CHAPTER III

.

THE CONSTITUTION OF ENGLAND IN THE TENTH AND ELEVENTH CENTURIES.[82]

I have no intention whatever of entering, in the present Chapter, into any examination of the minute details of our early English legal antiquities, still less into the controversies to which many points relating to them have given rise. I wish merely to give such a sketch of the political condition of England, at the time when England and Normandy began to influence each other’s affairs, as may make the narrative of their mutual intercourse intelligible. [Sidenote: The Old-English constitution survived the Norman Conquest.] What the constitution was under Eadgar, that it remained under William. This assertion must be taken with all the practical drawbacks which are involved in the forcible transfer of the crown to a foreign dynasty, and in the division of the greater part of the lands of the kingdom among the followers of the foreign King. But the constitution remained the same; the laws, with a few changes in detail, remained the same; the language of public documents remained the same. The powers which were vested in King William and his Witan remained constitutionally the same as those which had been vested in King Eadgar and his Witan a hundred years before. [Sidenote: The changes immediately following on the Conquest practical, not formal.] The change in the social condition of the country, the change in the spirit of the national and local administration, the change in the relation of the kingdom to foreign lands, were changes as great as words can express. The practical effect of these changes was a vast increase of the royal power, and the introduction of wholly new relations between the King and every class of his subjects. But formal constitutional change there was none. I cannot too often repeat, for the saying is the very summing up of the whole history, that the Norman Conquest was not the wiping out of the constitution, the laws, the language, the national life of Englishmen. The changes which distinguish the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries from the [Sidenote: Various causes of the ultimate results of the Conquest.] tenth and eleventh are not owing to any one cause. Many of them are merely the natural results of altered circumstances. Many of them are the work of lawgivers legislating for a new state of things, and, in not a few cases, confirming or restoring ancient English institutions under foreign names. Many of them are due to the ingenuity of lawyers whose minds were full of theories of law wholly alien to the principles of ancient English jurisprudence. All these changes were in some sort the final results of the Conquest. Some of them were actually caused by the Conquest; others were hastened by it. But of very few [Sidenote: Change in the monarchy from the old Teutonic to the later mediæval type.] indeed was it the direct and immediate cause. The English kingship gradually changed from a kingship of the old Teutonic type into a kingship of the later mediæval type. The change began before the Norman Conquest; it was hastened by the Norman Conquest; but it was not completed till long after the Norman Conquest. Such a change was not, and could not be, the work of one man or of one generation. But English kingship, like the other main features of the English polity, may be said to have fully put on its later form when the absent Edward was proclaimed in the place of his father, when the King was for the first time held to reign before he had received the rite which clothed him with the kingly office.

§ 1. _Origin of the Old-English Kingship._

[Sidenote: Question proposed, Origin and nature of the ancient English Kingship.]

What then was the nature, and what was the origin, of that kingship, which the election—the constrained and unwilling election, but still the election—of the Witan of all England did, on Midwinter-day, eight hundred years back,[83] entrust to William, Duke of the Normans—from that day forward William, King of the English? That election transferred to him the same internal power over his own kingdom, the same external power over the dependent kingdoms, which had been held by Eadgar and Æthelred, and which an earlier forced election of a foreign conqueror had transferred to the hands of Cnut the Dane. [Sidenote: Summary of the growth of Wessex.] We have already traced the course of the events by which those powers, internal and external, grew up. Two Saxon chiefs, _Ealdormen_ or _Heretogan_, formed a settlement on the [Sidenote: 495.] south coast of Britain. After some years of successful [Sidenote: 519.] warfare, they assumed the kingly title over their own tribe.[84] One of their successors incorporated some of the [Sidenote: 823–828.] other Teutonic kingdoms with his own realm, and obtained an external supremacy over all the other Teutons in the island and over a portion of the Celts. A series of his [Sidenote: 878–954.] successors, after long struggles, incorporated all the Teutonic states into one kingdom, and obtained an external Empire over all the Celtic states. The Ealdorman of the Gewissas thus gradually grew into the King of the West-Saxons, the King of the Saxons,[85] the King of the English, the Emperor of all Britain. The external aspect of this process, the dates of its several stages, I have already marked. I must now dwell a little longer on the real origin and nature of the various powers implied in those different descriptions of the ruler. Each stage marks an advance in the extent of territorial dominion; each stage marks also an advance in the amount of political authority enjoyed by the sovereign.

[Sidenote: Modern political controversies alien to the question.]

In following up these researches into our earliest political antiquities it is absolutely necessary to cast away all thoughts of modern political controversies. Time was when the whole fabric of our liberties was held to depend on the exact nature of the entry made by William the Bastard. Time was when supporters and opponents of parliamentary reform thought to strengthen their several positions by opposite theories as to the constitution of the Witenagemót. To this day a popular orator will sometimes think that he adds point to a declamation by bringing in Saxon Ælfred as the author of Trial by Jury, perhaps of every other privilege which other lands are held either not to possess or to have borrowed from ourselves. Every notion of this kind must be wholly cast away, if we would fairly and impartially learn what the institutions of our Teutonic forefathers really were. The lover of freedom certainly need not shrink from the inquiry. [Sidenote: The present shape of our political institutions not to be looked for in early times,] He will not indeed find that the finished systems of the nineteenth or of the seventeenth century were brought over ready made in the keels of Hengest and Horsa. He will not even find that they appeared in their perfect form in the Imperial Witenagemót of Eadgar the Peaceful. He will not find the legislative authority vested in a representative assembly to which every shire and borough sends the men of its choice. He will not find a King the freedom of whose will is at once hampered and protected by the tutelage of ministers responsible to that representative assembly. He will not find tribunals in which issues of law are determined by Judges independent alike of King and people, while issues of fact are determined by the people themselves in the form of jurors taken at haphazard from among them. Not one of these things will he find in the finished shape in which he is familiar [Sidenote: but the germs of later institutions may be traced from the beginning.] with them. But he will find the first principles from which all of them were derived; he will find the germs out of which all of them were developed. He will not find the relations of King, Lords, and Commons accurately balanced in the first Teutonic settlement on the shores of Kent. But he will find the rudiments of all three in days which were ancient in the days of Hengest. Let him go as far back as history or tradition throws any light on the institutions of our race, and he will find the germs alike of the monarchic, the aristocratic, and the democratic [Sidenote: Necessity of comparison with other Teutonic nations.] branches of our constitution. When positive evidence within our own land fails us, we must go for illustration and explanation, not to the facts, the theories, the controversies, of modern politics, but to the kindred institutions of the kindred nations of the mainland. Our Parliament is the true and lawful representative, by true and lawful succession, of the ancient Meeting of the Wise; but, if we would search out the origin and constitution of that Meeting of the Wise, we must go, not to the parliamentary traditions of the last six hundred years, but to the _Marzfeld_ of the Frankish Kings, to the _Landesgemeinden_ of Schwyz and Uri, to those yet earlier assemblies which still rise before us in full life in the pages of the first inquirer into the habits and institutions of our [Sidenote: Records of Teutonic Law from Tacitus onwards.] race. From the _Germania_ of Tacitus onwards, through the Barbaric Codes, through the Capitularies of the Frankish Kings and Emperors, through the records of our own insular legislation from the Dooms of Æthelberht to the so-called Laws of Henry the First, we have a series of witnesses, showing what were the general principles of Teutonic law, and what were the particular forms which it took in particular times and places. In truth we may go beyond the records of our own immediate race. The early history of the Teuton is constantly illustrated by [Sidenote: Analogies with the Homeric Achaians.] the early history of his Aryan kinsmen, and the living picture of the old Achaians of Homer brings vividly before us many an institution of our own forefathers and many an incident of their early history.

[Sidenote: Origin of Teutonic kingship.]

The sketch which has been given in the last Chapter has shown that the Imperial lordship of all Britain, as held by Æthelstan and his successors, and even the supremacy of Wessex over the other English kingdoms, as established by Ecgberht, were institutions of comparatively late growth. But it must not be thought that even the full-grown local kingship, such as we find it held by Æthelberht in Kent and by Eadwine in Northumberland, was a thing which had been from the beginning. In the days of Tacitus some of the Teutonic tribes had kings and [Sidenote: Kingship not universal; government by Ealdormen or Heretogan.] others had not; in the time of Cæsar it would seem that kingship was the exception and not the rule.[86] The chieftains of the first settlers in our own island bore no higher title than _Ealdorman_ or _Heretoga_. These two names express two different sides of the same office. The same man is Ealdorman as a civil ruler and Heretoga as a military chieftain. The former name survives in our [Sidenote: Force and history of the names.] language, but with sadly diminished dignity; the title which once expressed a rank which, among worldly dignities, was inferior to kingship alone, has taken refuge with a class of municipal magistrates, reaching downwards to the pettiest boroughs. The other name, always much more rarely in use, has dropped altogether out of our tongue, while, among the continental Teutons, the cognate word _Herzog_ expresses a dignity the distinction between which and modern kingship must be drawn by the courtier and not by the politician. The name of Ealdorman is one of a large class; among a primitive people age implies command and command implies age; hence, in a somewhat later stage of language, the _elders_ are simply the rulers, and the _eldest_ are the highest in rank, without any thought of the number of years which they may really have lived. [Sidenote: Import of the change from Ealdormen to Kings.] It is not perfectly clear in what the authority or dignity of the King exceeded that of the Ealdorman, but it is clear that the title of King did carry with it an advance in both respects. Even the smallest kingdom was probably formed by the union of the districts of several Ealdormen. It is probable too that the King was distinguished by some religious sanction of heathen times, analogous to the ecclesiastical consecration which in later times the Church bestowed on kings, but not on princes of lower rank. It is certain that kingship required descent from the Gods; it may be that no such divine origin was [Sidenote: Instances in Britain and elsewhere.] needed by the mere Ealdorman. At all events, we find the change from Ealdorman to Kings taking place in more than one kingdom of Teutonic Britain, as well as among many of the kindred tribes on the mainland. We have already seen that the kingdoms of Northumberland and East-Anglia were formed by the union of several smaller [Sidenote: The West-Saxon Ealdormen become Kings. 495–519.] states whose rulers did not assume the royal title.[87] In Wessex the account is still more remarkable. Cerdic and Cynric entered the land with the title of Ealdorman; they did not assume kingship till after the arrival of fresh reinforcements, and till a decisive victory over the Welsh had strengthened their position in the country. During the whole period commonly called that of the Heptarchy the whole land was full of petty princes, some of whom undoubtedly bore the title of King, though others may have [Sidenote: Alleged return of Wessex to ealdormanship. 673–685.] reigned simply as Ealdormen. According to one account, the West-Saxons, as late as the seventh century, were for ten years without any common sovereign, while the Ealdormen or Under-kings reigned independently. This falling back on an older system has its parallels; there is one noted case in Lombard history; but it would be specially remarkable in a kingdom which had, from the beginning, greater [Sidenote: Distinction between King and Ealdorman from Ecgberht onwards.] unity than most of its fellows. But at least from the time of Ecgberht onwards there is a marked distinction between the King and the Ealdorman. The King is a sovereign, the Ealdorman is only a magistrate. The King may be hampered in the exercise of his power by the rights of his people or by the joint

## action of the great men of his realm; he may be chosen by his Witan and

he may be liable to be deposed by them; still he is a sovereign, inasmuch as he does not rule by delegation from any personal superior. [Sidenote: Distinction between the Ealdorman and the dependent King.] He may even be, by original grant or more probably by _commendation_, dependent on some more powerful King; but even such dependence does not degrade him from his sovereign rank. His relation to his over-lord binds him to certain external services, but in his internal government he remains perfectly independent, with his power limited only by the laws of his own realm. But the Ealdorman has become distinctly a subject. He may hold the fullest royal power within his own district; he may be the descendant of former Ealdormen and even of former Kings; he may have a reasonable hope that he may hand on his dignity to his own children; still he is not a sovereign, but a subject. The King is supreme; the Ealdorman is simply sent by him. He is a Viceroy appointed by the King and his Witan; he is liable to be removed by them, and he is responsible to them for the exercise of his [Sidenote: Position of Ealdorman Æthelred in Mercia. 880–912.] authority. When the kingdom of Mercia was broken up, Ælfred entrusted the government of the part which fell to his share to his son-in-law Æthelred as Ealdorman. Æthelred was a man of royal descent; he exercised full royal power in Mercia; but he exercised it simply as a Governor General or Lord Lieutenant, the representative of a sovereign whose higher authority he carefully acknowledges [Sidenote: Case of Northumberland. 954.] in his charters.[88] So, when Northumberland was finally incorporated with England under Eadred, kingship was abolished, and the government was entrusted to a magistrate with the title of Ealdorman or its Danish [Sidenote: Contrary process in the Empire.] equivalent Earl.[89] By the exactly contrary process, Princes of the Empire, Dukes—that is, Ealdormen or Heretogan—and not only Dukes, but Counts, Margraves, Landgraves, all of them originally mere magistrates under the Emperor-King, have gradually grown into sovereign princes, and have at last, in several cases, ventured to assume the kingly title.[90]

[Sidenote: Title of King (Cyning); its origin.]

The mere title of _King_ seems to be comparatively recent among the Teutonic nations. It is not found in the earliest Teutonic prose writing, the Gothic Gospels; but in our own language it seems to be as old as the English settlements in Britain. Most of the questions which have arisen as to the etymology of the word only show how modern a thing scientific etymology is.[91] _Cyning_, by contraction _King_, comes from the same root as the word _cyn_ or _kin_. And the connexion is not without an important meaning. The King is the representative of the race, [Sidenote: The Teutonic kingship national, not territorial.] the embodiment of its national being. A King, in the old Teutonic sense, is not the King of a country, but the King of a nation. Such titles as King of England or King of France are comparatively modern, and the idea which they express is equally so.[92] The Teutonic King is not the lord of the soil, but the leader of the people. The idea of the King of a country would have been hardly intelligible to our forefathers. Every King is King of a people. He is King of Goths, Franks, Saxons, wherever Goths, Franks, Saxons, may happen to settle. The Goths and their Kings moved from the Danube to the Tiber, and from the Tiber to the Tagus; but Alaric and Athaulf were equally Kings of the Goths, in whatever quarter of the world the Goths might be. So in our own island, the King is King of the West-Saxons, Mercians, or Northumbrians. [Sidenote: No names for the English kingdoms as distinguished from the people.] In truth the countries themselves, as distinguished from their inhabitants, can hardly be said to have any names. We talk for convenience’ sake of Wessex, Mercia, and so forth; but the correct description is the Kingdom of the West-Saxons, the Kingdom of the Mercians. [Sidenote: The King is King of the English (not of England), but Emperor of Britain.] So, when the West-Saxon King had swallowed up all his brethren, he became, not King of England, but King of the English. It is only in their Imperial character, in their character, not as chiefs of a nation, but as lords over all the dwellers within the isle of Britain, that our Kings ever assume the territorial description. Indeed [Sidenote: Name of England hardly known.] England itself has hardly yet found a geographical name. _Englaland_ is a late form, scarcely found before the Danish Conquest. The common name for the land is the name of the people, _Angel-cyn_.[93]

[Sidenote: Growth of the kingly power by mere extension of territory.]

