them, and five days of safety only were allowed them to leave the country. They obeyed, and went exiles into Flanders." We have another instance of the great council both banishing and pardoning. A great gemot, in 1052, was assembled at London, which, "all the eorls and the best men in the country" attended. There Godwin made his defence, and purged himself before his lord the king and all the people, that he was guiltless of the crime charged on him and his sons. The king forgave him and his family, and restored them their possessions and the earldom. But the archbishop and all the Frenchmen were banished." The same power was exerted in 1055. A witena-gemot was assembled seven days before Mid-Lent, and eorl Elfgar was outlawed for high treason, or, as it is expressed, because he was a swica, a betrayer of the king and all his people. His earldom was given to another. So all the optimates meeting at Cyrnceaster, in the reign of Ethelred, banished Elfric for high treason, and confiscated all his possessions to the king.y At a great council, held in 716, one of their main objects is expressed to have been to examine anxiously into the state of the churches and monasteries in Kent, and their possessions. At these councils, grants of land were made and confirmed. The instances of this are innumerable. Thus, in 811, Cenwulf, at a very great council convened in London, gave some lands of his own right, with the advice and consent of the said council.* It would be tedious to enumerate all the grants which we know of, where the consent of the council is stated. Many have been already alluded to. At the council in 716, they forbade any layman taking any thing from the monastery therein named; and they freed the lands belonging to it from various impositions and payments.b At the council in 824, they inquired into the necessities of the secular deputies, as well as into the monasterial disciplines, and into the ecclesiastical morals. Here a complaint was made by the archbishop, that he had been unjustly deprived of some land. He cited those who withheld it. The writings concerning the land were produced, and viva voce evidence heard. The writings and the land were ordered by the council to be given to the archbishop. At a council in 903, an ealdorman stated that his title deeds y Sax. Chron. 164. y MS. Claud. C. ix. 123, 124. Ibid. 168. * Ibid. 169. z Astle's MS. Chart. No. 2. a Ibid. No. 8. But it would seem that even the king could not grant lands without the consent of the witena-gemot, for a gift of land by a king is mentioned: "Sed, quia non fuit de consensu magnatum regni, donum id non potuit valere." 1 Dugd. Mon. 20. b Ibid. No. 2. c Astle's MS. Chart. No. 12. had been destroyed by fire. He applied to the council for leave to have new ones. New ones were ordered to be made out to him, as nearly similar to the former as memory could make them.d What was done at one council was sometimes confirmed at another. Thus what was done in the great council in Baccanfield was confirmed in the same year at another held in July at Cloveshoe. So a gift at Easter was confirmed at Christmas. That the witena-gemot sometimes resisted the royal acts, appears from their not choosing to consider valid a gift of land by Baldred, king of Kent, because he did not please them. The witena-gemot frequently appears to us, in the Saxon remains, as the high court of judicature of the kingdom, or as determining disputed questions about land. In 896, Ethelred, the ealdorman of Mercia, convened all the witan of Mercia, (which had not yet been reduced into a province,) the bishops, ealdormen, and all the nobility, at Gloucester, with the leave of Alfred. "They consulted how they most justly might hold their theod-scipe, both for God and for the world, and right many men, both clergy and laity, concerning the lands and other things, that were detained." At this gemot, the bishop of Worcester made his complaint of the woodland of which he was deprived. All the witan declared that the church should have its rights preserved, as well as other persons. A discussion and an accommodation took place.s In another case of disputed lands, the bishop states, that he could obtain no right before Ethelred was lord of Mercia. He assembled the witan of Mercia at Saltwic, about manifold needs, both ecclesiastical and civil. "Then (says the bishop) I spoke of the monastery with the enre ge price, (conveyances of the land,) and desired my right. Then Eadnoth, and Alfred, and Ælfstan, pledged me that they would either give it to me, or would, among their kinsfolk, find a man who would take it on the condition of being obedient to me." No man, however, would take the land on these terms, and the parties came to an accommodation on the subject.h In 851, the monks of Croyland, having suffered much from some violent neighbours, laid their