In general we may admit the division of a conquered country, such as Britain was, to have been conducted upon settled principles, derived from the actual position of the conquerors. As an army they had obtained possession, and as an army they distributed the booty which rewarded their valour. That they nevertheless continued to occupy the land as families or _cognationes_, resulted from the method of their enrolment in the field itself, where each kindred was drawn up under an officer of its own lineage and appointment, and the several members of the family served together. But such a distribution of the land as should content the various small communities that made up the whole force, could only be ensured by the joint authority of the leaders, the concurrence of the families themselves, and the possession of a sufficient space for their extension, undisturbed by the claims of former occupants, and suited to the wants of its new masters. What difficulties, what jealousies preceded the adjustment of all claims among the conquerors, we cannot hope to learn, or by what means these were met and reconciled: but the divisions themselves, so many of whose names I have collected, prove that, in some way or other, the problem was successfully solved. On the natural clearings in the forest, or on spots prepared by man for his own uses; in valleys, bounded by gentle acclivities which poured down fertilizing streams; or on plains which here and there rose, clothed with verdure, above surrounding marshes; slowly and step by step, the warlike colonists adopted the habits and developed the character of peaceful agriculturists. The towns which had been spared in the first rush of war, gradually became deserted, and slowly crumbled to the soil, beneath which their ruins are yet found from time to time, or upon which shapeless masses yet remain, to mark the sites of a civilization, whose bases were not laid deep enough for eternity. All over England there soon existed a network of communities, the principle of whose being was separation, as regarded each other: the most intimate union, as respected the individual members of each. Agricultural, not commercial, dispersed, not centralized, content within their own limits and little given to wandering, they relinquished in a great degree the habits and feelings which had united them as military adventurers; and the spirit which had achieved the conquest of an empire, was now satisfied with the care of maintaining inviolate a little peaceful plot, sufficient for the cultivation of a few simple households. CHAPTER III. THE GÁ OR SCÍR.