The King’s power and dignity gradually grew. They grew by the mere extension of his dominions. The larger a prince’s territory becomes, the greater is the distance at which he finds himself from the mass of his subjects. He becomes more and more clothed with a sort of mysterious dignity; he comes to be more and more looked upon as something different from ordinary men, even from ordinary civil magistrates and military leaders. The prince of a small territory is known to all his people; he is, according to the character of his government, their personal friend or their personal enemy; if worthy himself and the descendant of worthy ancestors, he may command a strong feeling of clannish loyalty, but he cannot hedge himself in with the fence of any special divinity. A King who reigns over all Wessex is, in the nature of things, more of a King[94] than one who reigns only over Wight, and a King who reigns over all England is more of a King than one who reigns only over Wessex. Through this cause only, every fresh addition of territory added fresh power and dignity to the Kings of the House of Cerdic in their progress from the ealdormanship of a corner of Hampshire to the Imperial crown of the Isle of Britain. But this cause was by no means the only one. The growth of the royal power was greatly helped by another cause, fully to understand which we must go back to the very earliest accounts which we have of the political [Sidenote: Two elements in Teutonic political life, the free Community and the _Comitatus_.] institutions of the Teutonic race. From the very beginning of our history two opposing elements may be seen, one of which in the end gained the complete mastery over the other. The one is the original self-governing Teutonic community; the other is the King or other lord with his personal following.[95]

§ 2. _The Early Teutonic Constitution and its Decay._

[Sidenote: The Teutonic Free Community; its monarchic, aristocratic, and democratic elements.]

I said above that, in the very earliest glimpses of Teutonic political life, we find the monarchic, the aristocratic, and the democratic elements already clearly marked. There are leaders, with or without the royal title; there are men of noble birth, whose noble birth, in whatever the original nobility may have consisted, entitles them to pre-eminence in every way; but beyond these there is a free and armed people, in whom the ultimate sovereignty resides. Small matters are decided by the chiefs alone, great matters are submitted by the chiefs to the assembled nation.[96] Such a system is far more than Teutonic; it [Sidenote: Analogy of the Homeric Achaians,] is a common Aryan possession; it is the constitution of the Homeric Achaians on earth and of the Homeric Gods on Olympos. Zeus or Agamemnôn is King; he has his inner Council of great Gods or of great leaders; he has his general Assembly of all the divine race or of all the [Sidenote: and the historical Macedonians.] warriors who fought before Ilios.[97] The constitution of legendary Hellas remained the constitution of historical Macedonia; the assembly of the Macedonian nation—in war-time of the Macedonian army—remained, even under Philip and Alexander, the constitutional authority to decide on questions of succession to the throne and the tribunal in which was vested the power of adjudging a [Sidenote: The system a natural one in a small state.] Macedonian to death.[98] In short, the division of powers between the supreme leader, the Council, and the general Assembly, is the form into which the government of a small state or independent tribe almost necessarily throws itself. The hereditary prince and the aristocratic council may be exchanged for an elective chief magistrate and an elective council; but the division of powers remains the same, and in either case the ultimate sovereignty remains in the general Assembly, in the _Agorê_, the _Ekklêsia_, the _Comitia_, the _Marzfeld_, the _Landesgemeinde_. Of the nature and functions of such an assembly I shall have presently to speak, when I trace out the origin and nature of the Old-English Witenagemót. My present point is the distinction [Sidenote: Distinction of _Eorl_ and _Ceorl_.] of orders in the state. Tacitus sets before us a marked distinction between the noble and the common freeman, that is, in Old-English phrase, between the _Eorl_ and the _Ceorl_. The modern English forms of these words have altogether lost their ancient meaning. The word _Earl_, after several fluctuations, has settled down as the title of one rank in the peerage; the word _Churl_ has come to be a word of moral reprobation, irrespective of the rank of the person who is guilty of the offence. But in the earlier meaning of the words, _Eorl_ and _Ceorl_—words whose happy jingle causes them to be constantly opposed to each other—form an exhaustive division of the free members of the state. The distinction in modern language is most nearly expressed by the words _Gentle_ and _Simple_. The ceorl is the simple freeman, the mere unit in the army or in the assembly, whom no distinction of birth or office marks out from his fellows. It must not be forgotten that, among the ancient English, as among all other Teutonic nations, the system of slavery was in full force. The ceorl therefore, like the ancient Greek citizen, though he might be looked down upon by an aristocratic class, was actually a privileged person as compared with a large number of human beings in his own city or district.[99] The origin of the distinction it is in vain to search after; the difference of the eorl and the ceorl is a primary fact from which we start; it is as old as the earliest notices of Teutonic institutions, and the only attempt at its explanation is to be found in an ingenious mythical story in a Northern saga.[100] Nor is it very easy to see in what the privileges of the eorl consisted, or how far they were secured by definite laws. [Sidenote: Analogy of the democratic Cantons of Switzerland.] Perhaps we may gain some light by looking at those communities which have preserved the old Teutonic system of government with the least alteration, the democratic [Sidenote: Traditional predominance of certain families.] Cantons of Switzerland.[101] There, amid the purest democracy in the world, where every adult freeman has a direct and equal vote in the Assembly, we still find that certain families, enjoying no legal privileges above their fellows, were long held in a kind of hereditary reverence, and that members of those families were preferred above all others to the highest offices in the state. Such were the houses of Reding in Schwyz, of Tschudi in Glarus, of the Barons of Attinghausen in Uri. The office of Landammann, the chief magistracy of the commonwealth, conferred by the yearly vote of the Landesgemeinde, commonly fell to the lot of members of these great houses; the same man was constantly re-elected year after year, and, when he died, [Sidenote: Comparison of old county families among ourselves.] his son was often elected in his place. Or without going so far from home, we may see what is essentially the same thing in the position of old county families, holding no legal advantages above their fellows, but which still enjoy an hereditary respect and preference at their hands. The eorl and the ceorl in fact answer pretty nearly to the esquire and the yeoman;[102] the modern artificial peerage is something quite different, and we shall presently perhaps see its beginnings.

[Sidenote: The territory or _Mark_ of the Community.]

The primitive Teutonic community is thus set before us as one consisting of eorls and ceorls, headed by a King, Ealdorman, or other leader, temporary or permanent, elective or hereditary. Such a community occupies its own territory, its _Mark_,[103] which territory consists of land of two kinds. There is the common land, either applied to the general use of the community or else held by individuals on such terms as the community, in its character of landowner, may think good to allow. There are also the particular possessions of individuals, portions assigned to them by common consent, which are the absolute property of their owners, held of no superior, but simply subject to such burthens as the community, in its political character, may think good to impose on its members. All this again is in no way distinctively Teutonic; it is the story of the ancient commonwealths of Greece and Italy over again. [Sidenote: _Folkland_ or _Ager Publicus_.] The _folkland_[104] of England and the _ager publicus_ of Rome are the same thing. The English and the Latin names translate one another; they both describe the land which still belongs to the community as a body, and of which individuals cannot be more than the occupiers.[105] The whole history of the Roman Agrarian Laws, so long misunderstood, turns simply on the regulation of this common land of the state. In the time of Cæsar it would seem that the whole territory of a Teutonic community was _folkland_; individuals could obtain no right in it beyond that of a yearly tenancy.[106] But the custom of allotting portions of the common stock in absolute property gradually advanced. A conquest like that of Britain would be highly favourable to the growth of the practice. When a band of Teutonic warriors took possession of a district and slew or dispossessed its former inhabitants, we cannot doubt that, besides [Sidenote: Allodial property, _eðel_ or _odal_.] the stock reserved as common property, each man who had borne his share in the labours and dangers of the conquest would claim his reward in the absolute ownership of some portion of the conquered territory. The eorls, who would doubtless act as the leaders of the expedition, may well have received a larger allotment; but we may be sure that no freeman bearing arms went altogether without some share of the spoil. Such an allotment in absolute property, held of no superior, subject to nothing but the laws of the state, is called in different Teutonic dialects _eðel_, _odal_, or _alod_. It is an estate, great or small, which the owner does not hold either of the King or of any other lord, but in regard to which he knows no superior but God and the law.

These communities of freemen, among whom some had a pre-eminence in rank, and doubtless in wealth, but among [Sidenote: The primitive democracy gives way to the institution of] whom every freeman was a member of the state, form one of the elements of Teutonic life as we see it in its very earliest pictures. But those same pictures set no less strongly before us another element, which grew up alongside of the primitive democracy, and which was destined in the long run to supplant it more or less completely in nearly every Teutonic country. The ancient Teutonic community can now be seen in its purity only in a few of the smallest Swiss Cantons, and in several even of these[107] the ancient freedom had to be reconquered and was not uninterruptedly retained. Everywhere else it is as much as we can do to trace out some faint footsteps of the ancient system, such as we see in common lands, in some forms of communal institutions, in petty and half obsolete local [Sidenote: the _Comitatus_, the personal following of the Chiefs.] tribunals. The thing itself has given way to the other institution described by Tacitus, the _Comitatus_, the personal following of the chiefs. Every Teutonic King or other leader was surrounded by a band of chosen warriors, personally attached to him of their own free choice.[108] The chief and his followers were bound together by the strongest ties of mutual trust, and a lack of faithfulness on either side was reckoned among the most shameful of crimes. The followers served their chief in peace and in war; they fought for him to the death, and rescued or avenged his [Sidenote: Nature of the relation.] life with their own. In return, they shared whatever gifts or honours the chief could distribute among them; and in our tongue at least it was his character of dispenser of [Sidenote: The _Hlaford_ and his _Gesiðas_.] gifts which gave the chief his official title. He was the _Hlaford_, the _Loaf-giver_,[109] a name which, through a series of softenings and contractions, and with an utter forgetfulness of its primitive meaning, has settled down into the modern form of _Lord_. His followers were originally his _Gesiðas_ or _Companions_, a word which Ælfred uses to express the Latin _Comes_, but which must have dropped out of use [Sidenote: Origin of _Þegnas_ (Thanes).] very early, as it is not found in the Chronicles. The _Gesið_ or _Companion_ became the _Þegn_ (_Thegn_, _Thane_) or _Servant_, a change of name which might seem to imply a lowering of the nature of the relation, and which perhaps in a manner did so.[110] As Kings grew in power and dominion, it was not unnatural that a certain element of servility should find its way into the relation of the _Comitatus_, of which there is no trace in the primitive shape of that institution. The service of the King or other great lord conferred dignity even on the freeman. This is a notion altogether foreign to the ideas of republican Greece and Rome; but here again the primitive Teuton is but the [Sidenote: Homeric analogies.] reproduction of the primitive Achaian. The Homeric Kings have their _comitatus_, their _Gesiðas_ or ἑταῖροι, their _Þegnas_ or θεράποντες, free, noble, the cherished companions of their lords, but who do for those lords, without any loss of their own dignity, services which in later Greece none but slaves would have rendered. Eteôneus, Automedôn,[111] Mêrionês, the divine Patroklos himself, all appear in this relation; all are connected by this voluntary personal tie to a chieftain of higher rank. They are the very counterparts of Lilla, the faithful Thegn of Eadwine,[112] and of those true companions who fought to the death for [Sidenote: Contrast with the republican Greeks and Romans.] Cynewulf and Cyneheard.[113] The republican Greek knew no lord but the law.[114] He was a member of a civil community, and as a good citizen he obeyed the magistrates whom the choice of the community clothed with a limited and temporary power. But personal dependence on another human being seemed to him the distinguishing mark of the slave as opposed to the citizen. The republican Roman shared the same feeling; the early Cæsars were served by slaves or freedmen;[115] it was only as the Empire gradually grew into an avowed monarchy, and gradually assumed somewhat of the pomp of eastern kingship, that service about the person of the Emperor began to be looked upon as honourable in a man of free Roman birth. In the Teuton, as in the Homeric Achaian, the feeling of the civil community, though far from unknown, was less strong, and the tie of personal dependence was not felt to imply degradation. Indeed the Teuton carried the principle of personal service far further than the Roman ever did. It was held that purely menial services, when rendered to persons of higher rank, in no way degraded the ordinary freeman. It was even held that men of any rank short of the highest were actually honoured by rendering such services to those who were one degree higher than themselves. None of the old Cæsars ever held such lordly state [Sidenote: Developement of the principle in the later Empire and in modern Kingdoms.] as those among their successors who, while keeping hardly a trace of real Imperial power, still saw Kings and sovereign Dukes doing services about their person and household which, in the days of Augustus, would have been deemed a degradation to the meanest Roman citizen. So, among ourselves, offices about the person and household of the lord became high and honourable. The King’s _dish-thegn_, his _bower-thegn_, his _horse-thegn_ or _staller_, all became great dignitaries of the kingdom, high in rank and influence,[116] as some of them, among all the changes in our institutions, still remain. There thus arose a new kind of nobility, nobility by service, the nobility which gradually attached [Sidenote: The _Thegns_ supplant the old _Eorls_.] to the _Thegns_ or _Servants_ of Kings and Ealdormen; and this nobility gradually supplanted the elder nobility of immemorial descent.[117] Men pressed into the service of powerful leaders, till such service became the necessary badge of anything like distinguished rank. The _Thegn_, whose name might sound at first hearing like the exact opposite of the ancient _Eorl_, gradually took his place. The word _Thegn_ became equivalent to _noble_ or _gentle_. The King’s Thegns formed the highest class of gentry; the Thegns of Ealdormen and Bishops formed a lower class. Again to use a modern parallel, the ancient _Eorl_ answers to the gentleman of ancient family, looked at simply as the descendant of certain forefathers and the owner of certain property; the _Thegn_ answers to the gentleman, whether with or without such ancestry, looked at as holding, by royal commission, his place in the local magistracy and the local military force.

