The proper Anglosaxon name for this officer, as ruler and leader of an army, is Heretoga, in Old-german Herizohho, and in modern German, Herzog,—a word compounded of Here an army, and toga a leader[[302]]. It is in this sense only that Tacitus appears to understand the word Dux, when he tells us that dukes (i. e. generals) are chosen for their valour, in contradistinction to kings, who are recommended by their birth. But inasmuch as the ducal functions in the Anglosaxon polity were by no means confined to service in the field, the peculiar title of Heretoga is very rarely met with, being for the most part replaced by Ealdorman or Aldorman, which denotes civil as well as military preeminence. The word Heretoga accordingly is nowhere found in the Saxon Chronicle, or in the Laws, except in one late passage interpolated into the collection called the Laws of Eádweard the Confessor, and to the best of my remembrance it is found but once in the Charters[[303]]. From a very extensive and careful comparison between the titles used in different documents, it appears that Latin writers of various periods, as Beda, the several compilers of Annals, and the writers of charters, have used the words Dux, Princeps and Comes, in a very arbitrary manner to denote the holders of one and the same office. It is indeed just possible that the grant of peculiar and additional privileges may have been supposed to make a distinction between the duke and the prince, as the charters appear to show something like a system of promotion at least among the Mercian nobility, the same person being found to sign for some time as dux, and afterwards as princeps. In consequence of this confusion, it is necessary to proceed with very great caution the moment we leave contemporaneous history, and become dependent upon the expressions of annalists long subsequent to the events described: for strictly and legally speaking, the words count, duke and prince express very different ranks and functions.
The pure Anglosaxon authorities however are incapable of making any such blunder or falling into any such confusion: where Simeon of Durham, Florence of Worcester, Æðelweard, Henry of Huntingdon, nay even Beda himself, use Consul, Princeps, Dux and Comes, the Saxon Chronicle and the charters composed in Saxon have invariably Ealdorman. A few instances, down to the time of Cnut, when a new organization, and with it a new title, was adopted, will make this clear[[304]].
The word ealdor or aldor in Anglosaxon denotes princely dignity without any definition of function whatever. In Beówulf it is used as a synonym for cyning, þeóden and other words applied to royal personages. Like many other titles of rank in the various Teutonic tongues, it is derived from an adjective implying age, though practically this idea does not by any means survive in it, any more than it does in the word Senior, the origin of the feudal term Seigneur[[305]]; and similarly the words “ða yldestan witan,” literally the eldest councillors, are used to express merely the most dignified[[306]].
If we compare the position and powers of the ealdorman with those of the duke on the continent, we shall find several points of difference which deserve notice. In the imperial constitution of the German states, as it was modified and settled by Charlemagne, the duke was a superior officer to the comes, count or graf, and a duchy for the most part comprehended several counties, over which the duke exercised an immediate jurisdiction[[307]]. Occasionally no doubt there were counties without duchies, and duchies without counties, that is where the duke and count were the same person: sometimes the dukes were hereditary dynasts, representing sovereign families which had become subject to the empire of the Franks, and who continued to govern as imperial officers the populations which either by conquest or alliance had become incorporated with it; such were the dukes in Bavaria and Swabia. In other cases they were generals, exercising supreme military power over extensive districts committed to their charge, and mediately entrusted with the defence and government of the Markgraviats or border-counties which were established for the security of the frontiers. The variable, and very frequently exceptional, position of these nobles or ministerials, while it renders it difficult to give an accurate description of their powers which shall be applicable to all cases, often accounts for the events by which we are led to recognize modern kingdoms in the ancient duchies, and to trace the derived and mediate authority down to its establishment as independent royalty.
But this state of things which was possible in an empire comprising a vast extent of lands held by tribes of different descent, language, and laws, and often hostile to one another, was not to be expected in a country like England. Neither were the districts here sufficiently large, nor in general was the national feeling in those districts sufficiently strong, to produce similar results. Strictly speaking, during what has been loosely termed the Heptarchy, the various kingdoms or rather principal kingdoms bore a much greater resemblance to the Frankish duchies, and the small subordinate principalities to the counties; and could we admit the existence of a central authority or Bretwaldadom, we should find a considerable resemblance between the two forms: but this is in fact impossible: the kings, such as they were, continued to enjoy all the royal rights in their limited districts; and the dukes remained merely ministerial officers, of great dignity indeed, but with well-defined and not very extensive powers. The rebellion of a duke in English seems nearly as rare as it is frequent in German history. We may therefore conclude that the Anglosaxon Ealdorman in reality represented the Graf or Count of the Germans, before the powers of the latter had been seriously abridged by the imperial constitution of the Carlovings, by the growing authority of the duke, the Missus or royal messenger and the bishop. And this will tend to explain the comparatively subordinate position of the geréfa, who answers, in little more than name, to the Graphio or Graf.
