The King. Limited the highest rank, were bound to find a number of compurgators in addition to their own oath, in order to clear themselves from a charge, the simple oath of a priest was accepted as sufficient. The archbishop, like the King, merely gave his word, without an oath. In every great council the prelates appear to have taken a prominent part, Church and State working together in the closest alliance; while for purely church matters, the clergy, from an early period, had their own synods. At the head of the nation was its elected chief and representative, the Cyning, or King. At the period of which we are now treating, the English kingship was in a transition stage between the old Teutonic type and the later mediæval type, into which it developed in the reign of Henry II. The people were still the source of power, and the king was their minister, not their master. The royal power was strictly limited by that of the Witan or National Council, which, though not a representative assembly in the modern acceptation of the word, stood in relation to the King as the representative of the people. All the laws of the kings express the assent of this council, and there are even instances of royal grants of public land made without Gradual its concurrence, being revoked. With the extension of the Royal power national territory and the growth of the thegnhood, the and dignity. personal dignity and power of Royalty gradually but steadily increased. The King became the personal lord as well as Assumption the chief and representative of his people. From the time of Imperial of Athelstan the kings began to assume Imperial titles, with which the extensive European connections of that increase in titles. 1 The meaning of the word cyning or king, has been explained [by some writers] as child of the race,' from cyn=race or kin, and ing the wellknown patronymic. (Allen, Royal Prerog. p. 176; Freeman, Norm. Conq. i. 82.) In the Rigsmal, where 'Kon' is the son of 'Jarl,' the historical development of the King from the Earl seems to be hinted at. Max Müller (Lectures on the Science of Language, ii. 282, 284), decides that 'the old Norse konr and konungr, the old High German chuninc, and the Anglo-Saxon cyning, were common Aryan words, not formed out of German materials, and therefore not to be explained as regular German derivatives. It corresponds with the Sanscrit ganaka. . . . It simply meant father of a family.' 'But,' as observed by Bishop Stubbs (Const. Hist. i. 140), the Anglo-Saxons probably connected the cyning with the cyn more closely than scientific etymology would permit,' [though, as Max Müller shews, it is not ‘child of the race.'—ED.]. and im sovereign had doubtless rendered them familiar.1 These titles were probably not mere grandiloquent sounds, but were intended to proclaim the Imperial character of the sway which the King of the English asserted over the inhabitants of the whole island, and his independence of any external potentate. In his imperial character, as overlord, the King called himself rex, imperator, casere, basileus, totius Britanniae or totius Albionis; but in his regal character he is still King of his people, not lord of the soil -rex Anglorum, not rex Angliae. The prerogatives and immunities of the King were extensive. Like every other Royal individual, he had originally a wer-gild, or fixed price for prerogatives his life but Alfred made plotting against the king's life munities. 'death-worthy.' He was entitled to maintenance for himself and retinue in public progresses; to all treasure-trove, wrecks, tolls, the profits of markets, mines, and salt-works, and to the forfeited possessions of outlaws. A wite, or fine, was also payable to him, on every breach of the law, in addition to the compensation (bot) due to the person injured. The breach of the king's frith or peace, and the violation of his mund, or special security granted to any one, were severely punished. He alone had sac, or jurisdiction, over persons of the highest rank. Together with the duty of executing justice in the last resort he possessed the prerogative of mercy. He was commander-in-chief of the national host (fyrd), and might accept of money composi 1 Five of Athelstan's sisters were married to foreigners: (1) Eadgifu, to Charles the Simple, the titular Carolingian King of the West Franks; (2) Eadhild, to Hugh the Great, founder of the house of Capet; (3) Eadgyth, to the Emperor Otho I.; 4) Eadgifu, to Louis, King of Arles; and (5) Elfgifu, to the head of the house of Montmorency. [There are acknowledged doubts among genealogists as to the names, and the last of these marriages.-ED.] 2 [This may be partly true, but the titles of Imperial import used in charters of the later West Saxon Kings have very much the ring of the clerkly style of a Chancery following Roman and Byzantine models. They would, of course, be at once explained, if they could be proved to be an inheritance from the Roman dominion in Britain.-ED.] 3 On the Imperial character of the early English kings, see Palgrave, Eng. Commonwealth, pp. 627, cccxlii-cccxliv; and Freeman, Norman Conq. i. 148. 4 The original signification of 'mund' is hand. It specially denoted the power of the head of the family over his wife, children, and slaves, in which sense it may be compared with the similar use of manus in the ancient legal phraseology of the Romans. [Stratmann, Dict. O. Eng. Lang. 3rd ed. 1878, s.v., gives the meanings, mound, palm, protection.