The _Comitatus_—the _Thegnhood_, as we may call it—thus [Sidenote: Effects of the growth of the Thegnhood.] grew and developed, and became the central institution of the state. With every advance of the kingly power—and every accession of territory, every free or constrained union of one district with another, implied an advance of the kingly power—the dignity of the King’s Thegns rose along with the dignity of their _Hlaford_. In one way [Sidenote: Favourable to individual Ceorls, but depressing to the class.] the change was a liberalizing one. The Ceorl could not become an Eorl, simply because a man cannot change his forefathers; but several ways were open to him of becoming a Thegn.[118] And now Thegn’s rank had become practically equivalent to Eorl’s rank. But though individual Ceorls might thus rise, there can be no doubt that the growth of the Thegnhood was on the whole depressing to the Ceorls, the simple freemen, as a class. The idea of the simple _landman_—I must borrow a word from our continental brethren, as the word _citizen_ brings in quite other ideas—the undistinguished, but still free and, in a sense, equal member of a free community, gradually died out. The institution of the _Comitatus_, which in its origin was essentially voluntary, was pressed, as it were, upon all men, till at last it became a principle that no man should be without his lord. The freeman might choose his lord; he might determine to whom, in technical phrase, he should _commend_[119] [Sidenote: Commendation.] himself; but a lord he must have, a lord to act at once as [Sidenote: Every man must have a Lord.] his protector and as his surety, at once to watch over him and to give a guaranty for his good behaviour. The lordless man became a kind of outlaw, while in the older state of things the whole community would be lordless, except those who might of their own free will have entered [Sidenote: Depression of the Ceorls towards the period of the Conquest.] the _Comitatus_ of some chief.[120] And there is little doubt that the condition of the Ceorls had greatly changed for the worse in the later times as we approach the Norman Conquest. Some classes among them seem to have been fast approaching to the condition of villainage or even to that of serfdom. This change is not peculiar to England; but it is the peculiar glory of England that the bondage of the mass of its people began later, and that it certainly ended sooner, than in any other western country where such bondage existed. The peasantry of Germany gradually sank into a lower state of serfdom than ours, and they remained in it much longer. The free peasantry of Russia did not sink into serfdom till villainage was nearly forgotten in England, but their deliverance from the yoke has been reserved for our own times.

[Sidenote: Elements of Feudalism in England, but no Feudal System.]

This sketch of the growth of the Thegnhood and its effects at once suggests the question, Did the Feudal System exist in England before the Norman Conquest? One might perhaps be allowed to answer this question by another, Did the Feudal System ever exist anywhere? In England, before the Norman Conquest, the Feudal _System_ most certainly did not exist. There was no systematic feudalism, but the elements of feudalism were there. [Sidenote: Two elements of Feudalism;] Feudalism consists of two main elements; the feudal relation implies the union of two other relations. There is [Sidenote: the relation of the _Comitatus_ and the holding of land by military service.] the personal relation of lord and vassal, lord and man,[121] bound together by mutual will and mutual fidelity, the one owing service, the other owing protection; there is in short the old Teutonic relation of the _Comitatus_, the relation of the _Hlaford_ and his _Thegn_. But alongside of this, the feudal relation commonly implies the holding of land by military service. To grant land on such a tenure is in truth one form, one among several, of that bounty of the lord to his followers to which his very title of _Hlaford_ is [Sidenote: Military tenures suggested by the relation of the _Comitatus_,] owing. The lord makes his follower a grant of land as the reward of past services, and he makes the continuation of those services the condition of his follower’s keeping the land so granted. But there can be no doubt that the tendency to this particular form of bounty was greatly strengthened by the example of the Roman practice of [Sidenote: and also by the Roman tenures on the frontier.] granting out frontier lands to be held by military service.[122] The holders of such lands held them of the Roman Republic, and to the Roman Republic their service was due. They stood in no personal relation to the Emperor; they were not his men, his vassals, his _Gesiðas_, his Thegns; their service was due to him only so far as he was the head and [Sidenote: The two elements united produce Feudalism.] representative of the commonwealth. But the union in the same person of the Teutonic tie of the _Comitatus_ and the Roman tie of land held by military service would produce a relation coming very near to the strictly feudal relation. The Roman custom would easily suggest to the Teutonic conquerors the practice of rewarding their followers with grants of lands—in short with benefices or fiefs—as the most convenient and honourable form which the bounty of the lord could take. In Britain indeed, [Sidenote: Growth of Feudalism slower in England than on the Continent.] where Roman institutions were so utterly swept away, this influence would hardly exist; at any rate it would be far weaker than it was on the continent. Hence we find feudalism growing up far more slowly in England than in Gaul or even in Germany; in our old constitution we find the elements of feudalism; but they were not as yet worked into a systematic shape; they had not as yet become the materials of an elaborate jurisprudence. Homage was there; for the relation of every man to his lord was a relation of homage. Heriots too and other incidents of a feudal character already existed. But these feudal elements had not yet been wrought together into any harmonious feudal system. The _Comitatus_, the germ of feudalism, had thriven and developed and was now dominant; but the old Teutonic constitution had not been [Sidenote: Feudal elements strengthened by the Norman Conquest.] utterly wiped out. The Norman Conquest no doubt strongly tended to promote the further developement of the feudal element; but, as in every other case, it only opened and prepared the way for further changes.

[Sidenote: Earlier form of military service; the _Trinoda Necessitas_.]

The military service due from land held by a feudal tenure is strictly due to the lord as the lord. That lord may be the King; but if so, the service is still in strictness owing to him, not as head of the state, but as lord of the fief. But there is another obligation to military service which is older than this. All land in England was, by the earliest Common Law, subject to three burthens, to contributions to the three works most necessary for the defence of the country. These were the famous _Trinoda Necessitas_, the obligation to service in the field (_fyrd_) and to a share in the repairs of fortresses and of bridges.[123] But these are duties owed by the citizen to the commonwealth, or by the subject to the sovereign, not duties owed by a personal vassal to a personal lord. Land, in an age when there was little property except in land, is simply taken as the measure of the contribution due from each man to the common defence. From these burthens, as a rule, no land could be free; even church lands were regularly subject to them, though in some cases their owners contrived to obtain exemptions.[124] These ancient obligations pressed alike on the ancient allodial possession and on the land held by any more modern tenure. They were not feudal services, but a tax paid to the state. They were in fact the price paid to the commonwealth for the protection which it gave; or rather they were the share which each member of the commonwealth was bound to take in the protection of himself and his neighbours.

[Sidenote: Folkland and Bookland.]

I have already mentioned the _folkland_, the common land of the community or of the nation, out of which the ancient allodial possessions were carved. This process of turning public property into private went on largely in later times. The alienation was now commonly made by a document in writing, under the signatures of the King and his Witan; land so granted was therefore said to be _booked_ to the grantee, and was known as _bookland_. Portions of the folkland were thus cut off from the public ownership, and were booked to private individuals or corporations. The greater number of the existing ancient charters consists of grants of this kind. [Sidenote: Conversion of Folkland into

## Bookland in favour of the Church and of the King’s Thegns.] A vast

number are of course in favour of the Church, but those which are made to the King’s faithful Thegns are hardly less common. In either case portions of the folkland are alienated, _booked_, to private use with the consent of the Witan. The booking might of course be made on any terms; any sort of tenure might be created; but the great object of the grantee was to get the land on the same terms as an ancient _eðel_, subject only to the three burthens, which not even the most favoured Thegn, hardly the most favoured churchman, could hope to escape.[125]

[Sidenote: Conversion of Folkland into Bookland required the assent of the Witan.]

The folkland, the common property of the state, was of course at the disposal of the state, and of the state only. It was granted by the King, but only by the consent and authority of his Witan. That is to say, in modern language, the change of folkland into bookland required an Act of Parliament, but acts to that effect were passed constantly and without difficulty. The folkland belonged to the nation and not to the King. The King was only its chief administrator, enjoying its use, so far as he enjoyed it, only as the head and representative of the nation. [Sidenote: The King’s private estate.] But the King, like any other man, had his private estate. Like any other man, he might have his ancient allodial property, or he might, like any other man, have land booked to him, land which followed the ordinary course of legal succession or testamentary disposal.[126] It was indeed needful that the King should have such private possessions; for, in our ancient elective monarchy, the reigning King had no certainty that the crown, and the possessions attached to the crown, would ever pass to [Sidenote: Folkland passes into _Terra Regis_,] his descendants. But after the Norman Conquest, as the royal power increased, and as the modern notion of hereditary right was gradually developed, these two kinds of possession got confounded. On the one hand, the nation was forgotten or merged in the person of its chief; the folkland was held to be the King’s land, _Terra Regis_; the King was led to look on the possessions of the nation as his own, and to grant them away at his own pleasure without the consent of Parliament. On the other hand, lawyers brought in the strange doctrine that the King could hold no private property, but that, on his accession to the crown, his private estate was merged in what was now held to be the royal domain. By one of those curious cycles which so often come round in human affairs, both these wrongs have been redressed, one formally, the other practically. Our modern Kings have recovered the ancient right, common to them with other men, of inheriting, purchasing, and bequeathing [Sidenote: and becomes Folkland again.] private estates. On the other hand, now that the royal domain is given up to the nation to be controlled by Parliament, it is practically brought back to its ancient condition of folkland. That is to say, after so many centuries of usurpation, the land of which the Kings had defrauded the nation has come back to its lawful owners.[127]

[Sidenote: The old Teutonic constitution gradually dies out everywhere but in Switzerland.]

By these various means the old system of free Teutonic communities gradually died out in England, as it died out in all parts of the continent save one. It lingered in Friesland till the fifteenth century;[128] in the primitive Switzerland it lingers still. Everywhere else it has utterly [Sidenote: It yields in England to a real national monarchy, in Germany to the dominion of petty princes.] vanished, or has left only such faint traces as it has left among ourselves. But England did not suffer from the change as Germany did. Our free marks and shires gradually gave way, but they gave way before the developement of a real national life, before the establishment of a really national sovereignty. But in Germany local freedom was rooted out, not in favour either of the nation or of its sovereign, but for the advantage of that crowd of princes, great and small, which were for ages the curse of the land. The free communities of Germany vanished; but the German nation gained nothing, the German King gained nothing; the liberties and rights alike of the King, of the nation, and of the local communities, were confiscated to the profit of a brood of petty despots. The constitution which Tacitus saw and wondered at, the constitution for which Arminius fought and conquered, the constitution whose working may still be seen year by year in the free air of Uri and Appenzell, gave way in the great Teutonic realm to the dominion of princes who represented nothing but themselves, who embodied no national or provincial being, who were the mere creation of modern dynastic and diplomatic arrangements,—arrangements which did their best to wipe out every historic name and every national memory, and to assign to each of their princely creatures an arbitrary extent of dominion traced out at haphazard upon the map.[129] Such was the fate of the Teutonic mainland; such was not the fate of the Teutonic island. The uprooting of the old free communities, the growth of the power of the King and of his Thegns, no doubt tended in England, as elsewhere, to the degradation, at least for a while, of the lowest class of [Sidenote: Ceorldom sinks into Villainage, but the Villains are gradually emancipated.] freemen. The ceorl was fast sinking into the villain. Still, even in the worst times, enough of the old spirit remained in our laws to give the villain those means of obtaining enfranchisement which gradually did enfranchise the whole class, without the institution of villainage ever being formally done away with. And the uprooting of the old [Sidenote: Change of the old constitution necessary.] communities was needful, if England was ever to become a great and united nation. We must remember that the kingdom, like all our ancient divisions, from the shire, perhaps from the hundred, upwards, was formed by the aggregation of smaller divisions.[130] The unit is the _mark_, roughly represented by the modern parish or manor. The shire must not be looked on as a division of the kingdom,[131] nor the hundred or the mark as a division of the shire. [Sidenote: Shires formed out of Marks, and Kingdoms out of Shires.] The hundred is in truth formed by an aggregation of marks, the shire by an aggregation of hundreds, the kingdom by an aggregation of shires. The aggregation of marks into shires is indeed mainly to be inferred from local nomenclature and from the analogy of other Teutonic countries; but the aggregation of shires into kingdoms is [Sidenote: The Mark-system probably less perfect in England than elsewhere.] matter of recorded history. It is even possible that the circumstances of the English Conquest of Britain may have hindered the mark from ever possessing the same amount of independence in England which it possessed in the older Teutonic lands. When every English settlement had to defend itself, and if possible to extend itself, in the teeth of a hostile Welsh population, the different settlements must have kept up a very close union; there must have been from the beginning, if not centralization, yet at any rate something like federation. The first followers of Cerdic no doubt settled themselves in marks, forming self-governing communities; but all must have held themselves ready to march at Cerdic’s bidding, whenever it was needful to repel an inroad of the Welsh, whenever things promised well for a fresh inroad upon them. Still such communities, the mark and the shire, however dependent externally on some central authority, were doubtless internally self-governed from the beginning. We have already seen[132] how shires, ruled each one by its own Ealdorman, came together into kingdoms under a single [Sidenote: Formation of the greater Kingdoms.] King. We have seen also that the nature of the process differed in different parts of the country, that in Mercia, for instance, wholly independent states were thus brought into union, while in Wessex, though there were many Ealdormen and even many Kings, there was still a certain unity from the first. There was always a head King of the West-Saxons, and all the Under-kings were most likely Æthelings of the blood of Cerdic. Gradually the connexion became closer, the process no doubt being quicker in Wessex than in Mercia or Northumberland. The head King became the only King, the only independent executive; and the assembly of his Witan became the only independent legislature. In place of Kings, independent or dependent, the shires received Ealdormen, named by the King and his Witan, and liable to be removed by [Sidenote: Process of amalgamation; royal officers in the Shires.] them. The folkland of the shire became the folkland of the whole kingdom. A crowd of royal officers[133] of various ranks, whose main duty was to look after the royal interests, were scattered over all parts of the country. The Ealdorman still remained, the shadow of ancient kingship, and so far the representative of local independence. But beside him arose a new officer, the _Scírgerefa_, _Shirereeve_, or _Sheriff_, the immediate officer of the King, the agent of the central authority, the representative of the dependence of each local division on the common King and Assembly of the nation. Once the shires were the units, out of the union of which the kingdom was formed; now the kingdom forms a new whole, of which the shires have sunk to be mere administrative divisions. In Mercia we have seen[134] that, after the Danish conquest, the country was artificially mapped out again into fresh shires, which must have been felt to be still more completely mere administrative divisions than those West-Saxon shires which had once been separate principalities.

