Fyrd The fyrd in early Anglo - Saxon times , was an army that was mobilized from freemen to defend their shire , or from select representatives to join a royal expedition . Service in the fyrd was usually of short duration and participants were expected to provide their own arms and provisions . The composition of the fyrd evolved over the years particularly as a reaction to raids and invasions by the Vikings . The system of defence and conscription was reorganised during the reign of Alfred the Great who set up 33 fortified towns ( or burh s ) in his kingdom of Wessex . The amount of taxation required to maintain each town was laid down in a document known as the Burghal Hidage . Each lord had his individual holding of land assessed in hides , based on his land holding he had to contribute men and arms to maintain and defend the burhs . Non compliance of this requirement could lead to severe penalties . Ultimately the fyrd consisted of a nucleus of experienced soldiers that would be supplemented by ordinary villagers and farmers from the shires who would accompany their lords . Origins and definition . The Germanic tribes who invaded Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries relied upon the unarmoured infantry supplied by their tribal levy , or fyrd and it was upon this system that the military power of the several kingdoms of early Anglo - Saxon England depended . In Anglo Saxon documents military service might be expressed as fyrd - faru , fyrd - foereld , fyrd - socne , or simply fyrd . The fyrd was a local militia in the Anglo - Saxon shire , in which all freemen had to serve , those who refused military service were subject to fines or loss of their land . According to the laws of Ine : If a nobleman who holds land neglects military service , he shall pay 120 shillings and forfeit his land ; a nobleman who holds no land shall pay 60 shillings ; a commoner shall pay a fine of 30 shillings for neglecting military service . It was the responsibility of the shire fyrd to deal with local raids . The king could call up the national militia to defend the kingdom , however in the case of hit and run raids , particularly by Vikings , problems with communication and raising supplies meant that the national militia could not be mustered quickly enough so was rarely summoned . Historians are divided about the people who were part of the fyrd . Was it the body of peasants as distinct from the thegns and mercenaries ? Was it the peasants and thegns together ? Or was it a combination of all three ? Initially the force probably would have been entirely infantry . However , from Alfred ' s time there would have been a force of mounted infantry , who could gallop swiftly to any trouble spot , dismount , and drive off any raiding force . Also , after Alfred ' s reorganisation there were two elements to his army . The first known as the " select - fyrd " was , most likely , a strictly royal force of mounted infantry consisting mainly of thegns and their retainers supported by earls and reeves . The second would be the local militia or " general - fyrd " responsible for the defence of the shire and borough district and would consist of freemen , such as small tenant farmers and their local thegns and reeves . In the 11th century the infantry was strengthened by the addition of an elite force of housecarl s . The Old English term that the Anglo - Saxon Chronicle uses for the Danish Army is " " here " " ; Ine of Wessex in his law code , issued in about 694 , provides a definition of " " here " " as " an invading army or raiding party containing more than thirty five men " , yet the terms " " here " " and " " fyrd " " are used interchangeably in later sources in respect of the English militia . Tenants in Anglo - Saxon England had a threefold obligation based on their landholding ; the so - called ‘ common burdens ' of military service , fortress work , and bridge repair . Even when a landholder was granted exemptions from other royal services , these three duties were reserved . An example of this is in a charter of 858 where Ethelbert of Kent made an exchange of land with his thegn Wulflaf , it stipulates that Wulflaf ' s land should be free of all royal services and secular burdens except military service , the building of bridges , and fortress work . According to Cnut ' s laws : Organisation . England had suffered raids by the Vikings from the late 8th century onwards , initially mainly on monasteries . The first monastery to be raided was in 793 at Lindisfarne , off the north east coast , with the Anglo - Saxon Chronicle describing the Vikings as " heathen men " . The raiding continued on and off until the 860 ' s , when instead of raiding the Vikings changed their tactics and sent a great army to invade England . This army was described by the Anglo - Saxon Chronicle as a " Great Heathen Army " . The Danes were eventually defeated by Alfred the Great at the Battle of Edington in 878 . This was followed closely by what was described by Asser as the Treaty of Wedmore , under which England was divided up between the Anglo - Saxons of Wessex and the Vikings . However , there continued to be a threat by another Danish army that was active on the continent . The rampaging Viking army on the continent encouraged Alfred to protect his Kingdom of Wessex . He built a navy , reorganised the army , established a cavalry , and set up a system of fortified towns known as burh s . Each element of the system was meant to remedy defects in the West Saxon military establishment exposed by Viking raids and invasions . If under the existing system he could not assemble forces quickly enough to intercept mobile Viking raiders , the obvious answer was to have a standing field force . If this entailed transforming the West Saxon fyrd from a sporadic levy of king ' s men and their retinues into a mounted standing army , so be it . If his kingdom lacked strongpoints to impede the progress of an enemy army , he would build them . If the enemy struck from the sea , he would counter them with his own naval power . To maintain the burhs , and the standing army , he set up a system of taxation and conscription that is recorded in a document , now known as the Burghal Hidage ; thirty three fortified towns are listed along with their taxable value ( known as hides ) ) . Characteristically , all of Alfred ' s innovations were firmly rooted in traditional West Saxon practice , drawing as they did upon the three ‘ common burdens ' that all holders of bookland and royal loanland owed the Crown . Where Alfred revealed his genius was in designing the field force and burhs to be parts of a coherent military system . The " fyrd " was used heavily by King Harold in 1066 , for example in resisting invasion by Harold Hardrada and William of Normandy . Henry I of England , the Anglo - Norman king who promised at his coronation to restore the laws of Edward the Confessor and who married a Scottish princess with West Saxon royal forbears , called up the " fyrd " to supplement his feudal levies , as an army of all England , as Orderic Vitalis reports , to counter the abortive invasions of his brother Robert Curthose , both in the summer of 1101 and in autumn 1102 .