In the Anglosaxon laws we find many provisions respecting the powers and dignity of the ealdorman, which it will be necessary to examine in detail. It is highly probable that different races and kingdoms adopted a somewhat different course with respect to them,—a course rendered inevitable by the connection of the ealdorman with territorial government. The laws of the Kentish kings do not make any mention of such an officer: the ceorl, eorl and king are the only free classes whose proportionable value they notice; and if there were ealdormen at all, they were comprised in the great caste of eorls or nobles by birth, even as Æðelberht’s law uses eorlcund, that is of earl’s rank, as a synonym for betst, that is the best or highest rank[[308]]. In the law of Eádríc and Hlóðhere, though various judicial proceedings are referred to, we hear nothing of the ealdorman: suit is to be prosecuted at the king’s hall[[309]], before the stermelda[[310]], or the wícgeréfa[[311]], but no other officer is mentioned; probably because at this period, the little kingdoms into which Kent itself was divided, supplied ample machinery for doing justice, without the establishment of ealdormen for that or any other purpose. The law of Wihtræd has no provision of the sort, and it is remarkable that in the proem to his dooms, which a king always declares to be made with the counsel, consent and license of his nobles, the word eádigan, the wealthy or powerful, twice occurs[[312]], but not the word ealdormen. I therefore think it probable that Kent had no such officers at the commencement of the eighth century[[313]].
In general Beda uses the words tribunus or praefectus to express the authority of a royal officer either in the field or the city: with him comes represents the old and proper sense of the king’s comrade, as we find it in Tacitus, and dux is applied in the Roman sense to the leader or captain of a corps d’armée. But it is possible that in one passage he may have had something more in view, where he states that after the death of Peada, that is in 661, the dukes of the Mercians, Immin, Eaba and Eádberht rebelled against Osuuiu of Northumberland and raised Wulfhere to his father’s throne[[314]]; and he goes on to say that, having expelled the princes,—“principibus eiectis,”—whom the foreign king had imposed upon them, they recovered both their boundaries and their liberty. It is every way probable both that the Mercian dukes and Northumbrian princes mentioned in this passage were fiscal and administrative, not merely military officers[[315]]. Not much later than this we find dukes in Wessex[[316]] and Sussex[[317]]; and from this period we can follow the dukes with little intermission till the close of the genuine Anglosaxon rule with Eádmund Irensída.
From the time of Ini of Wessex we have the means of tracing the institution with some certainty; and we may thus commence our enquiry with the first years of the eighth century, nearly one hundred years before Charlemagne modified and recast the German empire. At first the ealdormen are few in number, but increase as the circuit of the kingdom extends; we can thus follow them in connection with the political advance of the several countries, till we find at one time no less than three dukes at once in Kent, and sixteen in Mercia. This number attended a witena gemót held by Coenwulf in the year 814.