complaint before the witenagemot. The king ordered the sheriff of Lincoln, and his other officers in that district, to take a view of the lands of the monastery, and to make their report to him and his council, wherever they should be, at the end of Easter. This was done, and the grievances were removed.i d Ibid. No. 21. f Spelm. Conc. p. 340. h Ibid. p. 120. e Ibid. No. 2; and MS. Claud. C. 9, 124. Heming, Chart. i. P. 93. Ingulf, p. 12. See other instances, Hcm. p. 17,27, 50. The power of the witena-gemot over the public gelds of the kingdom, we cannot detail. The lands of the Anglo-Saxons, the burghs, and the people, appear to us, in all the documents of our ancestors, as subjected to certain definite payments to the king as to their lords; and we have already stated, that by a custom, whose origin is lost in its antiquity, among the Anglo-Saxons, all their lands, unless specially exempted, were liable to three great burdens, the building and reparation of bridges and fortifications, and to military expeditions. But what we now call taxation seems to have begun in the time of Ethelred, and to have arisen from the evils of a foreign invasion. Henry of Huntingdon, speaking of the payment of ten thousand pounds to the Danes, to buy off their hostility, says, "This evil has lasted to our days, and long will continue, unless the mercy of God interferes; for we now, (in the twelfth century) pay that to our kings from custom, which was paid to the Danes, from unspeakable terror." This payment, and those which followed, are stated to have been ordered by the king and the witena-gemot.k Under sovereigns of feeble capacity, the witena-gemot seems to have been the scene of those factions which always attend both aristocracies and democracies, when no commanding talents exist to predominate in the discussions, and to shape the council. The reigns of Ethelred the Second, and of the Confessor, were distinguished by the turbulence, and even treason of the nobles. Of the former, our Malmsbury writes, "Whenever the duces met in the council, some chose one thing and some another. They seldom agreed in any good opinion. They consulted more on domestic treasons, than on the public necessities."l It was indeed becoming obvious that the extreme independence of the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy, during the last two reigns, was destroying the monarchy and injuring the nation. And if the Norman Conqueror had failed in his invasion, and had not by tightening the bonds of feudality, homage, wardship, and law, reduced the diverging and contradictory power of the nobility into a state of more salutary subordination, it would have become pernicious to the king and people, and even to itself; and have brought the land to that state of faction and civil warfare from which the Saxons had rescued it, and of which Poland and Albania have given us modern examples. j Hen. Hunt. lib. v. p. 357. Bromton, Chron. p. 879. Ingulf also complains heavily of these exactions, p. 55. * Sax. Chron. 126, 132, 136, 140, 142. Unless we refer it to the Anglo-Saxon period, I do not see when the principle could have originated which is recognised in Magna Charta and in its preparatory articles, and is so concisely mentioned by Chaucer in these two lines: "The king taxeth not his men, 1 Malmsb. p. 63. Ecl. fol. p. 88. CHAPTER VI. Some General Principles of the Anglo-Saxon Constitution and Laws. FROM a careful perusal of the laws, charters, and documents of the Anglo-Saxons which remain, the following may be selected as a statement of some of the great general principles of their constitution and laws. At the head of the state was THE KING; the executive authority of the nation, and an essential part of its legislature: the receiver and expender of all taxations; the centre and source of all jurisprudence; the supreme chief of its armies; the head of its landed property; the lord of the free, and of all burghs, excepting such as he had consented to grant to others; the person intrusted to summon the witena-gemot, and presiding at it: possessed of the other prerogatives that have been noticed; but elective, and liable to be controlled by the witena-gemot. Co-existing as anciently as the sovereign, if not anterior, and his elector, was a WITENA-GEMOT or parliament, consisting of the nobles holding land, including the superior thanes, and containing also milites, or those who were afterwards called knights, and likewise others without any designations, who were probably citizens and burgesses. A church establishment pervaded the country, consisting of archbishops, bishops, abbots, and priors, who were dignitaries sitting in the witena-gemot; comprising also inferior degrees of clergy, as deans, canons, archdeacons, priests, parochial rectors, &c.; besides the monks and nuns of their various cloisters. The highest orders