In spite of constant wars and ravages9 from the northern pirates, there can be little doubt that England had been slowly advancing in material civilisation ever since the introduction of Christianity. The heathen intermixture in the North and the Midlands had retarded10 the advance but had not completely checked it; while in Wessex and the South the intercourse11 with the continent and the consequent growth in culture had been steadily12 increasing. ?thelwulf of Wessex married a daughter of Karl the Bald; ?lfred gave his daughter to a count of Flanders; and Eadward's princesses were married respectively to the emperor, to the king of France, and to the king of Provence. Such alliances show a considerable degree of intercourse between Wessex and the Roman world; and the relics13 of material civilisation fully14 bear out the inference. The Institutes of the city of London mention traders from Brabant, Liège, Rouen, Ponthieu, France (in the restricted sense), and the Empire; but these came "in their own vessels15." England, which now has in her hands the carrying trade of the world, was still dependent for her own supply on foreign bottoms. We know also that officers were appointed to collect tolls17 from foreign merchants at Canterbury, Dover, Arundel, and many other towns; and London and Bristol certainly traded on their own account with the Continent.
As a whole, however, England still remained a purely18 agricultural country to the very end of the Anglo-Saxon period. It had but little foreign trade, and what little existed was chiefly confined to imports of articles of luxury (wine, silk, spices, and artistic19 works) for the wealthier nobles, and of ecclesiastical requisites20, such as pictures, incense21, relics, vestments, and like southern products for the churches and monasteries22. The exports seem mainly to have consisted of slaves and wool, though hides may possibly have been sent out of the country, and a little of the famous English gold-work and embroidery23 was perhaps sold abroad in return for the few imported luxuries. But taking the country at a glance, we must still picture it to ourselves as composed almost entirely24 of separate agricultural manors26, each now owned by a considerable landowner, and tilled mainly by his churls, whose position had sunk during the Danish wars to that of semi-servile tenants27, owing customary rents of labour to their superiors. War had told against the independence of the lesser28 freemen, who found themselves compelled to choose themselves protectors among the higher born classes, till at last the theory became general that every man must have a lord. The noble himself lived upon his manor25, accepted service from his churls in tilling his own homestead, and allowed them lands in return in the outlying portions of his estates. His sources of income were two only: first, the agricultural produce of his lands, thus tilled for him by free labour and by the hands of his serfs; and secondly29, the breeding of slaves, shipped from the ports of London and Bristol for the markets of the south. The artisans depended wholly upon their lord, being often serfs, or else churls holding on service-tenure. The mass of England consisted of such manors, still largely interspersed30 with woodland, each with the wooden hall of its lord occupying the centre of the homestead, and with the huts of the churls and serfs among the hays and valleys of the outskirts31. The butter and cheese, bread and bacon, were made at home; the corn was ground in the quern; the beer was brewed32 and the honey collected by the family. The spinner and weaver33, the shoemaker, smith, and carpenter, were all parts of the household. Thus every manor was wholly self-sufficing and self-sustaining, and towns were rendered almost unnecessary.
Forests and heaths still also covered about half the surface. These were now the hunting-grounds of the kings and nobles, while in the leys, hursts, and dens34, small groups of huts gave shelter to the swineherds and woodwards who had charge of their lord's property in the woodlands. The great tree-covered region of Selwood still divided Wessex into two halves; the forest of the Chilterns still spread close to the walls of London; the Peakland was still overgrown by an inaccessible35 thicket36; and the long central ridge37 between Yorkshire and Scotland was still shadowed by prim38?val oaks, pinewoods, and beeches39. Agriculture continued to be confined to the alluvial40 bottoms, and had nowhere as yet invaded the uplands, or even the stiffer and drier lowland regions, such as the Weald of Kent or the forests of Arden and Elmet.
Only two elements broke the monotony of these self-sufficing agricultural communities. Those elements were the monasteries and the towns.
