The Gá is the second and final form of unsevered possession; for every larger aggregate is but the result of a gradual reduction of such districts, under a higher political or administrative unity, different only in degree and not in kind from what prevailed individually in each. The kingdom is only a larger Gá than ordinary; indeed the Gá itself was the original kingdom.
But the unsevered possession or property which we thus find in the Gá is by no means to be considered in the same light as that which has been described in the Mark. The inhabitants are settled as Markmen, not as Gá-men: the cultivated land which lies within the limits of the larger community is all distributed into the smaller ones.
As the Mark contained within itself the means of doing right between man and man, i. e., its Markmót; as it had its principal officer or judge, and beyond a doubt its priest and place of religious observances, so the County, Scír or Gá had all these on a larger and more imposing scale; and thus it was enabled to do right between Mark and Mark, as well as between man and man, and to decide those differences the arrangement of which transcended the powers of the smaller body. If the elders and leaders of the Mark could settle the mode of conducting the internal affairs of their district, so the elders and leaders of the Gá (the same leading markmen in a corporate capacity) could decide upon the weightier causes that affected the whole community; and thus the Scírgemót or Shiremoot was the completion of a system of which the Mearcmót was the foundation. Similarly, as the several smaller units had arrangements on a corresponding scale for divine service, so the greater and more important religious celebrations in which all the Marks took part, could only be performed under the auspices and by the authority of the Gá. Thus alone could due provision be made for sacrifices which would have been too onerous for a small and poor district, and an equalization of burthens be effected; while the machinery of government and efficient means of protection were secured.
At these great religious rites, accompanied as they ever were by the solemn Ðing, placitum or court, thrice in the year the markmen assembled unbidden: and here they transacted the ordinary and routine business required. On emergencies however, which did not brook delay, the leaders could issue their peremptory summons to a bidden Ðing, and in this were then decided the measures necessary for the maintenance and well-being of the community, and the mutual guarantee of life and honour. To the Gá then probably belonged, as an unsevered possession, the lands necessary for the site and maintenance of a temple, the supply of beasts for sacrifice, and the endowment of a priest or priests: perhaps also for the erection of a stockade or fortress, and some shelter for the assembled freemen in the Ðing. Moreover, if land existed which from any cause had not been included within the limits of some Mark, we may believe that it became the public property of the Gá, i. e., of all the Marks in their corporate capacity: this at least may be inferred from the rights exercised at a comparatively later period over waste lands, by the constituted authorities, the Duke, Count or King.
Accident must more or less have determined the seat of the Gá-jurisdiction: perhaps here and there some powerful leading Mark, already in the possession of a holy site, may have drawn the neighbouring settlers into its territory: but as the possession and guardianship of the seat of government could not but lead to the vindication of certain privileges and material advantages to its holders, it is not unreasonable to believe that where the Marks coalesced on equal terms, the temple-lands would be placed without the peculiar territorial possession of each, as they often were in Greece, upon the ἐσχατιὰ or boundary-land. On the summit of a range of hills, whose valleys sufficed for the cultivation of the markmen, on the watershed from which the fertilizing streams descended, at the point where the boundaries of two or three communities touched one another, was the proper place for the common periodical assemblages of the free men: and such sites, marked even to this day by a few venerable oaks, may be observed in various parts of England[[127]].
The description which has been given might seem at first more properly to relate to an abstract political unity than to a real and territorial one: no doubt the most important quality of the Gá or Scír was its power of uniting distinct populations for public purposes: in this respect it resembled the shire, while the sheriff’s court was still of some importance; or even yet, where the judges coming on their circuit, under a commission, hold a shiremoot or court in each shire for gaol-delivery. Yet the Shire is a territorial division[[128]] as well as an abstract and merely legal formulary, although all the land comprised within it is divided into parishes, hamlets, vills and liberties.
Strictly speaking, the Shire, apart from the units that make it up, possesses little more land than that which the town-hall, the gaol, or the hospital may cover. When for the two latter institutions we substitute the fortress of the king, and a cathedral, which was the people’s and not the bishop’s, we have as nearly as possible the Anglosaxon shire-property, and the identity of the two divisions seems proved. Just as the Gá (pagus) contains the Marks (vicos), and the territory of them all, taken together, makes up the territory of the Gá, so does the Shire contain hamlets, parishes and liberties, and its territorial expanse is distributed into them. As then the word Mark is used to denote two distinct things,—a territorial division and a corporate body,—so does the word Gá or Scír denote both a machinery for government and a district in which such machinery prevails. The number of Marks included in a single Gá must have varied partly with the variations of the land itself, its valleys, hills and meadows: to this cause may have been added others arising, to some extent, from the original military organization and distribution, from the personal character of a leader, or from the peculiar tenets and customs of a particular Mark. But proximity, and settlement upon the same land, with the accompanying participation in the advantages of wood and water, are ever the most active means of uniting men in religious and social communities; and it is therefore reasonable to believe that the influence most felt in the arrangement of the several Gás was in fact a territorial one, depending upon the natural conformation of the country.
Some of the modern shire-divisions of England in all probability have remained unchanged from the earliest times; so that here and there a now existent Shire may be identical in territory with an ancient Gá. But it may be doubted whether this observation can be very extensively applied: obscure as is the record of our old divisions, what little we know, favours the supposition that the original Gás were not only more numerous than our Shires, but that these were not always identical in their boundaries with those Gás whose locality can be determined.
The policy or pedantry of Norman chroniclers has led them to pass over in silence the names of the ancient divisions, which nevertheless were known to them[[129]]. Wherever they have occasion to refer to our Shires, they do so by the names they still bear; thus Florence of Worcester and William of Malmesbury name, to the south of the Humber, Kent, Wiltshire, Berkshire, Dorset, Sussex, Southampton, Surrey, Somerset, Devonshire, Cornwall, Gloucester, Worcester, Warwick, Cheshire, Derby, Stafford, Shropshire, Hereford, Oxford, Buckingham, Hertford, Huntingdon, Bedford, Northampton, Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham, Cambridge, Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex, comprising with Middlesex thirty-two of the shires, out of forty into which England is now distributed.
Yet even these names and divisions are of great antiquity: Asser, in his life of Ælfred, mentions by name, Berkshire, Essex, Kent, Surrey, Somerset, Sussex, Lincoln, Dorset, Devon, Wiltshire and Southampton, being a third of the whole number: unfortunately, from his work being composed in Latin and his consequent use of paga, we cannot tell how many of these divisions were considered by him as Scír.