[(37)] To say nothing of other objections to this derivation, its author must have fancied that ing and not end was the ending of the Old-English participle. The mistake is as old as Sir Thomas Smith. See his Commonwealth of England, p. 12.
[(38)] See Norman Conquest, i. 583, and the passages there quoted. I am afraid of meddling with Sanscrit, but it strikes me that the views of Allen and Kemble are not inconsistent with a connexion with the Sanscrit Ganaka. As one of the curiosities of etymology, it is worth noticing that Mr. Wedgwood makes the word “probably identical with Tartar chan.”
[(39)] We read in the Chronicles, 449, how, on the first Jutish landing in Kent, “heora heretogan wæron twegen gebroðra Hengest and Horsa.” It is only in 455, on the death of Horsa, that “æfter Þam Hengest feng to rice and Æsc his sunu”; and in 488, seemingly on the death of Hengest, “Æsc feng to rice and was xxiiii wintra Cantwara cyning.” So among the West-Saxons, in 495, “coman twegen ealdormen on Brytene, Cerdic and Cynric his sunu.” It is only in 519 that we read “her Cerdic and Cynric West-Sexena rice onfengun.”
[(40)] The distinction between Kings and Jarls comes out very strongly in the account of the battle of Ashdown (Æscesdune) in the Chronicles in 871. The Danes “wæron on twam gefylcum, on oþrum wæs Bagsecg and Healfdene, þa hæðenan cingas and on oðrum wæron þa eorlas.” It may be marked that in the English army King Æthelred is set against the Danish Kings, and his brother the Ætheling Ælfred against the Jarls. So in the Song of Brunanburh we read of the five Kings and seven Jarls who were slain.
| “Fife lagon | sweordum aswefede, |
| on ðæm campstede | swilce seofone eac |
| ciningas geonge, | eorlas Anlafes.” |
We may mark that the Kings were young, as if they had been chosen “ex nobilitate;” nothing is said of the age of the Jarls, who were doubtless chosen “ex virtute.”
[(41)] I have quoted the passage from Bæda about the satraps in Norman Conquest, i. 579. The passage in the Life of Saint Lebuin, quoted in note 15, also speaks of “principes” as presiding over the several pagi or gauen, but he speaks of no King or other common chief over the whole country. And this is the more to be marked, as there was a “generale concilium” of the whole Old-Saxon nation, formed, as we are told, of twelve chosen men from each gau. This looks like an early instance of representation, but it should be remembered that we are here dealing with a constitution strictly Federal.
In the like sort we find the rulers of the West-Goths at the time of their crossing the Danube spoken of as Judices. See Ammianus, xxvii. 5, and the notes of Lindenbrog and Valesius. So also Gibbon, c. xxv. (iv. 305, ed. Milman). So Jornandes[(26)] speaks of “primates eorum, et duces, qui regum vice illis præerant.” Presently he calls Fredigern “Gothorum regulus,” like the subreguli or under-cyningas of our own History. Presently in c. 28 Athanaric, the successor of Fredigern, is pointedly called Rex.
On all this, see Allen, Royal Prerogative, 163.
[(42)] See Norman Conquest, i. 75, 580.