A large part of the soil of England was owned by the monks41. They now possessed42 considerable buildings, with stone churches of some pretensions43, in which service was conducted with pomp and impressiveness. The tiny chapel44 of St. Lawrence, at Bradford-on-Avon, forms the best example of this primitive45 Romanesque architecture now surviving in England. Around the monasteries stretched their well-tilled lands, mostly reclaimed46 from fen47 or forest, and probably more scientifically cultivated than those of the neighbouring manors. Most of the monks were skilled in civilised handicrafts, introduced from the more cultivated continent. They were excellent ecclesiastical metalworkers; many of them were architects, who built in rude imitation of Romanesque models; and others were designers or illuminators of manuscripts. The books and charters of this age are delicately and minutely wrought48 out, though not with all the artistic elaboration of later medi?val work. The art of painting (almost always in miniature) was considerably49 advanced, the figures being well drawn50, in rather stiff but not unlifelike attitudes, though perspective is very imperfectly understood, and hardly ever attempted. Later Anglo-Saxon architecture, such as that of Eadward's magnificent abbey church at Westminster (afterwards destroyed by Henry III. to make way for his own building), was not inferior to continental51 workmanship. All the arts practised in the abbeys were of direct Roman origin, and most of the words relating to them are immediately derived52 from the Latin. This is the case even with terms relating to such common objects as candle, pen, wine, and oil. Names of weights, measures, coins, and other exact quantitative53 ideas are also derived from Roman sources. Carpenters, smiths, bakers54, tanners, and millers55, were usually attached to the abbeys. Thus, in many cases, as at Glastonbury, Peterborough, Ripon, Beverley, and Bury St. Edmunds, the monastery56 grew into the nucleus57 of a considerable town, though the development of such towns is more marked after than before the Norman Conquest. As a whole, it was by means of the monasteries, and especially of their constant interchange of inmates58 with the continent, that England mainly kept up the touch with the southern civilisation. There alone was Latin, the universal medium of continental intercommunication, taught and spoken. There alone were books written, preserved, and read. Through the Church alone was an organisation59 kept up in direct communication with the central civilising agencies of Italy and the south. And while the Church and the monasteries thus preserved the connection with the continent, they also formed schools of culture and of industrial arts for the country itself. At the abbeys bells were cast, glass manufactured, buildings designed, gold and silver ornaments wrought, jewels enamelled, and unskilled labour organised by the most trained intelligence of the land. They thus remained as they had begun, homes and retreats for those exceptional minds which were capable of carrying on the arts and the knowledge of a dying civilisation across the gulf60 of predatory barbarism which separates the artificial culture of Rome from the industrial culture of modern Europe.
The towns were few and relatively61 unimportant, built entirely of wood (except the churches), and very liable to be burnt down on the least excuse. In considering them we must dismiss from our minds the ideas derived from our own great and complex organisation, and bring ourselves mentally into the attitude of a simple agricultural people, requiring little beyond what was produced on each man's own farm or petty holding. Such people are mainly fed from their own corn and meat, mainly clad from their own homespun wool and linen62. A little specialisation of function, however, already existed. Salt was procured63 from the wyches or pans of the coast, and also from the inland wyches or brine wells of Cheshire and the midland counties. Such names as Nantwich, Middlewych, Bromwich, and Droitwich, still preserve the memory of these early saltworks. Iron was mined in the Forest of Dean, around Alcester, and in the Somersetshire district. The city of Gloucester had six smiths' forges in the days of Eadward the Confessor, and paid its tax to the king in iron rods. Lead was found in Derbyshire, and was largely employed for roofing churches. Cloth-weaving was specially5 carried on at Stamford; but as a rule it is probable that every district supplied its own clothing. English merchants attended the great fair at St. Denys, in France, much as those of Central Asia now attend the fair at Kandahar; and madder seems to have been bought there for dyeing cloth. In Kent, Sussex, and East Anglia, herring fisheries already produced considerable results. With these few exceptions, all the towns were apparently64 mere65 local centres of exchange for produce, and small manufactured wares66, like the larger villages or bazaars67 of India in our own time. Nevertheless, there was a distinct advance towards urban life in the later Anglo-Saxon period. B?da mentions very few towns, and most of those were waste. By the date of the Conquest there were many, and their functions were such as befitted a more diversified68 national life. Communications had become far greater; and arts or trade had now to some extent specialised themselves in special places.
A list of the chief early English towns may possibly seem to give too much importance to these very minor69 elements of English life; yet one may, perhaps, be appended with due precaution against misapprehension.
The capital, if any place deserved to be so called under the perambulating early English dynasty, was Winchester (Wintan-ceaster), with its old and new minsters, containing the tombs of the West-Saxon kings. It possessed a large number of craftsmen70, doubtless dependant71 ultimately upon the court; and it was relatively a place of far greater importance than at any later date.