of nobility were open to the lowest classes of life. A nobility existed with the titles of ealdorman, hold, heretoch, eorl, and thegn. These titles were personal and not inherited. That of thegn was probably connected with their lands. Some part of the nobility were distinguished by their birth, others by their office. The possessed lands of all were transmissible to their heirs as they pleased by their wills: but no system of primogeniture. The landed property of the nation was generally bound to build castles and bridges, and to serve the king for a limited time, in his military expeditions, in proportion to the quantity of their land. To certain extents of it, independent legal jurisdictions were attached, exempt from all others. An order of milites, made by the investment of the military belt, who were the privileged classes that served for the lands of the nobility and clergy and for their own, and who could not serve in the army in this rank nor command others until it had been conferred. These were the superior class of the free. A class of freemen, with the king for their lord and defender, subject to no other master but whom they chose to serve. The majority of the population, slaves or bondsmen to the other classes of society, with many shades of servility or of employment; who had no con VOL. II. 27 stitutional or political right, but were part of the property of their master, and as such bought, sold, and transmissible at his pleasure; but for whose benefit the laws were watchful, and made from time to time various kind and superintending regulations, to promote their good usage and emancipation as well as good conduct. No property of the nobility, clergy, or free, was taxed without the consent of these orders, given in the witena-gemot. All the nobles and free were required to be always armed with arms appropriate to their condition. All the free were required to place themselves in some tything, and every one was to be under bail for his general good behaviour, under certain regulations, and the bail were to answer for his quiet conduct. Bail was to be given for all prosecutions, and for all defences. Offences were punished by fines to the state, as well as by compensation to the party. Every class had a pecuniary value fixed on it, at which each individual of it was estimated, called his were; and also another called mund, by which the value of his social peace was guarded. A high regard for the personal liberty of the free subject, while unoffending against the laws; and repeated provisions made to punish those who imprisoned or bound him without legal justice. Their principle of repelling criminal accusations was that of the accused producing a certain number of his neighbours, who swore to their belief of his innocence. Of this custom our habit of producing witnesses to character is a remnant. This imposed on every one the strongest obligation to maintain a good character in his neighbourhood. To this principle was attached at length the right of trial by jury. No record marks the date of its commencement. It was therefore either one of their immemorial institutions, or was introduced by the Danish colonists among whose countrymen it prevailed. From the extreme independence and violence of the great, and from the warlike spirit and habit of all their society, every stranger and traveller was considered as a suspected person, and jealously watched by many legal restrictions. From the same cause, all purchases above a very small sum were required to be public, and in the presence of witnesses, in every city appointed for that purpose. Although the right of property was a fixed principle among them, yet it was subject to certain rules, both of tenure and transmission, and to certain payments; but none of these seem to have been arbitrary, but all definite, known, and customary. Public fairs at certain seasons, and markets every week, were allowed by law, and usually granted by charter. Tolls and payments to those entitled to receive them accompanied their sales; and tolls also were levied on the high roads on those who passed with traffic. Every man was ordered to perform to others the right that he desired to have himself. Judges were warned that every act should be carefully distinguished, and the judgment be always given righteously according to the deed; and be moderated according to the degree of the offence. The superior orders were emphatically enjoined to comfort and feed the poor; to gladden and not distress widows and orphans, and not to harass or oppress strangers and travellers. The witena-gemot declared that just laws should be established before God and the world, and that all that was unlawful should be carefully abolished; and that every man, poor or rich, should be entitled to his common rights, or, as they termed it, be worthy of his folk-right. |