[(43)] The best instance in English History of the process by which a kingdom changed into a province, by going through the intermediate stage of a half-independent Ealdormanship, is to be found in the history of South-Western Mercia under its Ealdorman Æthelred and the Lady Æthelflæd, in the reigns of Ælfred and Eadward the Elder. See Norman Conquest, i. 563.
[(44)] See Norman Conquest, i. 39, 78.
[(45)] Iliad, ix. 160:—
καὶ μοὶ ὑποστήτω, ὅσσον βασιλεύτερός εἰμι.
[(46)] The instances in which a great kingdom has been broken up into a number of small states practically independent, but owning a nominal superiority in the successor of the original Sovereign, are not few. In the case of the Empire I have found something to say about it in my Historical Essays, 151, and in the case of the Caliphate in my History and Conquest of the Saracens, 137. How the same process took place with the Mogul Empire in India is set forth by Lord Macaulay in his Essays on Lord Clive and Warren Hastings. But he should not have compared the great Mogul, with his nominal sovereignty, to “the most helpless driveller among the later Carlovingians,” a class whom Sir Francis Palgrave has rescued from undeserved contempt. But the breaking up of the Western Kingdom is none the less an example of the same law. The most remarkable thing is the way, or rather the three different ways, in which the scattered members have been brought together again in Germany, Italy, and France.
This process of dismemberment, where a nominal supremacy is still kept by the original Sovereign, must be distinguished from that of falling back upon Dukes or Ealdormen after a period of kingly rule. In this latter case it would seem that no central sovereignty went on.
[(47)] At this time of day I suppose it is hardly necessary to prove the elective character of Old-English kingship. I have said what I have to say about it in Norman Conquest, i. 106, 596. But I may quote one most remarkable passage from the report made in 787 to Pope Hadrian the First by George and Theophylact, his Legates in England (Haddan and Stubbs, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents, iii. 453). “Sanximus ut in ordinatione Regum nullus permittat pravorum prævalere assensum: sed legitime Reges a sacerdotibus et senioribus populi eligantur.” One would like to know who the “pravi” here denounced were. The passage sounds very like a narrowing of the franchise or some other interference with freedom of election, but in any case it bears witness to the elective character of our ancient kingship, and to the general popular character of the constitution.
[(48)] I have described the powers of the Witan, as I understand them and as they were understood by Mr. Kemble, at vol. i. p. 108 of the History of the Norman Conquest and in some of the Appendices to that volume. With regard to the powers of the Witan, I find no difference between my own views and those of Professor Stubbs in the Introductory Sketch to his Select Charters (p. 11), where the relations between the King and the Witan, and the general character of our ancient constitution, are set forth with wonderful power and clearness. But I find Mr. Stubbs and myself differing altogether as to the constitution of the Witenagemót. I look upon it as an Assembly of the whole kingdom, after the type of the smaller assemblies of the shire and other lesser divisions. Mr. Stubbs fully admits the popular character of the smaller assemblies, but denies any such character to the national gathering. It is dangerous to set oneself up against the greatest master of English constitutional history, but I must ask the reader to weigh what I say in note Q in the Appendix to my first volume.
[(49)] I have collected some of the instances of deposition in Northumberland in the note following that on the constitution of the Witenagemót. (Norman Conquest, i. 593.) It is not at all unlikely that the report of George and Theophylact quoted above may have a special reference to the frequent changes among the Northumbrian Kings.
[(50)] I have mentioned all the instances at vol. i. p. 105 of the Norman Conquest: Sigeberht, Æthelred, Harthacnut, Edward the Second, Richard the Second, James the Second. It is remarkable that nearly all are the second of their respective names; for, besides Æthelred, Edward, Richard, and James, Harthacnut might fairly be called Cnut the Second.