Then one time had the king foregone before them with all the fyrd as they were going to their ships, and all the folk was ready to fight them.
But we had not yet the luck nor the worship [valour] that the ship-fyrd should be of any good to this land, no more than it oft was afore.
There man warned them that there was fyrd gathered at Lunden against them; then wended they over at Stane [Staines].
All autumn the West Saxon fyrd waited for the enemy, but in the end "it came to naught more than it had oft erst done.
The king and his witan resolved to send against them a land fyrd and a ship fyrd or raw levy.
There rode the king with his fyrd till he reached Badbury against Winburne.
Then quoth man to the ship-fyrd that man might easily take them, if man were about it.
The fyrd was gradually superseded by the gathering of the thegns and their retainers, but it was occasionally called out for defensive purposes even after the Norman Conquest.
On the other hand the Land-fyrd or general levy of fighting-men was a body easy to raise for any single encounter but hard to keep together.
The national fyrd or levy of all freemen at the King's call was reorganized.
From the judicial organization of the realm, he turned to its military organization, and in 1181 an Assize of Arms restored the national fyrd or militia to the place which it had lost at the Conquest.
Behind a ditch and palisade, in some commanding spot, the invaders would wait for months, till the accumulated force of the fyrd had melted away to its homes.
To supplement the force thus obtained, the fyrd was divided into two halves, one of which was always to be available.
Thirty years of disasters sealed the fate of the old national military organization: something more than the fyrd was necessary to meet the organized war-bands of the Danes.
With the Norman Conquest the fyrd was largely supplanted by the feudal system of knight's service, according to which the country was divided into knight's fees, each of which had to provide its quotum of men.
The fact is that William of Malmesbury must have been quite familiar with the 'shield-wall', if indeed he had seen the fyrd actually forming it.
The military service of Warwick and Leicester was arranged on the same method, yet Leicester sent twelve 'burgesses' to the fyrd where Warwick sent ten.
We find, as early as 1181, the Assize of Arms, which revives the ancientfyrd or militia.
It had always been difficult to bring together the fyrd, or general army of the freemen, even of a small district, and it was quite impossible to bring together the fyrd of a kingdom reaching from the Channel to the Firth of Forth.
In =1181= Henry issued the Assize of Arms, organising the old fyrd in a more serviceable way.
All through the summer Harold held a fleet concentrated under the lee of the Isle of Wight, waiting to intercept William's armament, while the fyrd of Wessex was ready to support him if the enemy should succeed in making a landing.
And then they went with the West Saxon fyrd into Mercia as far as Nottingham, and there met with the army within the fortress; and besieged them therein: but there was no great battle; and the Mercians made peace with the army.
It regulated the action of the hundred, the duty of watch and ward, and the gathering of the fyrd or militia of the realm as Henry the Second had moulded it into form in his Assize of Arms.
The Assize of Arms, the Statute of Winchester, show with what care the fyrdwas held in a state of efficiency.
Hearing of William's vast preparations, Harold arrayed a fleet to guard the narrow seas, and bade the fyrd of all England to be ready to muster on the Sussex coast.
The fyrd turned out in unexpected strength and loyalty, and with its aid William put down all the Norman rebels, and drove them out of the realm.
He also issued regulations for the uniform arming and mustering of the shire-levies, the old English fyrd which had served him so well against the rebels in 1173.
It was at the head of his thegns and this reorganized fyrd that Alfred smote the Danes when they dared to invade his realm in his later years.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "fyrd" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