The chief ports were London (Lundenbyrig), situated72 at the head of tidal navigation on the Thames; and Bristol (Bricgestow) and Gloucester (Gleawan-ceaster), similarly placed on the Avon and Severn. These towns were convenient for early shipping73 because of their tidal position, at an age when artificial harbours were unknown; They were the seat of the export traffic in slaves and the import traffic in continental goods. Before ?lfred's reign16 the carrying trade by sea seems to have been in the hands of the Frisian skippers and slave-dealers, who stood to the English in the same relation as the Arabs now stand to the East African and Central African negroes; but after the increased attention paid to shipbuilding during the struggle with the Danes, English vessels began to engage in trade on their own account. London must already have been the largest and richest town in the kingdom. Even in B?da's time it was "the mart of many nations, resorting to it by sea and land." It seems, indeed, to have been a sort of merchant commonwealth74, governed by its own port reeve, and it made its own dooms75, which have been preserved to the present day. From the Roman time onward76, the position of London as a great free commercial town was probably uninterrupted.
York (Eoforwic), the capital of the North, had its own archbishop and its Danish internal organisation. It seems to have been always an important and considerable town, and it doubtless possessed the same large body of handicraftsmen as Winchester. During the doubtful period of Danish and English struggles, the archbishop apparently exercised quasi-royal authority over the English burghers themselves.
Among the cathedral towns the most important were Canterbury (Cant-wara-byrig), the old capital of Kent and metropolis78 of all England, which seems to have contained a relatively large trading population; Dorchester, in Oxfordshire, first the royal city of the West Saxons, and afterwards the seat of the exiled bishopric of Lincoln; Rochester (Hrofes-ceaster), the old capital of the West Kentings, and seat of their bishop77: and Worcester (Wigorna-ceaster), the chief town of the Huiccii. Of the monastic towns the chief were Peterborough (Burh), Ely (Elig), and Glastonbury (Gl?stingabyrig). Bath, Amesbury, Colchester, Lincoln, Chester, and other towns of Roman origin were also important. Exeter, the old capital of the West Welsh, situated at the tidal head of the Exe, had considerable trade. Oxford79 was a place of traffic and a fortified80 town. Hastings, Dover, and the other south-coast ports had some communications with France. The only other places of any note were Chippenham, Bensington, and Aylesbury; Northampton and Southampton; Bamborough; the fortified posts built by Eadward and ?thelfl?d; and the Danish boroughs81 of Bedford, Derby, Leicester, Stamford, Nottingham, and Huntingdon. The Witena-gemots and the synods took place in any town, irrespective of size, according to royal convenience. But as early as the days of Cnut, London was beginning to be felt as the real centre of national life: and Eadward the Confessor, by founding Westminster Abbey, made it practically the home of the kings. The Conqueror "wore his crown on Eastertide at Winchester; on Pentecost at Westminster; and on Midwinter at Gloucester:" which probably marks the relative position of the three towns as the chief places in the old West Saxon realm at least. Under ?thelstan, London had eight moneyers or mint-masters, while Winchester had only six, and Canterbury seven.
As regards the arts and traffic in the towns, they were chiefly carried on by guilds82, which had their origin, as Dr. Brentano has shown with great probability, in separate families, who combined to keep up their own trade secrets as a family affair. In time, however, the guilds grew into regular organisations, having their own code of rules and laws, many of which (as at Cambridge, Exeter, and Abbotsbury) we still possess. It is possible that the families of craftsmen may at first have been Romanised Welsh inhabitants of the cities; for all the older towns—London, Canterbury, York, Lincoln, and Rochester—were almost certainly inhabited without interruption from the Roman period onward. But in any case the guilds seem to have grown out of family compacts, and to have retained always the character of close corporations. There must have been considerable division of the various trades even before the Conquest, and each trade must have inhabited a separate quarter; for we find at Winchester, or elsewhere, in the reign of ?thelred, Fellmonger, Horsemonger, Fleshmonger, Shieldwright, Shoewright, Turner, and Salter Streets.
The exact amount of the population of England cannot be ascertained83, even approximately; but we may obtain a rough approximation from the estimates based upon Domesday Book. It seems probable that at the end of the Conqueror's reign, England contained 1,800,000 souls. Allowing for the large number of persons introduced at the Conquest, and for the natural increase during the unusual peace in the reigns84 of Cnut, of Eadward the Confessor, and, above all, of William himself, we may guess that it could not have contained more than a million and a quarter in the days of Eadgar. London may have had a population of some 10,000; Winchester and York of 5,000 each; certainly that of York at the date of Domesday could not have exceeded 7,000 persons, and we know that it contained 1,800 houses in the time of Eadward the Confessor.
