted out of his place with bones, at the discretion of the company, without the privilege of taking offence. The lady, (or, as the Saxons named her, _leaf-dien_, the bread giver) sat, as now, at the upper end of the table, and distributed the provisions to her guests. The liquors used at genteel tables were wine, ale, and spiced ale, pigment (a composition of wine, spice, and honey,) morat, (honey diluted with mulberry juice) and mead. {263} Such, as may reasonably be concluded, was the state of things with regard to these matters, in the best of the families of Lynn at those times. SECTION III. _State of learning_, _and of the medical profession_, _among the Anglo-Saxons_. Learning during the time now alluded to was at a very low ebb in this Country. “Among the various discouragements, (says _Andrews_) which literature was obliged to encounter in this ill-fated period may be reckoned the extreme scarcity of materials for writing.” A strong proof of which (he adds) “is that many of the MSS. of the 10th and 11th centuries are written on parchment, from which older works (perhaps the Decades of Livy) have been erased.” It was for want of parchment to draw the deeds upon, (as he supposes,) that estates, were then frequently conveyed from one family to another by the ceremony of a turf and a stone, delivered before witnesses, without any written agreement. However that was, England even in those dark times, exhibited some rays of intellectual light, and produced some literary characters that would have done honour to more enlightened ages. _Bede_, in particular, styled _the Venerable_, who flourished in the 8th century, and has been called, _the wise Saxon_, is believed to have comprised, in eight folio volumes, the whole body of knowledge that his age afforded. To him may be added _Egbert_, arch-bishop of York, and his pupil _Alcuin_, both distinguished in their day for extraordinary literary attainments. _Alfred_ and his learned associates appeared in the 9th century, and were the ornaments of that dark age; but the light which they exhibited was not lasting, and they left no successors that were any way worthy of them. In the 10th (and most part of the 11th) century, scarce any man of literature appeared among the English. _Elfric_ is said to have been by far the most remarkable and eminent. He was styled _the grammarian_, from his having written a Latin grammar. Two volumes of homilies, in MS. translated by him from the Latin into the Saxon language, are said to be