СНАР.

V.

astical morals. Here a complaint was made by the archbishop, that he had been unjustly deprived of some land. He cited those who withheld it. The writings concerning the land were produced, and vivá voce evidence heard. The writings and the land were ordered by the council to be given to the archbishop.2

At a council in 903, an ealdorman stated that his title-deeds had been destroyed by fire. He applied to the council for leave to have new ones. New ones were ordered to be made out to him, as nearly similar to the former as memory could make them.30

What was done at one council was sometimes confirmed at another. Thus what was done in the great council in Baccanfield was confirmed in the same year at another held in July at Clove-shoe. So a gift at Easter was confirmed at Christmas. 31

That the witena-gemot sometimes resisted the royal acts, appears from their not choosing to consider valid a gift of land by Baldred, king of Kent, because he did not please them. 32

The witena-gemot frequently appears to us, in the Saxon remains, as the high court of judicature of the kingdom, or as determining disputed questions about land.

IN 896, Æthelred, the ealdorman of Mercia, convened all the witan of Mercia, (which had not yet been reduced into a province,) the bishops, ealdormen, and all the nobility, at Gloucester, with the leave of Alfred. “They consulted how they most justly might hold their theod-scipe, both for

BOOK
VIII.

God and for the world, and right many men, both clergy and laity, concerning the lands and other things that were detained.” At this gemot, the bishop of Worcester made his complaint of the wood-land of which he was deprived. All the witan declared that the church should have its rights preserved, as well as other persons. A discussion and an accommodation took place. 33

In another case of disputed lands, the bishop states, that he could obtain no right before Ethelred was lord of Mercia. He assembled the witan of Mercia at Saltwic, about manifold needs, both ecclesiastical and civil. “ Then (says the bishop) I spoke of the monastery with the erfe ze prite, (conveyances of the land,) and desired my right. Then Eadnoth, and Alfred, and Ælfstan, pledged me that they would either give it to me, or would, among their kinsfolk, find a man who would take it on the condition of being obedient to me.” No man, however, would take the land on these terms, and the parties came to an accommodation on the subject. 31

In 851, the monks of Croyland, having suffered much from some violent neighbours, laid their complaint before the witena-gemot. The king ordered the sheriff of Lincoln, and his other officers in that district, to take a view of the lands of the monastery, and to make their report to him and his council, wherever they should be, at the end of Easter. This was done, and the grievances were removed. 35 THE

power of the witena-gemot over the public

V.

gelds of the kingdom we cannot detail. The lands CHAP: of the Anglo-Saxons, the burghs, and the people, appear to us, in all the documents of our ancestors, Taxation. as subjected to certain definite payments to the king as to their lords; and we have already stated, that by a custom, whose origin is lost in its antiquity, among the Anglo-Saxons, all their lands, unless specially exempted, were liable to three great burdens; to the building and reparation of bridges; also of fortifications, and to military expeditions. But what we now call taxation seems to have begun in the time of Ethelred, and to have javnline arisen from the evils of a foreign invasion. Henry of Huntingdon, speaking of the payment of ten thousand pounds to the Danes, to buy off their hostility, says, “ This evil has lasted to our days, and long will continue, unless the mercy of God interferes ; for we now (in the twelfth century) pay that to our kings from custom which was paid to the Danes from unspeakable terror.”36 This payment, and those which followed, are stated to have been ordered by the king and the witenagemot.37

UNDER sovereigns of feeble capacity, the witena, gemot seems to have been the scene of those factions which always attend both aristocracies and democracies, when no commanding talents exist to

26 Hen. Hunt. lib. v. p. 357. Bromton, Chron. p. 879. Ingulf also complains heavily of these exactions, p. 55.

37 Sax. Chron. 126. 132. 136. 140. 142. Unless we refer it to the Anglo-Saxon period, I do not see when the principle could have originated which is recognised in Magna Charta and in its preparatory articles, and is so concisely mentioned by Chaucer in these two lines :

“ The king taxeth not his men,
But by assent of the comminaltie.”

Ecl. fol. p.88.

VIII.

BOOK predominate in the discussions, and to shape the

council.

The reigns of Ethelred the Second, and of the Confessor, were distinguished by the turbulence, and even treason, of the nobles. Of the former, our Malmsbury writes, “ Whenever the duces met in the council, some chose one thing and some another. They seldom agreed in any good opinion. They consulted more on domestic treasons, than on the public necessities. 38

It was indeed becoming obvious that the extreme independence of the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy, during the last two reigns, was destroying the monarchy and injuring the nation. And if the Norman Conqueror had failed in his invasion, and had not, by tightening the bonds of feudality, homage, wardship, and law, reduced the diverging and contradictory power of the nobility into a state of more salutary subordination, it would have become pernicious to the king and people, and even to itself; and have brought the land to that state of faction and civil warfare from which the Saxons had rescued it, and of which Poland and Albania have given us modern examples.

CHAP. VI.

Some General Principles of the Anglo-Saxon Constitution

and Laws.

CHAP.

VI.

From a careful perusal of the laws, charters, and documents of the Anglo-Saxons which remain, the following may be selected as a statement of some of the great general principles of their constitution and laws:

At the head of the state was the king; the executive authority of the nation, and an essential part of its legislature; the receiver and expender of all taxations; the centre and source of all jurisprudence ; the supreme chief of its armies; the head of its landed property ; the lord of the free, and of all burghs, excepting such as he had consented to grant to others ; the person intrusted to summon the witena-gemot, and presiding at it; possessed of the other prerogatives that have been noticed; but elective, and liable to be controlled by the witenagemot.

Co-existing as anciently as the sovereign, if not anterior, and his elector, was A WITЕNA-GEMOT or parliament, consisting of the nobles holding land, including the superior thanes, and containing also milites, or those who were afterwards called knights, and likewise others without any designations, who were probably citizens and burgesses.

A church-establishment pervaded the country, consisting of archbishops, bishops, abbots, and priors, who were dignitaries sitting in the witena-gemot; comprising also inferior degrees of clergy, as deans, canons, archdeacons, priests, parochial rectors, &c. besides the monks and nuns of their various cloisters.

The highest orders of nobility were open to the lowest classes of life.

A nobility existed with the titles of ealdorman, hold, heretoch, eorl, and thegn. These titles were personal and not inherited. That of thegn was probably connected with their