there is no Earl of London.  They freely hold their free and open meetings, their folk-motes,—­in the open space outside the northwest corner of St. Paul’s Churchyard.  That they lived roughly, enduring cold, sleeping in small houses in narrow courts; that they suffered much from the long darkness of winter; that they were always in danger of fevers, agues, “putrid” throats, plagues, fires by night, and civil wars; that they were ignorant of letters,—­three schools only for the whole of London,—­all this may very well be understood.  But these things do not make men and women wretched.  They were not always suffering from preventable disease; they were not always hauling their goods out of the flames; they were not always fighting.  The first and most simple elements of human happiness are three; to wit, that a man should be in bodily health, that he should be free, that he should enjoy the produce of his own labor.  All these things the Londoner possessed under the Norman kings nearly as much as in these days they can be possessed.  His city has always been one of the healthiest in the world; whatever freedom could be attained he enjoyed; and in that rich trading town all men who worked lived in plenty.

The households, the way of living, the occupations of the women, can be clearly made out in every detail from the Anglo-Saxon literature.  The women in the country made the garments, carded the wool, sheared the sheep, washed the things, beat the flax, ground the corn, sat at the spinning-wheel, and prepared the food.  In the towns they had no shearing to do, but all the rest of their duty fell to their province.  The English women excelled in embroidery.  “English” work meant the best kind of work.  They worked church vestments with gold and pearls and precious stones.  “Orfrey,” or embroidery in gold, was a special art.  Of course they are accused by the ecclesiastics of an overweening desire to wear finery; they certainly curled their hair, and, one is sorry to read, they painted, and thereby spoiled their pretty cheeks.  If the man was the hlaf-ord [lord],—­the owner or winner of the loaf,—­the wife was the hlaf-dig [lady], its distributor; the servants and the retainers were hlaf-oetas, or eaters of it.  When nunneries began to be founded, the Saxon ladies in great numbers forsook the world for the cloister.  And here they began to learn Latin, and became able at least to carry on correspondence—­specimens of which still exist—­in that language.  Every nunnery possessed a school for girls.  They were taught to read and to write their own language and Latin, perhaps also rhetoric and embroidery.  As the pious Sisters were fond of putting on violet chemises, tunics, and vests of delicate tissue, embroidered with silver and gold, and scarlet shoes, there was probably not much mortification of the flesh in the nunneries of the later Saxon times.

This for the better class.  We cannot suppose that the daughters of the craftsmen became scholars of the nunnery.  Theirs were the lower walks—­to spin the linen and to make the bread and carry on the housework.