§ 3. _Origin and Powers of the Witenagemót._

By these means those great kingdoms were formed which produced Bretwaldas and which strove for the supremacy of Britain. Each stage of union increased the kingly power; each stage lessened the independence of local communities and lessened the importance of their [Sidenote: Democratic constitution of the old Assemblies.] individual members. The democratic character of the old Teutonic system contained the seeds of its own destruction, whenever it should be applied to districts of any great extent. We may be sure that every Teutonic freeman had [Sidenote: The Assembly of the Mark,] a voice in the assembly—the _Gemót_, the _Gemeinde_, the _Ekklêsia_—of his own mark. In fact he in some sort keeps it still, as holding his place in the parish vestry. He had a voice; it might be too much to say that he had a vote; for in an early state of things formal divisions are not likely to be often taken; the temper of the assembly is found out by easier means. But the man who clashed his arms to express approval, or who joined in the unmistakeable sound which expressed dissent,[135] practically gave as efficient a vote as if he had solemnly walked out into a lobby. The Homeric _Agorê_ is the type of every such assembly, and the likeness of the Homeric _Agorê_ may [Sidenote: of the Shire.] be seen in an English county-meeting to this day.[136] The voice which the simple freeman, the ceorl, had in the assembly of his mark, he would not lose in the assembly of his shire, the _Scirgemót_. The county court is to this [Sidenote: The right becomes less valuable with each extension of area.] day an assembly of all the freeholders of the shire.[137] But the right of attending the assembly of the shire would become really less valuable than the right of attending the assembly of the mark. The larger the assembly, the more distant the place of meeting, the more difficult, and therefore the more rare, does the attendance of individual members become, and the smaller is the importance of each individual member when he gets there. We cannot doubt that the assemblies of the mark, of the shire, and of the kingdom all went on side by side: but at each stage of union the competence of the inferior assembly [Sidenote: Every freeman had a theoretical right to attend the National Assembly.] would be narrowed. We cannot doubt that every freeman kept in theory the right of appearing in the assembly of the kingdom, no less than in the assemblies of the mark and of the shire. Expressions are found which are quite enough to show that the mass of the people were theoretically looked on as present in the national assembly and as consenting to its decrees.[138] But such a right of [Sidenote: The right goes practically out of use.] attendance necessarily became a mere name. The mass of the people could not attend; they would not care to attend, they would find themselves of no account if they did attend. They would therefore, without any formal abrogation of their right, gradually cease from attending. The idea of representation had not yet arisen; those who did not appear in person had no means of appearing by deputy; of election or delegation there is not the slightest trace, though it might often happen that those who stayed away might feel that their rich or official neighbour who went would attend to their wishes and would fairly act in their interests. By this process an originally democratic assembly, without any formal exclusion of any class of its members, gradually shrank up into an aristocratic assembly. I trust that I have shown in another work[139] how, under closely analogous circumstances, the Federal Assembly of Achaia, legally open to every Achaian citizen, was commonly attended only by those who were both rich and zealous, and how it often happened that the members of the inner body, the Senate, themselves alone formed the [Sidenote: The Assembly practically an Assembly of the King’s Thegns.] assembly. In the same way, an assembly of all the freemen of Wessex, when those freemen could not attend personally and when they had no means of attending by representatives, gradually changed into an assembly attended by few or none but the King’s Thegns. The great officers of Church and State, Ealdormen, Bishops, Abbots, would attend; the ordinary Thegns would attend more laxly, but still in considerable numbers; the King would preside; a few leading men would discuss; the general mass of the Thegns, whether they formally voted or not, would make their approval or disapproval practically felt; [Sidenote: Vestiges of the old popular rights.] no doubt the form still remained of at least announcing the resolutions taken to any of the ordinary freemen whom curiosity had drawn to the spot; most likely the form still remained of demanding their ceremonial assent, though without any fear that the habitual “Yea, yea,” would ever be exchanged for “Nay, nay.”[140] It is thus that, in the absence of representation, a democratic franchise, as applied to a large country, gradually becomes unreal or delusive. [Sidenote: Primary Assemblies suited only to small commonwealths.] A primary assembly, an _Ekklêsia_, a _Landesgemeinde_, is an excellent institution in a commonwealth so small as to allow of its being really worked with effect. But in any large community it either becomes a tumultuous mob, like the later Roman _Comitia_ or the Florentine Parliament, or else it gradually shrinks up into an aristocratic body, as the old Teutonic assemblies did both in England and on the continent. When the great statesmen of the thirteenth century, Earl Simon and King Edward, fully established the principle of representation, they did but [Sidenote: The Ancient right restored in another shape in the thirteenth century.] bring back the old state of things in another shape. The ordinary freeman had gradually lost his right of personal attendance in the national assembly; it was inexpedient and impossible to restore that right to him in its original shape; he may be looked on as having in the thirteenth century legally surrendered it, and as having received in its stead the far more practical right of attending by his representatives.

Thus was formed that famous assembly of our forefathers, called by various names, the _Mycel Gemót_ or _Great Meeting_, the _Witenagemót_[141] or _Meeting of the Wise_, sometimes the _Mycel Getheaht_ or _Great Thought_.[142] [Sidenote: The Witenagemót.] But the common title of those who compose it is simply the _Witan_, the _Sapientes_ or _Wise Men_. In every English kingdom we find the royal power narrowly limited by the necessity under which the King lay of

## acting in all matters of importance by the consent and authority of his

Witan, in other words, of his Parliament. [Sidenote: The Gemót of Wessex becomes the general Legislature, those, of the other kingdoms surviving as local bodies.] As the other kingdoms merged in Wessex, the Witan of the other kingdoms became entitled to seats in the Gemót of Wessex, now become the common Gemót of the Empire. But just as in the case of the assemblies of the mark and the shire, so the Gemóts of the other Kingdoms seem to have gone on as local bodies, dealing with local affairs, and perhaps giving a formal assent to the resolutions of the central body.[143] [Sidenote: Lack of information as to the constitution of the Assembly.] As to the constitution of these great councils in any English kingdom our information is of the vaguest kind. The members are always spoken of in the loosest way. We find the Witan constantly assembling, constantly passing laws, but we find no law prescribing or defining the constitution of the assembly itself. We find no trace of representation or election; we find no trace of any property qualification;[144] we find no trace of nomination by the crown, except in so far as all the great officers of the court and the kingdom were constantly present. On the other hand we have seen that all the leading men, Ealdormen, Bishops, Abbots, and a considerable body of other Thegns, did attend; we have seen that the people as a body had in some way a share in the legislative acts of their chiefs, that those acts were in some sort the acts of the people themselves, to which they had themselves assented, and were not merely the edicts of superiors which they had to obey. There is no doubt that, on some particular occasions, some classes at least of the people did actually take a part in the proceedings of the national council; thus the citizens of London are more than once recorded to have taken a share in the election of Kings.[145] No theory that I know of will explain all these phænomena except that which I have just tried to draw out. This is, that every freeman had an abstract right to be present, but that any actual share in the proceedings of the assembly had, gradually and imperceptibly, come to be confined to the leading men, to the King’s Thegns, strengthened, under peculiarly favourable circumstances, by the presence of exceptional classes of freemen, like the London citizens.[146] It is therefore utterly vain for any political party to try to press the supposed constitution of our ancient national councils into the service [Sidenote: The Witenagemót proves nothing in modern political controversies.] of modern political warfare. The Meeting of the Wise has not a word to utter for or against any possible Reform Bill. In one sense it was more democratic than anything that the most advanced Liberal would dare to dream of; in another sense it was more oligarchic than anything that the most unbending Conservative would dare to defend. Yet it may in practice have fairly represented the wishes of the nation; and if so, no people ever enjoyed more complete political freedom, than the English did in these early times. [Sidenote: Extent of the powers of the Assembly; greater than those of a modern Parliament.] For the powers of the ancient Witenagemót[147] surpassed beyond all measure the powers which our written law vests in a modern Parliament. In some respects they surpassed the powers which our conventional constitution vests in a modern House of Commons. The King could do absolutely nothing without the consent of his Wise Men. First of all, it was from them that he derived his political being, and it was on them that he depended for its continuance. The Witan chose the King and the [Sidenote: Power of deposing the King.] Witan could depose him. The power of deposition is a power which, from its very nature, can be exercised but rarely; we therefore do not find many Kings deposed by Act of Parliament either before or since the Norman Conquest. But we do find instances, both before and since the Norman Conquest, which show that, by the ancient constitution of England, the Witan of the land did possess the right of deposing the sovereign, and that on great and emergent occasions they did not shrink from exercising that right. I will not attempt to grapple with the confused history of Northumberland, where at one time Kings were set up [Sidenote: Instances in Northumberland;] and put down almost daily. Such revolutions were doubtless as much the result of force as of any legal process; still we can hardly doubt that the legal forms were commonly observed, and sometimes we find it distinctly recorded that they were. Let us keep ourselves to the more certain history of the line of Cerdic. Five times—we [Sidenote: in Wessex.] might more truly say six times—thrice before and twice since the Norman Conquest, has the King of the West-Saxons or of the English been deprived of his [Sidenote: Sigeberht. 755.] kingly office by the voice of his Parliament.[148] Sigeberht of Wessex, in the eighth century, was deposed by the vote of the general assembly of his kingdom, and another King [Sidenote: Æthelred deposed, 1013; restored, 1014.] was elected in his stead. Æthelred the Second was deposed by one act of the Legislature and restored by another. Harthacnut, in the like sort, was deposed, while still uncrowned, from his West-Saxon kingdom, though he [Sidenote: Harthacnut deposed, 1037; re-elected, 1040.] was afterwards re-elected to the whole kingdom of England. [Sidenote: Edward the Second deposed, 1327; Richard the Second, 1377.] Edward the Second was deposed by Parliament; so was Richard the Second. At a later time the Parliament [Sidenote: Case of James the Second.] of England shrank from the formal deposition of James the Second, and took refuge in a theory of abdication which, though logically absurd, practically did all that was wanted. But the Parliament of Scotland had no such scruples, and that body, in full conformity with ancient examples, declared the crown of Scotland to be forfeited. In a land where everything goes by precedent, a right resting on a tradition like this, though its actual exercise may have taken place only five or six times in nine hundred years, is surely as well established as any other. Under our modern constitution the right is likely to remain dormant. The objects which in past times required the deposition of the King, if not from his office, at least from his authority, can now be gained by a parliamentary censure of the Prime Minister, or in the extremest case by bringing an impeachment against him.

[Sidenote: The King elected by the Witan.]

If the Witan could depose the King, still more undoubtedly did the Witan elect the King.[149] It is strange how people’s eyes are blinded on this subject. It is not uncommon to hear people talk about the times before and shortly after the Norman Conquest as if the Act for the Settlement of the Royal Succession had already been in force in those days. It is strange to hear a number of princes, both before and since the Conquest, popularly spoken of as “usurpers,” merely because they came to the crown in a different way from that which modern law and [Sidenote: Popular misconceptions on this subject.] custom prescribe. It is strange that people who talk in this way commonly forget that their own principle, so far as it proves anything, proves a great deal more than they intend. If Harold, Stephen, John, were usurpers, Ælfred and Eadward the Confessor were usurpers just as much. Ælfred and Eadward, no less than John, succeeded by election, to the exclusion of nephews whom the modern law of England would look upon as the undoubted heirs of the crown. It is stranger still to hear others talk as if hereditary succession, according to some particular theory of it, was a divine and eternal law which could not be departed from without sin. Those who talk in this way should at least tell us what the divine and unchangeable law of succession is; for in a purely historical view of things, nearly every kingdom seems to have a law of succession of its own. Our forefathers at any rate knew nothing of any such superstitions. The ancient English kingship was elective. It was elective in the same sense in which all the old Teutonic kingdoms were elective. Among a people in whose eyes birth was highly valued, it was deemed fitting that the King should be the descendant of illustrious and royal forefathers. In the days of heathendom it was held that the King should come of the supposed [Sidenote: Kings commonly chosen out of a particular family.] stock of the Gods. Thus in every kingdom there was a kingly house, out of which alone, under all ordinary circumstances, Kings were chosen; but within that kingly house the Witan of the land had a free choice. The [Sidenote: The eldest son of the last King has a preference, but no more.] eldest son of the last King would doubtless always have a preference; if he was himself at all worthy of the place, if his father’s memory was at all cherished, he would commonly be preferred without hesitation, probably chosen without the appearance of any other candidate. But a preference was all to which he was entitled, and he seems not to have been entitled even to a preference unless he [Sidenote: Minors constantly passed by.] was actually the son of a crowned King.[150] If he were too young, or otherwise disqualified, the electors passed him by and chose some worthier member of the royal family. Ælfred and Eadred were chosen in preference to the minor sons of elder brothers. Eadward the Confessor was chosen in preference to the absent son of an elder brother. At the death of Eadgar, when the royal family contained only minors to choose from, the electors were divided between the elder and the younger brother. Minors who had been once passed by might or might not be elected at a later vacancy. Æthelwold, the son of Æthelred the First, who had been passed by in favour of his uncle Ælfred, was again passed by on Ælfred’s death, because no claim could compare with that of Eadward, the worthy son of the most glorious of fathers. The children of Eadmund were passed by in favour of their uncle Eadred, but on Eadred’s death the [Sidenote: A certain preference acquired by the recommendation of the last King.] choice fell on the formerly excluded Eadwig. And as a certain preference was acquired by birth, a certain preference was acquired by the recommendation of the late King. So Eadgar recommended his elder son Eadward to the electors; so Eadward the Confessor recommended Harold. Æthelwulf had long before attempted, by the help of a will confirmed by the Witan, to establish a peculiar law of succession, which soon broke down.[151] But it is clear that a certain importance was attached to the wishes of a deceased and respected King, as conveying a distinct preference. But it conveyed nothing more than a preference; the person who enjoyed such preference, whether by birth or by nomination, could still be passed by without breach of constitutional right. From these principles it follows that, as any disqualified person in the kingly house might be passed by, so, if the whole house were disqualified, the whole house might be passed by. [Sidenote: Harold the son of Godwine lawfully chosen.] That is to say, the election of Harold the son of Godwine, the central point of this history, was perfectly good in every point of view. The earlier election of Cnut was [Sidenote: Cnut’s election good in form, but made under _duresse_.] equally good in point of form; only it was an election under _duresse_—_duresse_ a little, but not much, stronger than that under which an English Chapter elects its Bishop.