—ED.] The Queen. The Athelings. tions in lieu of personal service. With regard to certain classes of offences he was even clothed with an arbitrary jurisdiction, and might either slay, fine, imprison, or banish the culprits, at his own pleasure. The consort of the king, in accordance with the high respect in which women were held by the Germans, seems to have occupied a very exalted position. She was styled emphatically 'the wife' (cwen) and lady (hlæfdige). Her privileges and possessions were probably considerable, although we have but few specific details concerning them. The crimes of Edburga, who poisoned her husband King Brihtric, caused the West Saxons, for a considerable period, to withhold from the King's wife the name and authority of queen. In 856 Ethelwulf gave deep offence to his people by causing his second wife, Judith, to be crowned; but from the date of Edgar's second marriage with Elfrida, in 965, the rank of queen appears to have been restored. Emma, wife and Queen of Ethelred II., seems to have held the city of Exeter as her peculiar property, and to have governed it by her own officers. In Mercia and EastAnglia the queen-consort was entitled to the payment of an extra tenth, called aurum reginae (gersuma), or queengold, on every fine or oblation of more than ten marks paid to the king. This ancient due was claimed so late as the time of Charles the First, by Queen Henrietta Maria.1 The sons and brothers of the King were distinguished by the title of Athelings. The word Atheling, like corl, originally denoted noble birth simply; but, as the royal House of Wessex rose to pre-eminence, and the other royal houses and the nobles generally were thereby reduced to a relatively lower grade, it became restricted to the near kindred of the national King. The more remote members of the royal house fell into the ranks of the ordinary nobility without any distinctive appella 1 Lappenberg, A.-S. ii. 310, 311. On 'Queen' and 'Lady,' see Freeman, Norm. Conq. iv. 768; Append. X. [Stratmann, O. E. Dict., simply explains garsume as treasure. Morgan, Eng. under Norm. p. 47, cites Little Domesday, 353, to shew that wherever the return for land was in gold or silver, it was called gersum.-ED.] tion, on the same principle as the descendant of an English nobleman at the present day, if not heir to the ancestral title, bears, in the third generation, no external sign of his noble relationship. The Athelings ranked above the rest of the nobility; the penalty for a violation of their rights being generally fixed at one-half of that payable for a similar offence against the King. The supreme council of the nation, the representative of The Witethe Teutonic national assembly described by Tacitus, and agemot, or Supreme the progenitor of our own Parliament, was the Witenagemot, Council of or Meeting of the Wise. the nation. tion. Concerning the constitution of this assembly, there exists Its constituconsiderable difference of opinion. It is admitted that in the local gemots every freeman had a right to attend. In the gemot of his own mark or township-whose modern representative is the parish vestry-every Teutonic freeman was entitled to a voice. So every freeman, whether eorl or ceorl, had a voice in the folkmoot of the shire, the shiremoot or county court of later times. But here the divergence makes itself manifest. According to one view1 every freeman had also the right to attend the National Assembly, although this right had practically gone out of use at an early period. The Witenagemot was 'demo cratic in ancient theory, aristocratic in ordinary practice' -a view which, to a certain extent, is supported by the high authority of Kemble. According to another view 3 the central assembly was never formed on the model of the lower courts as the folkmoot of the whole nation, the ordinary freemen never rising higher than their respec 3 1 Freeman, Norm. Conq. i. 107. 2 Kemble (Saxons, ii. 239, 240), after quoting from charters expressions which would seem to imply the presence and consent of the mass of the people in the national assembly, remarks: Whether expressions of this kind were intended to denote the actual presence of the people on the spot; or whether populus is used in a strict and technical sense-that sense which is confined to those who enjoy the full franchise, those who form part of the ToλÍTEVμa—Or finally, whether the assembly of the witan making laws is considered to represent in our modern form an assembly of the whole people, it is clear that the power of self-government is recognized in the latter. 3 Stubbs, Select Chart., Introductory Sketch, 10, 11; and Const. Hist. i. 119-127. tive shiremoots; but yet, constructively, the Witenagemot represented the whole people, whose rights, as against the King, were all vested in this assembly. witan Whatever may have been its theoretical constitution, there is no doubt that practically it was an aristocratic body. Its members were the King, the ealdormen, or governors of shires, the king's thegns, the bishops, abbots, and generally the principes and sapientes of the kingdom. Sapientes wise men, was the common title of those who attended it. The lesser thegns, if entitled to be present, did not, probably, attend in any numbers, so that the assembly can never have been very large. 'The largest amount of signatures,' says Kemble, which I have yet observed is 106, but numbers varying from 90 to 100 are not uncommon, especially after the consolidation of the monarchy. In earlier times, and smaller kingdoms, the numbers must have been much less. . . . Other meetings, which were rather in the nature of conventions, and were held in the presence of armies, may have been much more numerous and tumultuary,-much more like the ancient armed folkmoot on the famous day which put an end to the Merwingian dynasty among the Franks. Such, perhaps, was the gemót which, after Eádmund Irensída's death, elected Cnut sole king of England, or that in which Earl Godwine and his family were outlawed.'1 Although the Witenagemot was not a representative body in the modern sense, it was unquestionably looked upon as representing the whole people and consequently the national will.2 The ancient principle of representation, after a period of obscuration, was restored in another shape by De Montfort and Edward I., in the 13th century. 1 Kemble, Saxons in England, ii. 200, 201, n. 2 In a charter of Athelstan, A.D. 931, the act is said to have been confirmed 'tota plebis generalitate ovante'; and the act of a similar meeting at Winchester in 934, which was attended by the King, four Welsh princes, two archbishops, seventeen bishops, four abbots, twelve dukes, and fifty-two thegns, making a total of ninety-two persons, is described as being executed tota populi generalitate.'-Kemble, Sax., ii. 199. [Cf. Cod. Dip., Nos. 1103, 364.-ED.] |