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A Saxon housecarl and ceorl meet defeat at Hastings. (Bayeux Tapestry)

for the local forces. This was probably in imitation of the fortified bases of the Danish raiders. In the early years of the following century the building of burghs was continued, and twenty-seven were erected between 911 and 924, all on the network of old Roman roads or on strategie waterways.

By the beginning of the iith century all the thegns usually held estates of five hides or morę, and so by this datę they probably constituted the bulk of the Select Fyrd. At the beginning of this century there also appears the first mention of the elite body of warriors known as housecarls. It is thought that these were introduced after Svein Forkbeard’s concjuest ofEngland in 1016, and were probably raised by Knut in 1018. Professional mercenary soldiers, they hacl their own rules of conduct, lived at the king’s court and received his pay, as opposed to gifts. They formed a smali but efficient and highly organized standing army, well disciplined and heavily armed.

The housecarls were retained by Edward the Confessor and by Harold Godwinson, and during the reign of the former they appear to have been reeruited also by the great earls: Tostig’s English and Danish retainers are referred to as housecarls by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicie, but the term may have acąuired a morę generał meaning by then and encompassed all landless mercenary soldiers as opposed to the thegns, who were warriors but also landowners under the king. There are, however, other references to mercenaries in the pay of the king or earls who are clearly not housecarls, such as the lithsmen, who were skilled seamen but who also fought on land. These and other paid warriors provided the late Saxon kings with a highly trained nucleus, backed by the earls and their war bands, and by the thegns of the Select Fyrd.

By the mid-nth century the royal housecarls probably numbered about 3,000. Earl Tostig lost 200 ofhis own housecarls during the Northumbrian revolt in 1065: as some ofhis housecarls survived and escaped, a figurę of around 250 300 housecarls seems reasonable for an earl.

At Hastings the Saxon army, although its elite force had been weakened while achieving victory at Stamford Bridge, and although it was short of the ąuota of men for both the Select and Greater Fyrd, successfully withstood the Norman army in a battle which lasted much longer than was normal for the period. At its fuli strength it could probably have held its own against any army in western Christen-dom, and its value was not underestimated by its conąuerors, who not only adopted the Danish axe of the English but also perpetuated under the Anglo-Norman kings both the Select and Greater Fyrd systems.