An ancient English King then was, not the father of his people, but their child, their creation. And the assembly which had elected him, and which could depose him, claimed to direct him by its advice and authority [Sidenote: Direct share of the Witan in every branch of government.] in almost every exercise of the kingly power. Every act of government of any importance was done, not by the King alone, but by the King and his Witan. The Great Council of the nation took an active share even in those branches of government which modern constitutional theories mark out as the special domain of the Executive. That laws were ordained, and taxes imposed,[152] by the authority of the Witan, that they sat as the highest court for the trial of exalted and dangerous offenders, is only what we should look for from the analogy of modern times. It is more important to find that the King and his Witan, and not the King alone, concluded treaties, made grants of folkland, ordained the assemblage of fleets and armies, appointed and deposed the great officers of Church and State. Of the exercise of all these powers by the assembled Witan we shall find abundant examples in the course of this history. Now these are the very powers which a modern House of Commons shrinks from [Sidenote: Difference between the direct and indirect

## action of Parliament.] directly exercising. These are the powers which,

under our present system, Parliament prefers to entrust to ministers in whom it has confidence, ministers whom it virtually appoints, and whom it can virtually dismiss without any formal ceremony of deposition. And, in our present state of things, little or no harm, and some direct good, comes from Parliament preferring an indirect course of action [Sidenote: Direct action necessary in early times.] on these subjects. But in an earlier state of things, a more direct agency of the Parliament or other national assembly is absolutely necessary. The assembly has to deal, not with a ministry whom it can create and destroy without any formal

## action, but with a personal King, whom it has indeed elected and whom it

can depose, but whose election and deposition are solemn national acts, his deposition indeed being the rarest and most extreme of all national acts. In such a state of things the power of the King may be strictly limited by law; but, within the limits which the law prescribes to him, he acts according to his own will and pleasure, or according to the advice of counsellors who are purely of his own choosing. In such a state of things the King and the nation are brought face to face, and it is needful that the national assembly should have a much more direct control over affairs than is at all needful when the ingenious device of a responsible ministry is interposed between King and Parliament. Long after the days of our ancient Witenagemóts, in the days of Edward the Third for instance, Parliament was consulted about wars and negotiations in a much more direct way than it is now. The control of Parliament over the Executive is certainly not less effective now than it was then; but the nature of our present system makes it desirable that the control of Parliament should be exercised in a less direct way than it was then. Our present system avoids, above all things, all possibility of direct personal collision between Parliament and the sovereign. But such direct personal collisions form the staple of English history from the thirteenth century onwards. In earlier times we seldom come across any record of the debates of our national councils, though we often know their determinations. How far such collisions commonly took place in early times[153] we have but small means of knowing. They were perhaps less to be looked for in the tenth or eleventh century than in the thirteenth or fourteenth. In the later times the King had to deal with his Parliament as with something external to himself, something which laid petitions before him which he could accept or reject at pleasure. A struggle in those days was a struggle between the King and an united Parliament. Nowadays, as we all know, the struggle takes place within the walls of Parliament itself. But we can well believe that, in this respect as in so many others, the earliest times were really more like our own [Sidenote: Joint action of the King and the Witan.] than the intermediate centuries were. An ancient Witenagemót did not petition; it decreed; it confirmed the acts of the King which, without the assent of the Witan, had no validity; it was not a body external to the King, but a body of which the King was the head in a much more direct sense than he could be said to be the head of a later mediæval Parliament. The King and his Witan acted together; the King could do nothing without the Witan, and the Witan could do nothing without the King; they were no external, half-hostile, body; they were his own council, surrounding and advising him. Direct collisions between the King on the one hand and an united Gemót on the other were not likely to be common. And as to the great powers of the Witenagemót, as to its direct participation in all important acts of government, there can be no doubt. They are legibly [Sidenote: Diminution of parliamentary action after the Conquest.] written in every page of our early history. The vast increase of the power of the crown after the Norman Conquest, the gradual growth of a systematic feudal jurisprudence, did much to lessen the authority and dignity of the national councils. The idea of a nation and its chief, of a King and his counsellors, almost died away; the King became half despot, half mere feudal lord. England was never without national assemblies of some kind or other; but from the Conquest in the eleventh century till the second birth of freedom in the thirteenth, our national assemblies do not stand out in the same distinct and living shape in which they stand out both in earlier [Sidenote: The old freedom won back in the thirteenth century.] and in later times. Here again we owe our thanks to those illustrious worthies, from the authors of the Great Charter onwards, who, in so many ways, won back for us our ancient constitution in another shape. I have said that no political party can draw any support for its own peculiar theories from that obscurest of subjects, the constitution of the Witenagemót. But no lover of our old historic freedom can see without delight how venerable a thing that freedom is, how vast and how ancient are the rights and powers of an English Parliament. Our ancient Gemóts enjoyed every power of a modern Parliament, together with some powers which modern Parliaments shrink from claiming. Even such a matter of detail as the special security granted to the persons of members of the two Houses has been traced, and not without a show of probability, to an enactment which stands at the very front of English secular jurisprudence, the second among the laws ordained by our first Christian King and the Witan of his kingdom of Kent.[154]

[Sidenote: The King not a puppet in the hands of the Witan.]

As the powers of the Witan were thus extensive, as the King could do no important act of government without their consent, some may hastily leap to the conclusion that an ancient English King was a mere puppet in the hands of the national council. No inference could be more mistaken. Nothing is clearer in our early history than the personal agency of the King in everything that is done, and the unspeakable difference between a good and [Sidenote: Vast importance of the personal character of the King.] a bad King. The truth is that in an early state of society almost everything depends on the personal character of the King. An able King is practically absolute; under a weak King the government falls into utter anarchy. Change the scene, as we shall presently do in our narrative, from the days of Eadgar to those of Æthelred—change it again from the long, dreary, hopeless, reign of Æthelred to the few months of ceaseless energy which form the reign of the hero Eadmund—compare the nine months of Harold with the two months which followed his fall—and we shall see how the whole fate of the nation turned upon the personal character of its sovereign. With such witnesses before us, we can the better understand how our forefathers would have scouted the thought—if the thought had ever occurred to them—of risking the destiny of the nation on the accidents of strict hereditary succession, and how wisely they determined that the King must be, if not the worthiest of the nation, at any rate the worthiest of the kingly house. The unhappy reign of Æthelred showed the bad side of even that limited application of the hereditary principle which was all that they admitted. Under her great Kings England had risen from her momentary overthrow to an Imperial dominion. At home she had a strong and united government, and her position in the face of other nations was one which made her alliance to be courted by the foremost princes of Europe. The accession of the minor son of Eadgar, a child who, except in his crimes and vices, never got beyond childhood, dragged down the glorious fabric into the dust. So greatly did national welfare and national misfortune depend on the personal character of the King. The King, it is true, could do nothing without his Witan; but as his Witan could do nothing without him, he was not a shadow or a puppet, but a most important personal agent. He was no more a puppet than the Leader of the House of Commons is a puppet. We may be sure that the King and his immediate advisers always had a practical initiative, and that the body of the Witan did little but accept [Sidenote: Overwhelming personal influence of an able King.] or reject their proposals. We may be sure that a King fit for his place, an Ælfred or an Æthelstan, met with nothing that could be called opposition, but wielded the assembly at his will. Princes clothed with far smaller constitutional powers than those of an ancient English King have become the ruling spirits of commonwealths which denied them any kind of independent action. Agêsilaos guided the policy of Sparta, and Francesco Foscari guided the policy of Venice,[155] with a personal influence almost as commanding as that which Periklês exercised in the pure democracy of Athens or Aratos in the mixed constitution of the Achaian League. So when a great King sat on the West-Saxon throne, we may be sure that, while every constitutional form was strictly observed,[156] the votes of the Witan were guided in everything by the will of the King. But when the King had no will, or a will which the Witan could not consent to, then the machine gave way, and nothing was to be seen [Sidenote: Importance of the King as the Executive.] but confusion and every evil work.[157] Again, the King was not only the first mover, he was also the main doer of everything. The Witan decreed, but it was the King who carried out their decrees. Weighty as was the influence of his personal character on the nature of the resolutions to be passed, its influence was weightier still on the way in which those resolutions were to be carried out. Under a good King counsel and execution went hand in hand; under a weak or wicked King there was no place found for either. Sometimes disgraceful resolutions were passed; sometimes wise and good resolutions were never carried into effect. The Witan under Æthelred sometimes voted money to buy off the Danes, sometimes they voted armies to fight against them; but, with Æthelred to carry out their votes, it mattered little what their [Sidenote: Influence of the King as _Hlaford_ of all the chief men.] votes were. Add to all this the boundless influence which attached to the King from his having all the chief men of the land bound to him by the personal tie of thegnship. He was the _Cyne-hlaford_, at once the King of the nation and the personal lord of each individual. Though his grants of folkland and his nominations to the highest offices needed the assent of the Witan, yet in these matters above all his initiative would be undoubted; the Witan had only to confirm, and they would seldom be tempted to reject, the proposals which the King laid before them. He was not less the fountain of honour and the fountain of wealth, because in the disposal of both he had certain decent ceremonies to go through. [Sidenote: General importance and influence of the King.] Add to all this that in unsettled times there is a special chance, both of acts of actual oppression which the law is not strong enough to redress, and of acts of energy beyond the law which the nation easily forgives in the case of a victorious and beloved prince. Altogether, narrowly limited as were the legal powers of an ancient English King, his will, or lack of will, had the main influence on the destinies of the nation, and his personal character was of as much moment to the welfare of the state as the personal character of an absolute ruler.

§ 4. _The Imperial power of the King and his relation to the Dependent Kingdoms._

The King and his Witan then, in their joint action, formed the supreme legislature and the supreme tribunal [Sidenote: England strictly one kingdom, but much local independence retained by the incorporated kingdoms.] of the English kingdom. That kingdom, from the days of Æthelstan onwards, took in the whole Teutonic portion of Britain, together with those Celtic lands to the south-west which had been incorporated and to a great extent Teutonized. This whole region, at least from the overthrow of the last Northumbrian King under Eadred, formed in the strictest sense one kingdom; the revolt of the Mercians against Eadwig was only a momentary interruption of its unity. The ancient divisions were indeed by no means forgotten; above all, the great Danish land beyond the Humber still retained a lively memory of its former independence. Both Northumberland and the other incorporated kingdoms kept much of the form of distinct states; each state had its local Witenagemót, presided over by its local Ealdorman or Earl, who exercised, by commission from the King and his Witan, full royal authority within his own province. But I have already explained that, vast as were the powers of an ancient Ealdorman, he was still only a great magistrate, not a prince, even a dependent prince. The whole land formed one kingdom under one King, and the King and his Witan held direct authority in every corner of it. But this kingdom of the English was not the only title and dignity to which the house of [Sidenote: Superiority or Empire of the West-Saxon Kings over all Britain.] Cerdic had attained. The King of the English was also Emperor of the whole isle of Britain. I must now explain somewhat more at length the nature of this British Empire, as distinguished from the English kingdom which was [Sidenote: Statement of the question. First, the fact of the superiority. Secondly, the force of the assumption of strictly Imperial titles.] only part of it. In this inquiry two special points call for notice. There is, first, the fact that the English Kings did exercise a superiority of some kind over the whole of Britain, a fact which has sometimes been called in question by local prejudice. There is, secondly, the question as to the exact nature of that superiority, and as to the motives which led the Kings of the tenth and eleventh centuries to assume distinctively Imperial titles. It must not be forgotten that in those days such titles were not assumed at random; the idea of the Roman Empire was still thoroughly understood, and indeed the Roman Empire itself, both in the East and in the West, was in one of its most flourishing periods.

