But though English society passed thus in its completeness to the soil of Britain, its primitive organization was affected in more ways than one by the transfer.  In the first place conquest begat the King.  It seems probable that the English had hitherto known nothing of kings in their own fatherland, where each tribe was satisfied in peace time with the customary government of village-reeve and hundred-reeve and ealdonnan, while it gathered at fighting times under war leaders whom it chose for each campaign.  But in the long and obstinate warfare which they waged against the Britons it was needful to find a common leader whom the various tribes engaged in conquests such as those of Wessex or Mercia might follow; and the ceaseless character of a struggle which left few intervals of rest or peace raised these leaders into a higher position than that of temporary chieftains.  It was no doubt from this cause that we find Hengest and his son AEsc raised to the kingdom in Kent, or AElle in Sussex, or Cerdic and Cynric among the West Saxons.  The association of son with father in this new kingship marked the hereditary character which distinguished it from the temporary office of an ealdorman.  The change was undoubtedly a great one, but it was less than the modern conception of kingship would lead us to imagine.  Hereditary as the succession was within a single house, each successive king was still the free choice of his people, and for centuries to come it was held within a people’s right to pass over a claimant too weak or too wicked for the throne.  In war indeed the king was supreme.  But in peace his power was narrowly bounded by the customs of his people and the rede of his wise men.  Justice was not as yet the king’s justice, it was the justice of village and hundred and folk in town-moot and hundred-moot and folk-moot.  It was only with the assent of the wise men that the king could make laws and declare war and assign public lands and name public officers.  Above all, should his will be to break through the free customs of his people, he was without the means of putting his will into action, for the one force he could call on was the host, and the host was the people itself in arms.

[Sidenote:  The Thegn]

With the new English king rose a new order of English nobles.  The social distinction of the eorl was founded on the peculiar purity of his blood, on his long descent from the original settler around whom township and thorpe grew up.  A new distinction was now to be found in service done to the king.  From the earliest times of German society it had been the wont of young men greedy of honour or seeking training in arms to bind themselves as “comrades” to king or chief.  The leader whom they chose gave them horses, arms, a seat in his mead hall, and gifts from his hoard.  The “comrade” on the other hand—­the gesith or thegn, as he was called—­bound himself to follow and fight for his lord.  The principle of personal