[11] This practice, indeed, recognized in the laws of Offa alluded to in a subsequent portion of the Essay, continued so late as the Norman king, John, and the unsettled state of the doctrine of succession has been urged in extenuation of his usurpation.
The Anglo-Saxon annals afford an excellent commentary upon this system of a partially elective monarchy. Scenes of strife and bloodshed, family dissensions, party feuds, assassination, and even fratricide were not unfrequent occurrences amid this optional “setting up and pulling down of kings;” and the liberality and seeming justice of the system, that appear so seductive on a first view of the THEORY, fade before the exercise of tyranny, the right of might, and the injustice of usurpation, that evidence themselves as its prolific offspring when reduced to practice.
To aid the king and sanction measures of public administration, as well as give consent to the enactment of laws, there existed among the Saxons an Assembly or Parliament, termed a Wittena-Gemot, consisting of the nobles or thanes, the dignified clergy, and freemen possessing a given portion of land.[12] There was also a county court, termed Shire-Gemot, where all the freeholders assembled twice in each year to receive appeals from the inferior courts (probably the petty courts held by each landholder for conducting the affairs of his own estate); and over this assembly the eaorlderman (earl) and the bishop presided, although they do not appear to have had farther authority allotted to them than was sufficient to keep order among the freeholders, and to offer their advice in causes of difficulty.
[12] Five hides were at first deemed a sufficient qualification, but the required amount rose gradually to forty.
To obtain nobility among the Saxons required one of three qualifications, birth, valour, or wisdom. The parents who had distinguished themselves by either of the latter means transmitted their honors to their children. They who were born of obscure or moderate parentage (provided they were free) had, however, the path of distinction open to them to pursue at will. They who gained their nobility by valour were termed adelingi; they who gained it by wisdom in peace (because generally the fruit of experience) were termed aldermanni (senators or elder men); and they who gained it by a mixed valour and wisdom in war, being illustrious for success rather than simple courage, were termed heretochii.
Beneath the nobles there were two distinct classes, each capable of a subdivision; viz., the freemen, and the slaves or villains. The freeborn (frilingi) were either custodes pagani, country gentlemen, or simply pagani, ceorles or yeomen; while the villains were distinguished as lazzi, bondmen, or free lazzi, freedmen or manumitted slaves.
Of these all except the two last had a share in the representation of their respective states, and free access to, if not the right of voting at, the Micklemote or Wittena-Gemot when assembled.
Whether the priests formed originally a part of the Witan is difficult to determine, but unquestionably they did so after Christianity was received among the Saxons; for within six years after Augustin’s arrival (A. D. 597) Ethelbert, king of Kent, having summoned a council “tam Cleri, quam Populi,” distinguished himself as the promulgator of the earliest written laws of the Anglo-Saxons which are now extant. Of the lawgivers next following him, Hlothære and Eadric, as well as Whitræd, little beyond their names is known; but about a century after Ethelbert’s time, Ina promulgated a fresh and more extensive Code of Laws, “suasu et instituto Episcoporum, omnium Senatorum et natu majorum sapientium populi; in magnâ servorum Dei frequentiâ.” After him Offa promulgated laws throughout his dominions, but these are not now separately extant: and about a century later Alfred the Great, “consultu sapientium,” retained and confirmed all the righteous laws of Ethelbert, Ina, and Offa, while he reformed or rescinded those enactments which circumstances had rendered less efficient or less advisable to be retained.
“The laws of Offa,” remarks Sir Francis Palgrave,[13] “have not been retained in their original form, and we cannot distinguish them in the capitulary of the king of Wessex. But the laws of Ina are annexed to the statute of Alfred, and perhaps we only possess them in his edition. There was no incorporate union of the Saxon kingdoms, and it is, therefore, probable that there were two promulgations of Alfred’s laws, one statute for the West-Saxons, and to which the laws of Ina were appended, and another for Mercia, since lost, to which the laws of Offa were, in like manner, annexed.”
[13] Rise and progress of the English constitution.—Chap. 2.