The fact that the West-Saxon or English Kings, from Eadward the Elder onwards, did exercise an external supremacy over the Celtic princes of the island is a fact too clear to be misunderstood by any one who looks the evidence on [Sidenote: Superiority over Scotland dates from Eadward the Elder. 924.] the matter fairly in the face. I date their supremacy over Scotland from the reign of Eadward the Elder, because there is no certain earlier instance of submission on the part of the Scots to any West-Saxon King. I pass by the [Sidenote: No earlier supremacy in Wessex.] instances of Scottish submission to the earlier Northumbrian Kings, as well as the seeming submission of both Scots and Northumbrians to the Roman Empire itself in the person of Charles the Great.[158] These instances do not prove the existence of any permanent superiority; they are rather analogous to the temporary and fluctuating superiority of this or that Bretwalda over the other English kingdoms. But from the time of Eadward the Elder onwards the case is [Sidenote: Submission of Wales to Ecgberht, 830; to Eadward, 922.] perfectly clear. The submission of Wales dates from the time of Ecgberht; but it evidently received a more distinct and formal acknowledgement in the reign of Eadward. Two years after followed the _Commendation_ of Scotland and [Sidenote: The Welsh and Scottish people concur with their princes in the _Commendation_.] Strathclyde.[159] Now it seems to be implied in the case of Wales, and it is still more plainly stated in the case of Scotland and Strathclyde, that the people of both those countries had a share in those acts of their princes by which Eadward was chosen to Father and to Lord. I conceive this to mean that the Scottish and Welsh princes acted in this matter by the consent and authority of whatever body in their own states answered to the Witan in England. In both cases the commendation was a [Sidenote: Nature of _Commendation_;] solemn national act. I use the feudal word _commendation_, because that word seems to me better than any other to express the real state of the case. The transaction between Eadward and the Celtic princes was simply an application, on an international scale, of the general principle of the [Sidenote: the relation unaffected by greatness or smallness of scale.] _Comitatus_. That relation, like all the feudal relations which it helped to form, may be entered into either on the greatest or on the smallest scale. The land which is originally granted out on a feudal tenure, or which its allodial owner finds it expedient to convert into a fief held on feudal tenure, may be a kingdom or it may be a rood of land maintaining its man. So the lord whom a man chooses, and the man who chooses the lord, may be of any possible rank, from the Emperor and the Pope with their vassal Kings down to the smallest Thegn and his neighbouring ceorl. It would even seem that the ceorl himself might be the lord of a poorer ceorl.[160] The relation is exactly the same, whatever may be the rank and power of the parties between whom it is contracted. In every case alike, great or small, faithful service is owing on the one side and faithful protection on the other. In every case alike, great or small, the relation may imply a strictly feudal tenure of land or it may not. Now the Chroniclers, in recording these cases of Welsh and Scottish submission, make use, as if of set purpose, of the familiar legal phrases which express the relation of commendation on the smaller [Sidenote: Process of Commendation on a small scale.] scale. A man “chose his lord;” he sought some one more powerful than himself, with whom he entered into the relation of _Comitatus_; as feudal ideas strengthened, he commonly surrendered his allodial land to the lord so chosen, and received it back again from him on a feudal tenure. This was the process of commendation, a process of every day occurrence in the case of private men choosing their lords, whether those lords were simple gentlemen or [Sidenote: Instances of Commendation among sovereign princes.] Kings. And the process was equally familiar among sovereign princes themselves.[161] Almost all the northern and eastern vassals of the Western Empire, some of them of kingly rank,[162] became vassals by commendation. The commendation was doubtless in many cases far from voluntary, but the legal form was always the same. The lands of these princes were not original grants from the Emperors; but their holders found it expedient to come to terms with their Imperial neighbour, and to place themselves and their lands in the same position as if their lands had really been Imperial grants. We might go on to say that the [Sidenote: Commendation of the Normans to Leo the Ninth. 1053.] Norman conquerors of southern Italy commended themselves to the Pope whom they took prisoner, and that the Sicilian kingdoms, on the strength of that commendation, remained for seven hundred years in the position of fiefs [Sidenote: Commendation of England to the Pope by John [1213]; to the Emperor by Richard. 1193.] of the Holy See. The kingdom of England itself was twice commended to a foreign potentate. John, as all the world knows, commended his kingdom to the Pope; and his brother Richard had before that commended it to the Emperor. There was nothing unusual or degrading in the relation; if Scotland, Wales, Strathclyde, commended themselves to the West-Saxon King, they only put themselves in the same relation to their powerful neighbour in which every continental prince stood in theory, and most of them in actual fact, to the Emperor, Lord of the World. [Sidenote: Homage of Odo the West-Frank to Arnulf. 888.] Not to speak of a crowd of smaller instances, Odo, King of the West-Franks, commended himself to Arnulf of Germany, just as Howel and Constantine commended themselves to Eadward of Wessex. And this commendation was made before Arnulf became Emperor and Lord of the World, while he was still the simple King of the Eastern Franks.[163] The commendation of Scotland and Strathclyde was, in form at least, a perfectly voluntary act, done with the full consent of the nations interested. The kingdom of Strathclyde soon came to an end, and with the Welsh of Wales proper no lasting relations of any kind [Sidenote: Relations between England and Scotland as friendly as was usual in such cases.] could be kept up. But between the English over-lord and his Scottish vassal the mutual compact was not worse kept than it commonly was in such cases. It was often broken and often renewed; but this was no more than happened always and everywhere in those turbulent times. The relations between the English _Basileus_ and the King of Scots were at least as friendly as the relations which existed in the tenth century between the King of the West-Franks [Sidenote: The claims of Edward the First in 1291 rest on the Commendation to Eadward the Elder in 924.] and his dangerous vassals at Paris and Rouen. The original commendation to the Eadward of the tenth century, confirmed by a series of acts of submission spread over the whole of the intermediate time, is the true justification for the acts of his glorious namesake in the thirteenth century.[164] The only difference was that, during that time, feudal notions had greatly developed on both sides; the original commendation of the Scottish King and people to a lord, had changed, in the ideas of both sides, into a [Sidenote: Change of ideas in the meanwhile.] feudal tenure of the land of the Scottish kingdom. But this change was simply the universal change which had come over all such relations everywhere. That this point, the only point which could with any justice have been brought forward against Edward on the Scottish side, never was brought forward shows how completely the ancient notion of commendation had gone out of mind.[165] But the principal point at issue, the right of the over-lord to decide between two claimants of the vassal kingdom, rested on excellent precedents in the reigns of Eadward the Confessor and of William Rufus. Altogether the vassalage—to use the most convenient word—of Scotland from the [Sidenote: 924–1328.] commendation to Eadward to the treaty of Northampton [Sidenote: Threefold relation of the King of Scots to the English Crown.] is one of the best authenticated facts in history. But it is here needful to point out two other distinct events which have often been confounded with the commendation of Scotland, a confusion through which the real state of the case has often been misunderstood. In the eleventh century at least, if not in the tenth, the King of Scots stood to his English over-lord in a threefold relation, grounded on three distinct acts which are popularly confounded. In this matter, as in so many others, prevalent ignorance is strengthened by inattention to historical geography. As it is hard to make people understand that there has not always been a kingdom of France including Marseilles and Strassburg, perhaps even including Nizza and Chambery, so it is hard to make people understand that there were not always kingdoms of England and Scotland, with the Tweed and the Cheviot Hills as the boundaries between them. It must be borne in mind that in the tenth century no such boundaries were known, and that the very names of England and Scotland were only just beginning to be [Sidenote: Geography of Scotland, Strathclyde, and Lothian in the tenth century.] heard. At the time of the commendation the country which is now called Scotland was divided among three quite distinct sovereignties. North of the Forth and Clyde reigned the King of Scots, an independent Celtic prince reigning over a Celtic people, the Picts and Scots, the exact relation between which two tribes is a matter of perfect indifference to my present purpose. South of the two great firths the Scottish name and the Scottish dominion were unknown. The south-western part of modern Scotland formed part of the kingdom of the Strathclyde Welsh, which up to 924 was, like the kingdom of the [Sidenote: Relations of the three to one another and to the English Crown.] Scots, an independent Celtic principality. The south-eastern part of modern Scotland, Lothian in the wide sense of the word, was purely English, as in language it remains to this day. It was part of the kingdom of Northumberland, and it had its share in all the revolutions of that kingdom. In the year 924 Lothian, like the rest of Northumberland, was subject only to that precarious superiority on the part of Wessex which had been handed on from Ecgberht and Ælfred, In the year 924, when the three kingdoms, Scotland, Strathclyde, and Northumberland, all commended themselves to Eadward, the relation was something new on the part of Scotland and Strathclyde; but on the part of Lothian, as an integral part of Northumberland, it was only a renewal of the relation which had been formerly entered into with Ecgberht and Ælfred. It is not uncommon to hear the vassalage of Scotland proper, that is, the land north of the Forth and Clyde, mixed up with questions about Cumberland and Lothian. But, at the time of the Commendation of 924, Lothian stood in no relation at all towards Scotland, except that of simple, most likely not very friendly, neighbourhood. Strathclyde [Sidenote: Since 908.] was already ruled by princes of the Scottish royal house,[166] but it was still a kingdom quite independent of Scotland. The transactions which brought Scotland, Strathclyde, and Lothian into their relations to one another and to the English crown were quite distinct from each other. They were as follows:—

First, The Commendation of the King and people of the Scots to Eadward in 924.

Secondly, The Grant of Cumberland by Eadmund to Malcolm in 945.

Thirdly, The grant of Lothian to the Scottish Kings, either under Eadgar or under Cnut.

[Sidenote: Popular confusions; true nature of the grant of Cumberland.]

These three events are perfectly distinct, and the relations created by them are perfectly distinct; but, as always happens when several relations and tenures co-exist, the three gradually got confounded together, both in idea and in fact. Both in popular conception and in the hands of partizan Scottish writers, the second of these three events is made to obscure the other two. The grant by an English King to a Scottish King of a country described as Cumberland is something too clear to be denied; that the Scottish princes held their Cumbrian dominions as a fief of the English crown, that they did homage for them to the English King, no Scottish writer has ever ventured to call in doubt.[167] In truth there seems never to have been any wish to call this fact in doubt, because the Cumbrian homage, put forth sometimes even in an exaggerated shape, has formed a convenient means of escape from the fact of the homage for Scotland proper and from the fact of the purely English character of Lothian. And the confusion of geographical terms comes conveniently in. In modern language Cumberland means a single shire which for ages has been undoubtedly English. In modern language Lothian means three shires which for ages have been undoubtedly Scottish. People are thus led to believe that Lothian was from all time an integral part of Scotland, and also that the homage done by the Scottish to the English King was done only for the county of Cumberland as an integral part of England. But in the language of the year 945 Lothian was still an integral portion of England; Cumberland meant a country, part of which is now English and part Scottish, but which up to that time was neither English nor Scottish, but the seat of a distinct Welsh principality. By Cumberland in short is meant, not merely the modern English county so called, but all northern Strathclyde; that is, modern Cumberland together [Sidenote: Circumstances of the grant of Cumberland or Strathclyde.] with a considerable portion of modern Scotland. In 945 the reigning King Donald revolted against his over-lord Eadmund; he was overthrown and his kingdom ravaged;[168] it was then granted on tenure of military service to Donald’s kinsman Malcolm King of Scots. Malcolm could hardly have earned this favour except by sharing in the war against Donald, which indeed his actual relation to the English crown bound him to do. For a long time the fief then granted was granted out again by the Scottish Kings as an apanage for their own heirs-apparent. The southern part of this territory was afterwards, as we shall see at a later stage of our history, [Sidenote: The part kept by Scotland becomes merged in the Scottish kingdom.] annexed to England; the northern part was kept by the Scottish Kings, and was gradually, though very gradually, incorporated with their own kingdom. The distinction between the two states seems to have been quite forgotten in the thirteenth century; neither side in the controversies of that time drew any distinction between the tenure of Fife and the tenure of Galloway; the claims of the English crown were asserted, admitted, or denied, [Sidenote: Original distinction between the position of Strathclyde or Cumberland, and the position of Scotland proper.] equally with regard to both. Yet the relations between England and Scotland proper and the relations between England and Strathclyde or Cumberland, though much the same in their nature, were wholly different in their origin. The relation in which Scotland stood to England was one of commendation; the relation in which Cumberland stood to England was one of original grant. This last fact marks a distinct advance in feudal ideas. Cumberland was from the beginning a real territorial fief. Eadward did not grant Scotland to Constantine, because Scotland had never been his; but Constantine and his people, by their own act, put themselves in the same position as if it had been so granted. But Eadmund really did grant Cumberland to Malcolm; he granted him a territory which he had himself conquered, and which he might have kept in his own hands. Cumberland in short—including, as must not be forgotten, the south-western shires of modern Scotland—was held by the Scottish King or his son as a feudal benefice in the strictest sense.

[Sidenote: Grant of Lothian.]

Cumberland then was truly a fief of the crown of England, but it was not a fief held within the kingdom of England. This last position, popularly thought to be the position of Cumberland, was really the position of Lothian. The date of the grant of Lothian is not perfectly clear.[169] But whatever was the date of the grant, there can [Sidenote: Lothian an integral part of England.] be no doubt at all as to its nature. Lothian, an integral part of England, could be granted only as any other part of England could be granted, namely to be held as part of England, its ruler being in the position of an English Earl. If the grant was really made by Eadgar, this is still more likely to be the case, on account of the unusual friendliness of the relations between Eadgar and Kenneth. Eadgar might well grant, and Kenneth might well accept, a purely English government, held by a tenure which would bind him still more closely to his English over-lord than either his commendatory relation for Scotland [Sidenote: Lothian gradually separated from England and merged in Scotland.] or his feudal relation for Strathclyde. But in such a grant the seeds of separation were sown. A part of the kingdom which was governed by a foreign sovereign, on whatever terms of dependence, could not long remain in the position of a province governed by an ordinary Earl. The King of Scots, though holding all his dominions by various kinds of dependent tenure, could not be dealt with in any portion of them like a simple Earl of the Northumbrians. That the possession of Lothian would under all ordinary circumstances remain hereditary, must have been looked for from the beginning. This alone would distinguish Lothian from all other earldoms. Though it was very common to appoint the son of a deceased Ealdorman to his father’s dignity, still he had not so much as a preferential claim; the office was held altogether at the pleasure of the King and his Witan. But when a province was once granted to a foreign prince, even though that prince remained a feudatory of the English crown, this kind of control was parted with for ever, or could be won back only at the cost of war. [Sidenote: Distinction between Scotland, Strathclyde, and Lothian gradually forgotten.] Lothian could not fail to become an hereditary dominion of the Scottish Kings; it could not fail gradually to lose its distinct character and the remembrance of its distinct tenure, and to be gradually merged in the mass of the other dominions of its rulers. By the time of the great controversy of the thirteenth century the distinction seems to have been forgotten on both sides, exactly as it was in the case of Strathclyde. The claims of the English King were the same over the whole country, over Scotland, Strathclyde, and Lothian; they were put forward as a whole, and they were accepted or rejected as a whole. Yet, when we weigh the claims of Edward the First by the letter of the compacts of the tenth century, if we pronounce them to go a little beyond the mark in the case of Scotland proper, we must equally pronounce them to fall a little under the mark in the case of Lothian. The fact is that the progress of feudal ideas had wiped out the distinction, and had brought all tenures to the same level. The alternative by that time had come to be whether Scotland, as a whole, that is, Scotland proper, Scottish Strathclyde, and Lothian, should be a fief of England or an independent kingdom. That Scotland, Strathclyde, and Lothian were originally all dependencies of England, but held in three different degrees of dependence, had passed out of mind on both sides.

[Sidenote: Later history of Lothian.]

