History of the Origin of Representative Government in Europe

by François Guizot

Of Local Institutions.

In Frankish Gaul, as among the Anglo-Saxons, the territory was divided into counties, hundreds, and tythings. [Footnote 14]

[Footnote 14: That is, of course, districts analogous to these divisions.]

The counts were called grafen, judices; the centeniers, centgrafen; and the tything-men, tungini, thingrafen. Each of these officers held a court, placitum, mallum, at which justice was administered, and the business of the district transacted. This court was at first an assembly of all the free men of the district; they were bound to attend, and a heavy fine was imposed as the penalty for non-attendance. There, as I have said, they distributed justice, and deliberated upon matters of common interest. Civil transactions, sales, wills, enfranchisements, were carried on in public. There, also, military convocations were made. The court or plaid of the tything-man, decanus, is seldom met with, and was of little importance, as in England. The powers of the courts or assemblies of free men, held by the centenarii and vicarii were somewhat limited; judgments could not be given upon questions involving property or personal liberty, unless it were in presence of the imperial envoys or the counts.

Such were the free institutions and the meetings for common deliberation, of separate localities. These primitive plaids correspond to the ancient assemblies of the Germans in Germany.

Besides the plaids of freemen, appears the jurisdiction of the nobles or important landowners over the persons who dwelt on their domains. The chieftain distributed justice to his comrades, or, as they had now become, his colonists. His jurisdiction was not, however, altogether arbitrary; his comrades were his assessors in his court. The conjuratores, who attested the truth of the facts stated, almost entirely settled the affair. If we consider these institutions in their origin, we find that the seignorial courts of justice, although obscure and somewhat inactive, existed simultaneously with the assemblies of freemen, exempt from the circumscription and jurisdiction of the officers of the crown. The jurisdiction of the churches was derived from the jurisdiction of the seigneurs, and both were exercised in virtue of the proprietorship of the domain, which rendered the landlord the patron of its inhabitants.

Rudiments Of Feudalism.

These are the first rudiments of that feudal organization which, by establishing the authority and jurisdiction of the seigneur over his tenants, vassals or colonists, constantly tended to destroy the authority and jurisdiction of the assemblies of free men. A conflict began between the feudal principle of hierarchical subordination, and the principle of the union of equals in common deliberation. This conflict commenced as early as the beginning of the epoch which now occupies our attention.

Let us now examine how the royal power was exercised in separate localities during this period. The dukes, counts, centeniers, and others, were probably at the outset, as I have already observed, not mere delegates of the king, but the natural chieftains, the most powerful and extensive landowners. It is quite erroneous to believe that, originally, a county corresponded to what is now called a department, and that the king appointed and sent a count to govern it as he now sends a prefect. The king, the head of the nation, naturally directed the most important man in the district to convoke together the free men of the district for military purposes, and to collect the revenues of the royal domains; and this person thus received a sort of appointment from the king. The increasing importance of the palace and court of the kings—the influence of Roman institutions and ideas, at length made this appointment the source of a title. The counts became Leudes, and vice versâ, the Leudes became counts.