The organisation of the country continued on the lines of the old constitution. But the importance of the simple freeman had now quite died out, and the gemot was rather a meeting of the earls, bishops85, abbots, and wealthy landholders, than a real assembly of the people. The sub-divisions of the kingdom were now pretty generally conterminous with the modern counties. In Wessex and the east the counties are either older kingdoms, like Kent, Sussex, and Essex; or else tribal86 divisions of the kingdom, like Dorset, Somerset, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Surrey. In Mercia, the recovered country is artificially mapped out round the chief Danish burgs, as in the case of Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire, and Leicestershire, where the county town usually occupies the centre of the arbitrary shire. In Northumbria it is divided into equally artificial counties by the rivers. Beneath the counties stood the older organisation of the hundred, and beneath that again the primitive unit of the township, known on its ecclesiastical side as the parish. In the reign of Eadgar, England seems to have contained about 3,000 parish churches.
点击收听单词发音
1 warfare | |
n.战争(状态);斗争;冲突 | |
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2 civilisation | |
n.文明,文化,开化,教化 | |
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3 ornaments | |
n.装饰( ornament的名词复数 );点缀;装饰品;首饰v.装饰,点缀,美化( ornament的第三人称单数 ) | |
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4 remains | |
n.剩余物,残留物;遗体,遗迹 | |
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5 specially | |
adv.特定地;特殊地;明确地 | |
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6 conqueror | |
n.征服者,胜利者 | |
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7 commissioners | |
n.专员( commissioner的名词复数 );长官;委员;政府部门的长官 | |
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8 influx | |
n.流入,注入 | |
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9 ravages | |
劫掠后的残迹,破坏的结果,毁坏后的残迹 | |
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10 retarded | |
a.智力迟钝的,智力发育迟缓的 | |
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11 intercourse | |
n.性交;交流,交往,交际 | |
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12 steadily | |
adv.稳定地;不变地;持续地 | |
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13 relics | |
[pl.]n.遗物,遗迹,遗产;遗体,尸骸 | |
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14 fully | |
adv.完全地,全部地,彻底地;充分地 | |
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15 vessels | |
n.血管( vessel的名词复数 );船;容器;(具有特殊品质或接受特殊品质的)人 | |
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16 reign | |
n.统治时期,统治,支配,盛行;v.占优势 | |
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17 tolls | |
(缓慢而有规律的)钟声( toll的名词复数 ); 通行费; 损耗; (战争、灾难等造成的)毁坏 | |
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18 purely | |
adv.纯粹地,完全地 | |
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19 artistic | |
adj.艺术(家)的,美术(家)的;善于艺术创作的 | |
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20 requisites | |
n.必要的事物( requisite的名词复数 ) | |
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21 incense | |
v.激怒;n.香,焚香时的烟,香气 | |
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22 monasteries | |
修道院( monastery的名词复数 ) | |
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23 embroidery | |
n.绣花,刺绣;绣制品 | |
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24 entirely | |
ad.全部地,完整地;完全地,彻底地 | |
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25 manor | |
n.庄园,领地 | |
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26 manors | |
n.庄园(manor的复数形式) | |
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27 tenants | |
n.房客( tenant的名词复数 );佃户;占用者;占有者 | |
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28 lesser | |
adj.次要的,较小的;adv.较小地,较少地 | |
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29 secondly | |
adv.第二,其次 | |
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30 interspersed | |
adj.[医]散开的;点缀的v.intersperse的过去式和过去分词 | |
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31 outskirts | |
n.郊外,郊区 | |
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32 brewed | |
调制( brew的过去式和过去分词 ); 酝酿; 沏(茶); 煮(咖啡) | |
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33 weaver | |
n.织布工;编织者 | |
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34 dens | |
n.牙齿,齿状部分;兽窝( den的名词复数 );窝点;休息室;书斋 | |
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35 inaccessible | |
adj.达不到的,难接近的 | |
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36 thicket | |
n.灌木丛,树林 | |
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37 ridge | |
n.山脊;鼻梁;分水岭 | |
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38 prim | |
adj.拘泥形式的,一本正经的;n.循规蹈矩,整洁;adv.循规蹈矩地,整洁地 | |