It was then to be expected that Lothian, when once granted to the King of Scots, should gradually be merged in the kingdom of Scotland. But the peculiar and singular destiny of this country could hardly have been looked for. [Sidenote: Lothian becomes the historical Scotland.] Neither Eadgar nor Kenneth could dream that this purely English province would become the historical Scotland. The different tenures of Scotland and Lothian got confounded; the Kings of Scots, from the end of the eleventh century, became English in manners and language; they were not without some claims to the crown of England, and not without some hopes of winning it. They thus learned to attach more and more value to the English part of their dominions, and they laboured to spread its language and manners over their original Celtic territory. They kept their ancient title of Kings of Scots, but they became in truth Kings of English Lothian and of Anglicized Fife. A state was thus formed, politically distinct from England and which political circumstances gradually made bitterly hostile to England—a state which indeed kept on a dark and mysterious Celtic background, but which, as it appears in history, is English in laws, language, and manners, more truly English indeed, in many respects, than England itself remained after the Norman Conquest. As in so many other cases, the people took the name of their sovereign; the English subjects of the King of Scots learned to call themselves Scots and their country Scotland. Meanwhile the true Scots to the north of them, the original subjects of the Scottish dynasty, forsaken as it were by their natural princes, became the standing difficulty of their government. The true Scots are known in history only as a mass of turbulent tribes, alien in customs, language, and feeling from those who had taken their name—tribes which the Kings of Dunfermline and Edinburgh had much ado to keep in even nominal subjection—tribes which, by a strange turning about of relations, were ready to fight for their English over-lord against the Kings of Dunfermline and Edinburgh. [Sidenote: Analogy between the history of Scotland and of Switzerland.] The history of Scotland is in many respects strikingly analogous to the history of Switzerland. I pass by the singular likeness in the national character of the two peoples, a likeness to be traced alike in the virtues and in the defects of each. I speak only of the outward facts of their history. In the case of Switzerland, parts of the German, Burgundian, and Italian nations were, through a variety of political causes, detached from the main body of their respective countrymen, and became united by a close political tie to one another. They thus formed an artificial nation,[170] a political and historical [Sidenote: Their position as artificial nations.] nation, but not a nation of common blood and speech. In the case of Scotland, portions of the English, Welsh, and Irish[171] nations were in like manner detached from the main body of their own people; they became in like manner politically connected with one another, and grew in like manner into an artificial nation. In both cases it is often amusing to hear men claim as their forefathers those who were the bitterest enemies of their real forefathers. But in both cases it is more important to mark, what the history both of Switzerland and of Scotland abundantly proves, that an artificial nation of this kind is capable of as true and honourable national feeling as any nation of the most unmixed blood and language. The history both of Switzerland and of Scotland presents so many materials for honest pride that it is a pity that exaggerations and perversions of history should have ever been allowed to step in in either case. And, to cite one point more of likeness, each people has drawn its national name from a very small portion of its territory and population. Switzerland, German, Burgundian, and Italian, has taken its common name from the single small canton of Schwyz. Scotland, English, Welsh, and Gaelic, has taken its common name from the original small colony of Irish Scots who settled on the coast of Argyllshire.

[Sidenote: Case of Wales analogous to that of Scotland.]

I have dwelt on the Scottish question at length, both because of its intrinsic importance, and because the relations between the crowns of England and Scotland will call for constant notice in the course of our history. The case with regard to Wales is the case of Scotland over again. The homage of the Welsh Kings was always due, and was constantly exacted, from the days of Ecgberht and Eadward onwards. The only difference was in the [Sidenote: 1283.] final result. Wales was incorporated with the English [Sidenote: 1328.] kingdom at the close of the thirteenth century; Scotland obtained perfect independence in the fourteenth. The life of one man made all the difference. The great Edward lived thoroughly to secure his Welsh conquest; before he had thoroughly secured his Scottish conquest, his mission had passed to a son who could not keep his crown on his head at home.

Before we leave this subject, it may be well to remember what the relations between a dependent kingdom and its superior lord really were. The King of the English did not, by virtue of the commendation, claim any jurisdiction within the dominions of his vassals. The individual inhabitant of Scotland stood in no relation to [Sidenote: The relation between Scotland and England international only.] the English King.[172] The relation was a purely international one. The King and people of the Scots chose the King of the English as their Father and Lord; it became his duty to protect them against their enemies, and it became their duty to serve him against his enemies. But with the internal management of the Scottish kingdom he had no concern, nor did this or that individual [Sidenote: The relation often broken on both sides.] Scot become his man or his subject. Such was the The relation often broken on both sides. relation; as we go on, we shall see its engagements broken on both sides. We shall find the Scottish vassal more than once breaking through his duty of fidelity, and [Sidenote: 1000.] we shall once at least find the English over-lord of Strathclyde breaking through his duty of protection, setting up an unjust claim to a tribute which was not imposed by the original grant, and cruelly harrying the land in revenge for a perfectly justifiable refusal of his demands.[173] But such breaches of duty on both sides are in no way peculiar to England and Scotland; they form a very large portion of the history of any two [Sidenote: Delicate nature of the relation.] countries between which such relations existed. The truth is that the feudal or commendatory relation is a very delicate relation, one which offers constant temptations to a breach of its duties on both sides, temptations which, [Sidenote: Analogy with colonial relations.] in a rude age, must often have been irresistible. The relation is not identical with the modern relation between the mother country and its colonies and dependencies, but there are many points of analogy between the two. And we all know well how very delicate the relation always is between the metropolis and its colony. But the point to be borne in mind is that the English over-lord of Scotland, Strathclyde, and Wales claimed no sovereignty within those countries, but only a superiority over them. He claimed such a superiority as the King of the French exercised, or claimed to exercise, over the Duke of the Normans. The relation was less close than the relation between the Emperor and the German princes, as no common Diet looked after the common interests of [Sidenote: Attendance of the Welsh and Scottish princes in the Witenagemót.] all. That the Scottish and Welsh princes had the right, which they most likely deemed a burthen, of attending the meetings of the English Witan is certain; it is equally certain that the attendance of the Scottish and Cumbrian princes was exceedingly rare.[174] And at any rate they must have come only in their personal capacity, to transact any business which they might have with their over-lord and his counsellors. We cannot suppose that the English Gemót was ever attended by any Scottish or Welsh Witan beyond the immediate suite of the Scottish and Welsh Kings. The Kings came, because they were the men of the English over-lord; but the private Scot or Briton was not the man of the English over-lord, and had no need to attend the assembly which he summoned. As little can we deem that the English Gemót took on itself to make laws for Wales or Scotland. Neither can we deem that the Welsh and Scottish princes, though they sign the acts of the Gemóts at which they were present, took any active share or interest in purely English affairs.

The King of the English was thus over-lord or external superior of all the princes of the isle of Britain. [Sidenote: Statement of the case as to the Imperial titles.] In that character, our Kings, from the days of Æthelstan onwards, bore titles beyond those of ordinary royalty, titles which in strictness belonged only to the successors of Charles and of Constantine. They appear in their public acts as _Basileus_, _Cæsar_, _Imperator_, _Imperator Augustus_.[175] [Sidenote: 1st. Are they to be taken as seriously implying Imperial claims?] Several questions at once arise. Are these titles mere outpourings of vanity, mere pieces of inflated rhetoric, mere specimens of the turgid style of the tenth century? Or do they imply a serious claim on the part of the English Kings to be looked on as something more than mere Kings, to be deemed the peers of the lords of Imperial [Sidenote: 2nd. If so, are they to be traced uninterruptedly to the old provincial Emperors?] Rome, Old and New? And if they do imply such a claim, from what was that claim understood to be derived? Did the Emperors of Britain in the tenth century inherit, or claim to inherit, their Imperial rank from the provincial Emperors who reigned in Britain in the third, fourth, and fifth centuries? Are we to trace an uninterrupted succession of Imperial sovereignty from Carausius onwards, through Maximus, Constantine,[176] Aurelius Ambrosius, and the eight Bretwaldas, down to the _Imperatores_ and _Basileis_ of the days succeeding the commendations of Scotland, Wales, and Strathclyde? Or are we to see in these titles [Sidenote: 3rd. Or are they borrowed from the style of the contemporary Emperors, through a feeling that the position of the English King was an Imperial one?] merely an imitation of the style of the contemporary Roman Emperors, Eastern and Western—an imitation not grounded solely on a love of sounding titles, but on a feeling that the English sovereignty was in some sort greater than that of ordinary Kings, that it had something in common with that of the Emperors, that in truth the King of the English held in his own island a position answering to that which the Emperor of the Romans held in the rest of the world? These questions have given rise [Sidenote: The third alternative the true one.] to a large amount of controversy. My own belief, briefly to sum it up, is that vanity and the love of sounding titles may well have had some secondary share in the matter, but yet that these titles were seriously meant as a distinct assertion of the Imperial position of the English crown. But I do not believe that there was the least thought of any succession from the ancient provincial Emperors, or from any phantom of Imperial sovereignty which may have lingered on among the Welsh at the time of the English Conquest or afterwards. I believe that these titles were taken in order to claim for the English crown an absolute independence of the Roman Empire, and at the same time to assert its right to a superiority over all the princes of Britain of the same kind as that which the Emperor exercised, or claimed to exercise, over all the princes of the mainland. I believe in short that, as the Metropolitan of England was sometimes spoken of as Pope of another world,[177] so the King of the English claimed to be Emperor of the same island world, a world over which the Lord of the greater world at Rome or at Constantinople had no authority. I will now go on to give the reasons for the conclusions to which I have come.

[Sidenote: Turgid style of the Latin]

It is undoubtedly true that the Latin charters of our Kings during the latter half of the tenth century are [Sidenote: Charters of the tenth century.] the most turgid and absurd of all human compositions. Nothing is said straightforwardly; no idea is expressed by the word which would most naturally occur to express it. The Latin language is ransacked for strange and out of the way terms; and when Latin fails, the writers draw on whatever store of Greek they enjoyed. They turn the whole into a piebald or mongrel language, something like the jargon of English lawyers in the seventeenth century.[178] When such a taste prevailed, it was no wonder that the names of King, Ealdorman, and Bishop were thought not [Sidenote: Prevalent use of Greek and other strange titles.] grand enough, and that the dignitaries of Church and State were described by strange, foreign, and often quite unintelligible titles, Roman, Greek, Persian, anything that came uppermost. Again, it is no less true that [Sidenote: This affectation hardly known in the English Charters.] this sort of affectation is almost wholly confined to the Latin charters. Those which are drawn up in English are for the most part simple and business-like, and in them the use of Imperial titles is much rarer.[179] Still I [Sidenote: The Imperial titles then conveyed a distinct meaning, and were not likely to be taken up at random.] cannot look on such titles as _Basileus_, _Imperator_, _Imperator Augustus_, as mere outbursts of swelling rhetoric. We must remember that they were all formal titles, titles to which a very distinct meaning was attached, titles which expressed a special position and which carried with them a special reverence, titles which were not then, as they are now, taken up at random by every upstart who, half in shame, half in self-conceit, shrinks from calling himself by the straightforward title of King. Any one who knows what the mediæval theory of the Empire was will understand that for a man to call himself _Imperator Augustus_ was in those days no light matter. It was a thing which the vainest potentate would hardly do without some kind of reason for it. For an ordinary King to call himself Emperor was very nearly as strong a measure as it would have been for an ordinary Archbishop [Sidenote: Force of the word _Basileus_.] to call himself Pope. _Basileus_ again, the favourite title of all, was one specially Imperial; by a caprice of language it had become the Greek equivalent of _Imperator_; it was the special title of the Eastern Emperors, the assumption of which by any other prince was held by them to be an infringement of their sole claim to represent the old Roman sovereignty. It is hard to believe that our Kings would have assumed a title surrounded by such associations, one which had been made the subject of many disputes, merely to make a sentence in a charter sound more swelling. It is hard to believe that they would have assumed it without a direct intention to claim thereby a distinctly Imperial sovereignty. Still, considering the fondness for Greek titles and Greek words of all kinds which the charters so constantly display, if the title of _Basileus_ stood alone, it might not be safe to lay [Sidenote: Still more distinct import of the other titles.] too much stress upon it. But when we also meet with _Cæsar_, _Imperator_, and _Augustus_, it is impossible to believe that any title of the class was assumed without a meaning. Whatever we say of the Greek title of _Basileus_, these Latin titles at least were not vague descriptions borrowed from a strange and half unintelligible language. They were titles in familiar use, titles which every one understood, titles which the diplomacy of the age studiously applied to one potentate and to one potentate only. They were titles whose force and use must have been perfectly well known to every man who understood the Latin language. It is utterly inconceivable that such titles should have been [Sidenote: The titles meant to assert an Imperial position.] taken up at random. They could have had no object but to claim for the prince who assumed them a sovereignty of the same kind as that which belonged to the prince for whom they were commonly reserved.