The reason of this was, that the ealdorman was inseparable from a shire or gá: the territorial and political divisions went together, and as conquest increased or defeat diminished the number of shires comprised in a kingdom, we find a corresponding increase or diminution in the number of dukes attendant upon the king. Ælfred decides that if a man wish to leave one lord and seek another, (hláfordsócn, a right possessed by all freemen,) he is to do so with the witness of the ealdorman whom he before followed in his shire, that is, whose court and military muster he had been bound to attend[[318]]: and Ini declares that the ealdorman who shall be privy to the escape of a thief shall forfeit his shire, unless he can obtain the king’s pardon[[319]]. The proportionably great severity of this punishment arises, and most justly so, from the circumstance of the ealdorman being the principal judicial officer in the county, as the Graf was among the Franks. The fiftieth law of Ini provides for the case where a man compounds for offences committed by any of his household, where suit has been either made before the king-himself or the king’s ealdorman[[320]]. He was commanded to hold a shiremoot or general county-court twice in the year, where in company of the bishop lie was to superintend the administration of civil, criminal and ecclesiastical law: Eádgár enacts[[321]],—“Twice in the year be a shiremoot held; and let both the bishop of the shire and the ealdorman be present, and there expound both the law of God, and of the world:” which enactment is repeated in nearly the same words by Cnut[[322]]. And this is consistent with a regulation of Ælfred, by which a heavy fine is inflicted upon him who shall break the public peace by fighting or even drawing his weapon in the Folcmoot before the king’s ealdorman[[323]]. In the year 780 we learn from the Saxon Chronicle that the high-reeves or noble geréfan of Northumberland burned Beorn the ealdorman to death at Seletún[[324]]: but Henry of Huntingdon records the same fact with more detail: he says[[325]],—“The year after this the princes and chief officers of Northumberland burned to death a certain consul and justiciary of theirs, because he was more severe than was right:” from which it would appear not only that this ealdorman had been guilty of cruelty and oppression in the exercise of his judicial functions, but, from the hint of Simeon, also that the king acquiesced in his punishment. We have occasional records in the Saxon charters which show that the shiremoot for judicial purposes was presided over by the ealdorman of the shire. In 825 there was an interesting trial touching the rights of pasture belonging to Worcester cathedral, which the public officers had encroached upon: it was arranged in a synod held at Clofeshoo, that the bishop should give security to the ealdorman and witan of the county, to make good his claim on oath, which was done within a month at Worcester, in the presence of Háma the woodreeve, who attended on behalf of Eádwulf the ealdorman[[326]]. Another very important document records a trial which took place about 1038 in Herefordshire: the shiremoot sat at Ægelnóðes stán, and was held by Æðelstán the bishop, and Ranig the ealdorman in the presence of the county thanes[[327]]. Another but undated record of a shiremoot held at Worcester again presents us with the presidency of an ealdorman, Leófwine[[328]].
It is thus clear that the ealdorman really stood at the head of the justice of the county, and for this purpose there can be no doubt that he possessed full power of holding plea, and proceeding to execution both in civil and criminal cases. The scírmen, scírgeréfan or sheriffs were his officers, and acted by his authority, a point to which I shall return hereafter. That the executive as well as the judicial authority resided in the ealdorman and his officers seems to me unquestionable: Ælfred directs that no private feud shall be permitted, except in certain grave cases, but that if a man beleaguers his foe in his own house, he shall summon him to surrender his weapons and stand to trial. If the complainant be not powerful enough to enforce this, he is to apply to the ealdorman (a mode of expression which implies the presence of one in every shire), and on his refusal to assist, resort may be had to the king[[329]]. For this there was also good reason: the ealdorman in the shire, like the Frankish graf, was the military leader of the hereban, posse comitatus or levy en masse of the freemen, and as such could command their services to repel invasion or to exercise the functions of the higher police: as a noble of the first rank he had armed retainers, thanes or comites of his own; but his most important functions were as leader of the armed force of the shire. Throughout the Saxon times we read of ealdormen at the head of particular counties, doing service in the field: thus in 800 we hear of a battle between the Mercian ealdorman Æðelmund with the Hwiccas, and the Westsaxon Weoxstán with the men of Wiltshire[[330]]: in 837, Æðelhelm led the men of Dorset against the Danes[[331]]: in 845 Eánwulf with the men of Somerset, and Osríc with the men of Dorset, obtained a bloody victory over the same adversaries[[332]]: in 853 a similar fortune attended Ealhhere with the men of Kent, and IIuda with them of Surrey, the latter of whom had marched from their own county into Thanet, in pursuit of the enemy[[333]]. In 860, Osríc with his men of Hampshire, and ealdorman Æðelwulf with the power of Berkshire, gave the Danes an overthrow in the neighbourhood of Winchester[[334]]; in 905 the men of Kent with Sigewulf and Sigehelm their ealdormen were defeated on the banks of the Ouse[[335]]: lastly in 1016, we find Eádríc the ealdorman deserting Eádmund Irensída in battle with the Magesætan or people of Herefordshire[[336]],—a treason which ultimately led to the division of England between Eádmund and Cnut, and later to the monarchy of the latter. Everywhere the ealdorman is identified with the military force of his shire or county, as we have already seen that he was with the administration of justice.