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39 beeches | |
n.山毛榉( beech的名词复数 );山毛榉木材 | |
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40 alluvial | |
adj.冲积的;淤积的 | |
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41 monks | |
n.修道士,僧侣( monk的名词复数 ) | |
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42 possessed | |
adj.疯狂的;拥有的,占有的 | |
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43 pretensions | |
自称( pretension的名词复数 ); 自命不凡; 要求; 权力 | |
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44 chapel | |
n.小教堂,殡仪馆 | |
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45 primitive | |
adj.原始的;简单的;n.原(始)人,原始事物 | |
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46 reclaimed | |
adj.再生的;翻造的;收复的;回收的v.开拓( reclaim的过去式和过去分词 );要求收回;从废料中回收(有用的材料);挽救 | |
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47 fen | |
n.沼泽,沼池 | |
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48 wrought | |
v.引起;以…原料制作;运转;adj.制造的 | |
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49 considerably | |
adv.极大地;相当大地;在很大程度上 | |
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50 drawn | |
v.拖,拉,拔出;adj.憔悴的,紧张的 | |
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51 continental | |
adj.大陆的,大陆性的,欧洲大陆的 | |
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52 derived | |
vi.起源;由来;衍生;导出v.得到( derive的过去式和过去分词 );(从…中)得到获得;源于;(从…中)提取 | |
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53 quantitative | |
adj.数量的,定量的 | |
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54 bakers | |
n.面包师( baker的名词复数 );面包店;面包店店主;十三 | |
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55 millers | |
n.(尤指面粉厂的)厂主( miller的名词复数 );磨房主;碾磨工;铣工 | |
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56 monastery | |
n.修道院,僧院,寺院 | |
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57 nucleus | |
n.核,核心,原子核 | |
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58 inmates | |
n.囚犯( inmate的名词复数 ) | |
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59 organisation | |
n.组织,安排,团体,有机休 | |
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60 gulf | |
n.海湾;深渊,鸿沟;分歧,隔阂 | |
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61 relatively | |
adv.比较...地,相对地 | |
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62 linen | |
n.亚麻布,亚麻线,亚麻制品;adj.亚麻布制的,亚麻的 | |
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63 procured | |
v.(努力)取得, (设法)获得( procure的过去式和过去分词 );拉皮条 | |
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64 apparently | |
adv.显然地;表面上,似乎 | |
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65 mere | |
adj.纯粹的;仅仅,只不过 | |
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66 wares | |
n. 货物, 商品 | |
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67 bazaars | |
(东方国家的)市场( bazaar的名词复数 ); 义卖; 义卖市场; (出售花哨商品等的)小商品市场 | |
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68 diversified | |
adj.多样化的,多种经营的v.使多样化,多样化( diversify的过去式和过去分词 );进入新的商业领域 | |
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69 minor | |
adj.较小(少)的,较次要的;n.辅修学科;vi.辅修 | |
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70 craftsmen | |
n. 技工 | |
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71 dependant | |
n.依靠的,依赖的,依赖他人生活者 | |
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72 situated | |
adj.坐落在...的,处于某种境地的 | |
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73 shipping | |
n.船运(发货,运输,乘船) | |
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74 commonwealth | |
n.共和国,联邦,共同体 | |
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75 dooms | |
v.注定( doom的第三人称单数 );判定;使…的失败(或灭亡、毁灭、坏结局)成为必然;宣判 | |
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76 onward | |
adj.向前的,前进的;adv.向前,前进,在先 | |
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77 bishop | |
n.主教,(国际象棋)象 | |
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78 metropolis | |
n.首府;大城市 | |
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79 Oxford | |
n.牛津(英国城市) | |
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80 fortified | |
adj. 加强的 | |
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81 boroughs | |
(尤指大伦敦的)行政区( borough的名词复数 ); 议会中有代表的市镇 | |
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82 guilds | |
行会,同业公会,协会( guild的名词复数 ) | |
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83 ascertained | |
v.弄清,确定,查明( ascertain的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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84 reigns | |
n.君主的统治( reign的名词复数 );君主统治时期;任期;当政期 | |
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85 bishops | |
(基督教某些教派管辖大教区的)主教( bishop的名词复数 ); (国际象棋的)象 | |
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86 tribal | |
adj.部族的,种族的 | |
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