Granting then that the assumption of the Imperial titles had a meaning, and that it was not a mere piece of rhetorical vanity, the second question follows;—Was there any real continuous Imperial tradition handed on from the days of the provincial Emperors, or were the Imperial titles simply assumed in imitation or rivalry or whatever it is to be called, of the contemporary German, Italian, and Byzantine Emperors? My own conviction is [Sidenote: No continuous tradition from the provincial Emperors.] very decidedly on the latter side.[180] I do not see how any continuous Imperial tradition could have been handed on from a Roman ruler in Britain to a West-Saxon King. Every circumstance of the English Conquest shuts out such a belief. It is likely enough that in Wales and Cornwall memories might still linger on from the days when Cæsars and Augusti reigned in Britain. It is likely enough that Aurelius or Arthur or any other Welsh leader may have put forward some kind of Imperial pretensions. But that these princes should have handed on such rights or claims to their English conquerors and destroyers seems to me utterly inconceivable. We have seen in the last Chapter how completely the English Conquest of Britain differed from all other Teutonic conquests. Elsewhere the conquerors became more or less Romanized; they rejoiced to receive from the reigning Emperor the investiture of some Roman dignity, some empty title of Consul or Patrician. From the assumption of the Imperial dignity itself our whole race shrank with a kind of superstitious awe till the spell was broken by the coronation of the great Charles. This last motive indeed was one which could have no effect upon the mind of Ælle or Ceawlin; but its place would be fully supplied by utter ignorance, carelessness, and contempt for the titles and institutions of the vanquished. Consul, Patrician, Augustus, all would be [Sidenote: Real position of the “Tyrants” or provincial Emperors.] alike unintelligible and despicable in their eyes. And, before we rule that an English Bretwalda or an Emperor of Britain was in any sense a successor of the so-called Tyrants[181] or provincial Emperors, let us remember what the position of these Tyrants or Emperors really was. Carausius, Maximus, Constantine, and the rest, never called themselves Emperors of Britain. According to the strict Imperial theory, an Emperor of Britain is an absurd impossibility; the titles assumed by Eadgar are in themselves as ridiculous as the titles assumed by those who in later times have called themselves “Emperor of Austria,” “Emperor of Hayti,” “Emperor of Mexico,” “Emperor of the French.” The Emperor is essentially Lord of Rome and of the World; and it was only by setting itself up as being in some sort another world that Britain could lay any claim to either a Pope or an Emperor of its own. [Sidenote: Not Emperors of Britain, but pretenders to the whole Roman Empire while possessing only a part.] But the very last thought of the old Tyrants or provincial Emperors would have been to claim any independent existence for Britain, Gaul, or any other part of the Empire of which they might have gained possession. Nothing could be further from their wishes than to set up anything like a separate national kingdom. They were pretenders to the whole Empire, if they could get it, and they not uncommonly did get it in the end. A man who began as tyrant often became a lawful Emperor, either by deposing the reigning Emperor or by [Sidenote: Carausius. 286–294.] being accepted by him as his colleague. Carausius, the first British Emperor according to this theory, held not only Britain but part of Gaul. It must not be thought that part of Gaul had been annexed to the dominions of a national sovereign of Britain, as Calais was by Edward the Third and Boulogne by Henry the Eighth. Britain and part of Gaul were simply those parts of the Roman Empire of which Carausius, a candidate for the whole Empire, had been able actually to possess himself. At last Carausius was accepted as a colleague by Diocletian and Maximian, and so became a lawful Cæsar and Augustus. [Sidenote: Allectus. 294–297.] Allectus was less fortunate; he never got beyond Britain, and instead of being acknowledged as a colleague, he was defeated and slain by Constantius. Constantius himself reigned in Britain; but no one would call Constantius a British Emperor, and Carausius was a British Emperor [Sidenote: Magnentius. 350.] just as little. Magnentius, Maximus, Constantine, were simply Emperors whose career began in Britain and not in [Sidenote: Maximus. 383–388.] Syria or Africa; they were not content to reign as British [Sidenote: Constantine. 407.] Emperors or Emperors of Britain; they speedily asserted their claim to as large a share of the Roman world as they had strength to win and to keep. Now it is perfectly possible, especially if any of the Welsh princes were descendants of Maximus, that a remembrance of these Emperors may have survived in Britain, and it is not unlikely that the conquest of Gaul by an Emperor who set forth from Britain may be the kernel of truth round which much of the mythical history of Arthur has [Sidenote: No analogy between these Emperors and the English Bretwaldas.] gathered. But it is certainly hard to understand the analogy between a Roman general, trying to obtain the whole Roman Empire, but who is unable to obtain more than Britain or Britain and Gaul, and a Teutonic chief, winning by his own sword some sort of superiority over the other princes, Celtic and Teutonic, within the isle of Britain. The essence of the position of Carausius and his successors is that they aspired to an universal dominion, and with such dominion any independent or national existence on the part of Britain would have been utterly inconsistent. The essence of the position of an English Bretwalda or Basileus is that he is the very embodiment of an independent national existence, that he aspires to a dominion purely insular, that he claims supremacy over everything within the island, but aspires to no conquests beyond it. He is a “Wielder of Britain,” Emperor so far as he is independent of either continental Empire, Emperor so far as he exercises Imperial power over vassal princes within his own island. I can see no likeness between him and a Roman general, who aspires to reign on the seven hills, but who is unluckily shut up against his will within the four seas of Britain.[182]

I infer then that the Imperial style which was affected by our Kings from Æthelstan onwards was not derived by any continuous tradition from any earlier British or Roman [Sidenote: Explanation to be found in the circumstances of the time.] Empire. It is in the circumstances of their own kingdom, and in the general circumstances of Europe during the ninth and tenth centuries, that we must look for the causes which led them to challenge Imperial rank. Ecgberht, [Sidenote: Charles and Ecgberht.] it should not be forgotten, was the friend, the guest, and no doubt the pupil, of Charles the Great.[183] Ecgberht [Sidenote: 802.] was chosen to the West-Saxon throne two years after the Old Rome re-asserted, in the person of Charles, her right to choose her own Emperor. We cannot doubt that, through his whole career, he had Charles before him as his model, and that his object was to win for himself the same kind of dominion in his own island which Charles had won on the continent. But Ecgberht never assumed any higher style than that of King of the English, and even that, as far as we know, but once only.[184] In his days the unity of the Western Empire still remained unbroken under his benefactor and his benefactor’s son. It was enough for the West-Saxon King to feel himself well nigh the only independent prince in Western Christendom, [Sidenote: The plans of Ecgberht, checked yet in the end helped by the Danish invasions, were fully carried out by Eadward and Æthelstan.] without setting himself up as a rival Emperor. The schemes of Ecgberht, checked under his immediate successors by the Danish invasions, were in the end really promoted by those invasions, through the weakening and destruction of the other English kingdoms. At last his whole plan was carried out in the latest days of Eadward, and it was established in a more thoroughly organized form by Æthelstan. The whole isle of Britain was now, in different degrees of subjection and dependency, under the supreme dominion of the West-Saxon Kings. Now, and not before, begins the use of the Imperial titles. [Sidenote: Greatness of the position of Æthelstan.] Æthelstan, in whose reign the connexion between England and the continent was unusually busy, Æthelstan, Lord of all Britain, connected by marriage and friendship with all the greatest princes of Europe, could hardly fail to take in the greatness of his own position. He might well feel [Sidenote: His assumption of the Imperial style.] himself to be the peer of Emperors. He was the one prince whose dominions had never, since his own nation entered them, acknowledged any superiority in the lord of either Rome. Of our island at least might be said, whether in honour or in reproach,

“De tributo Cæsaris nemo cogitabat; Omnes erant Cæsares; nemo censum dabat.”[185]

[Sidenote: Points of analogy between his position and that of the Emperors.] Whatever vague and transitory homage Cæsar may have received from Scots or Northumbrians, it is certain that no King of the West-Saxons ever knew a superior beyond the limits of his own island. But, from the days of Ecgberht onwards, every King of the West-Saxons had claimed or aspired to a superiority of his own through the whole extent of his own island; and now Æthelstan had converted those lofty dreams into a living reality. Gaul, Spain, Italy, Denmark, the Slavonic and other less known lands beyond the Elbe, all had bowed to the dominion of the first Teutonic Cæsar. To England alone he had been a model and a counsellor, but not a master. As the one perfectly independent prince in Western Christendom, Æthelstan was the equal of Emperors, and within his own island he held the same position which the Emperors held in the rest of the world. Like an Emperor, he not only had his own kingdom, governed under him by his own Dukes or Ealdormen, but his kingdom was surrounded by a circle of vassal princes who paid to him the homage which he himself paid to no superior upon earth. As no other prince in Western Christendom could claim for his own kingdom the same perfect independence of all Imperial superiority, so no other prince in Western Christendom could show, in a crowd of dependent princes, so perfect a reproduction of the Imperial majesty. And [Sidenote: No universally acknowledged Emperor at this time.] it must not be forgotten that during the first half of the tenth century there was not, as there was before and after, any one Emperor universally acknowledged by all the Christian states of the West. The days of the Carolingian Cæsars were past; the days of the Saxon Cæsars were not yet come. Guy, Lambert, Berengar, [Sidenote: 888–896.] were Augusti not less fleeting, and far more feeble, than any of the tyrants of whom Britain had once been so fertile. The King of the English and Lord of all Britain might well feel himself to be a truer representative of Imperial greatness than Emperors whose rule was at most confined to a corner of Italy. He was, beyond all doubt, the second among Western Kings. The Kings of the Eastern Franks, not yet Emperors in formal rank, but marked out in the eyes of all men as the predestined heirs of Charles, were the only rulers who could be held to surpass him in power and glory. Without waiting for any formal coronation, the soldiers of Henry and Otto had saluted their victorious Kings as _Imperatores_ and _Patres Patriæ_, and, with the same feeling, Æthelstan assumed, or received from his counsellors, the titles which placed [Sidenote: Revival of the Empire under Otto [962], not likely to make the English Kings withdraw their Imperial claims.] him on a level with them. The new birth of the Empire during the reign of Eadgar, the coronation of Otto the Great, which at once restored to the Imperial crown no small share of its ancient power and dignity, would by no means tend to make our princes lay aside any Imperial claims which they had already asserted. Eadgar was on the best terms with his Imperial uncle; still it might be thought needful to assert that England owed him no kind of homage, and that the other princes of Britain owed homage to Eadgar and not to Otto.

Here then, as it seems to me, and not in any traditions of Ambrosius or Carausius, is to be found the true explanation of the otherwise startling title of Emperor of [Sidenote: Full import of the Imperial titles.] Britain. That title was meant at once to assert the independence of the English crown upon any foreign superior, and to assert the dependence of all the other powers of Britain upon the English crown. It was meant to assert that the King of the English was, not the homager but the peer, alike of the Imperator of the West and of the Basileus of the East, and it was meant to assert that Scots, Welsh, and Cumbrians owed no duty to Rome or to Byzantium, but only to their Father and Lord at [Sidenote: They go out of use after the Norman Conquest, because insular dominion is no longer the chief object.] Winchester. The Imperial titles last in common use down to the Norman Conquest; after that their employment is rare, and they gradually die out altogether. And why? Because the Norman and Angevin Kings, though they were by no means disposed willingly to abate a tittle of the rights of their predecessors within the four seas of Britain, were far from looking on insular dominion as the main object of their policy. They were Kings of England, and they knew the strength and value of England; some of them had wisdom enough to value England for her own sake; still in the eyes of all of them, one main value of England was to serve as a nursery of men and a storehouse of money to serve their plans of continental ambition. They were Kings of England, but they were also Counts of Anjou, Dukes of Normandy and Aquitaine, striving after an equality with their liege lord at Paris, sometimes perhaps after a superiority over him. The British Empire in which Æthelstan gloried, and in which Cnut in the midst of his Northern triumphs gloried no less, was assuredly not despised by the wisdom of Henry of Anjou. But if it was one object of his policy, it was not the only one. In the eyes of the Poitevin knight-errant who came after him, it seemed hardly worth keeping; and it was something which could not be kept in the grasp of John and Henry the [Sidenote: The old claims take a more strictly feudal shape under Edward the First.] Third. At last in the great Edward there again arose a true Bretwalda, one who saw that the dominion of Æthelstan and Eadgar was a worthier prize than shadowy dreams of aggrandizement beyond the sea. But by this time the notion of a British Empire had given way to more purely feudal ideas, and his claims to supremacy took their shape [Sidenote: Later traces of the ideas.] accordingly. But traces of the old ideas still lingered on. Through the fourteenth, the fifteenth, the sixteenth centuries, a chain of instances may be put together which show that the idea of an Empire of Britain was not wholly forgotten.[186] Even when no Imperial claims were put forward on behalf of England, it was thought needful carefully to shut out all claims on the part of any other power to Imperial supremacy over England. And in the sixteenth century, along with the revived study of our early history, the Imperial titles themselves revive in a more definite form. The Imperial character of the English sovereignty was strongly asserted both by Henry the Eighth and by Elizabeth. In the days of Charles the Fifth a denial of all dependence on the Roman Cæsar may have been no less needful than a denial of all dependence on the Roman Pontiff. Henry may well have deemed it prudent to take the same precautions against his Imperial nephew which Eadgar had taken against his Imperial uncle. Protests of the like sort were again made in the reign of Elizabeth. We find her more than once formally described as Empress, an Empress whose Empire reached from “the Orcade isles to the mountains Pyrenee.” In this last description we find the key to the style. An Empire implied subordinate kingdoms. Elizabeth claimed to be Empress as being independent of the continental Emperor; she also claimed to be Empress as having a royal vassal within her own island. The same phrases which assert the independence of England upon the Austrian Emperor also assert the dependence of Scotland upon the English Empress.[187]

This then I believe to be the true account of the Imperial titles and Imperial pretensions of the English Kings in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Our Kings meant to assert at once their own perfect independence and the dependence of the other princes of Britain upon them. [Sidenote: Growth of the English system of dependencies. 827–1869.] It is perhaps worth notice that in all this we may see the beginnings of a system which has gone on to our own day. From the days of Ecgberht onwards the House of Cerdic has never been without its dependencies. Their sphere has gradually been enlarged; as nearer dependencies have been incorporated with the central state, another more distant circle of dependencies has arisen beyond them. Wessex held the supremacy over England; England held it over Great Britain; Great Britain held it over Ireland and a crowd of smaller islands and colonies; the United Kingdom holds it over colonies and dependencies of every kind, from Man to New Zealand. Since the days of the Roman Commonwealth, no other land has had so large an experience of the relations between a central power and half-incorporated states of various kinds. [Sidenote: Imperial character still retained by England.] In this sense, England is now a more truly Imperial power than any other in the world. Putting aside the local associations of Rome and Constantinople, no modern state comes so near to the notion of an Empire as understood either by Æthelstan or by Otto. There is therefore an historical meaning in the familiar phrases of “the British Empire” and “the Imperial Parliament,” whether any remembrance of ancient Bretwaldas and Basileis was or was not present to the minds of those who devised them.

[Sidenote: Summary.]

I thus bring to an end my survey of the political condition of England and its dependent states in the tenth and eleventh centuries. The dominion won by Eadward and Æthelstan was handed over unimpaired to William the Bastard. We have seen what that dominion was. There was a home monarchy in which the power of the King was strictly limited by law, but in which his personal influence was almost unbounded. There was also an external lordship over a body of vassal princes who had the right and the duty, though perhaps but seldom the will, to appear in the Great Council of their Over-lord along with the Bishops and Ealdormen of his own realm. [Sidenote: The old Kingdom and Empire transferred to William.] This dominion was, by the forced election of the English Witan, transferred to the hands of the Norman Conqueror. Under his successors the character of the monarchy [Sidenote: Gradual changes] gradually altered, but it altered far more through a change in the spirit of the administration than through actual [Sidenote: after the Conquest.] changes in the laws. The power of the crown was vastly increased in the hands of William and his sons, and in other respects the kingdom gradually changed from the old Teutonic to the later mediæval form. But it was always the constitutional doctrine that William, a legal claimant of the crown, received the crown as it had been held by his predecessors. It follows that a thorough knowledge of the position of those predecessors, of the nature of their authority and of the limits on their power, is absolutely necessary, if only to understand the position of the Norman Kings, what changes they made and what changes they did not make. What was the real nature and amount of those changes, political and social, will be shown in my last volume. And, along with them, I shall deal more specially with some points, like language and art, the earlier forms of which are most fittingly treated of by way of comparison with their later forms. For the present we turn for a while from the history and state of England as they stood under Ælfred and his immediate successors, to trace out the early history of the land which became closely connected with England in the course of the tenth century, and which sent forth the conquerors of England in the eleventh.

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