90. The modern German princes represent nothing but modern dynastic and diplomatic arrangements; otherwise one might compare this process with the return to ealdormanship in Wessex and Lombardy. [This was written early in 1866, before the reverse process had begun.]
91. On the word “King” see Appendix L.
92. See Appendix M.
93. Englaland, in its different forms, does not appear in the Chronicles till the year 1014. Angel-cyn, which in 597 clearly means the people, must, in 975 and 986, be taken for the country. So still more plainly in 1002. In many places it may be taken either way. Cf. Appendix A, T.
94. Il. ix. 160. καὶ μοὶ ὑποστήτω ὅσσον βασιλεύτερός εἰμι.
95. In tracing the origin and progress of the Comitatus or Thegnhood I find no essential difference between the views of Sir Francis Palgrave and Mr. Kemble. It is only when we draw near to more purely political questions that their theories diverge in any marked way.
96. Tac. Germ. 11. “De minoribus rebus principes consultant; de majoribus omnes; ita tamen ut ea quoque, quorum penes plebem arbitrium est, apud principes pertractentur.” This is exactly the Greek βουλή and δῆμος.
97. For the Assembly of the Achaians, see Il. ii. 51; for that of the Gods, see Il. xx. 4. Compare on the Homeric Assemblies, Grote, Hist. of Greece, ii. 91, and Gladstone, Homer and the Homeric Age, iii. 114. It certainly strikes me that Mr. Gladstone has understood far more thoroughly than Mr. Grote the position of the simple freeman of the Homeric age, which Mr. Grote is inclined to undervalue. So most people are inclined to undervalue the position of our Ceorlas. See Hallam, Supplementary Notes, p. 206 et seqq.
98. On the amount of freedom among the Macedonians, see Historical Essays, Second Series, p. 188, and the passages there quoted.
99. See History of Federal Government, i. 37–38.
100. The story is in the Rig’s-mal, and will be found in the English translation of Mallet’s Northern Antiquities, p. 365. Jarl, Karl, and Thræll, all born on one day through the power of the God Helmdall, are the respective ancestors of the three classes of men, eorls, ceorls, and thralls or slaves. Karl, among other sons, has Husbandman, Holder, and Smith.
101. Of the history and constitution of these commonwealths I trust to treat more at large in the second volume of my History of Federal Government. I will now only say that, though the amount of independence enjoyed by the ancient Cantons has often been greatly exaggerated, there is evidence enough to show that, in some districts at least, the old Teutonic system can be traced back uninterruptedly as far as we have any records at all, so that we may fairly presume an unbroken succession from the Germans of Tacitus. [See Growth of the English Constitution, p. 161, ed. 3.]
102. This comparison may surprise some who have been accustomed to look on the ceorlas as a very degraded class. There can be no doubt that among the ceorlas there were men of very different positions, that the general tendency of their position was to sink, and that, by the time of the Norman Conquest, some classes of them had advanced a good way on the road to serfdom. But this was not the condition of the whole order even then; still less was it the original conception of ceorldom. The original ceorl is a citizen and a soldier; he is, or may be, a landowner; on the one hand he is free, on the other he is not noble. See the remarks in Hallam’s Supplementary Notes already referred to.
103. See Mr. Kemble’s Chapter on “The Mark” in the first volume of The Saxons in England.
104. To Mr. Allen (Royal Prerogative, p. 129) belongs the honour of having first explained what folkland and bookland really were.
105. In Latin possessores, the word so fertile in confusions as to the Agrarian Laws. So Aristotle (Pol. vii. 10) lays down the rule, ἀναγκαῖον εἰς δύο μέρη διῃρῆσθαι τὴν χώραν, καὶ τὴν μὲν εἶναι κοινὴν, τὴν δὲ τῶν ἰδιωτῶν. [On this whole subject of communities and common lands much has been said since this Chapter was written. The English reader will find the cream in Sir Henry Maine’s Village Communities.]
106. Cæsar, Bell. Gall. vi. 22. Cf. Tac. Germ. 26; but from c. 16 it would seem that in his time the institution of the eðel had already begun.
107. In Glarus and Appenzell altogether so, and even in Uri to some extent.
108. On the Comitatus see the classical passage of Tacitus, Germ. 13, 14 (cf. 25), and for the working out of the whole in detail, see Mr. Kemble’s two Chapters, “The Noble by Service” in the first volume, and “The King’s Court and Household” in the second.
109. Looked at philologically, this word Hlaford is most puzzling, and the feminine Hlæfdige (Lady) is more puzzling still. But it is enough for my purpose, if a connexion with Hláf in any shape be admitted, whatever may be thought of the last syllable.
110. Maine, Ancient Law, 303. “The person who ministered to the sovereign in his court had given up something of that absolute personal freedom which was the proudest privilege of the allodial proprietor.”
111. Hom. Od. iv. 22;
So Il. xxiv. 473;
Eteôneus is κρείων, Automedôn is ἥρως, yet they are the Þegnas of Menelaos and Achilleus respectively.
112. Bæda, ii. 9. “Lilla minister (þegn) Regis amicissimus.” He saves his hlaford’s life at the cost of his own.
113. See this most remarkable story in the Chronicles, 755; Florence, 784.
114. Herod. vii. 104. ἔπεστι γάρ σφι δεσπότης νόμος, τὸν ὑποδειμαίνουσι πολλῷ ἔτι μᾶλλον ἢ οἱ σοὶ σε.
115. Of this feeling, and the gradual change as the Empire advanced, I have spoken in Historical Essays, Second Series, p. 317. See the passages quoted in the note, Tac. Hist. i. 58, and Spartianus (in Hist. Aug. Scriptt.) Hadrian, 22.
116. Mr. Kemble however (ii. 112) remarks that the greatest men of the kingdom, men like Godwine, Leofric, and Siward, seem never to have held such offices. So in our own day a man who had any chance of becoming First Lord of the Treasury would not stoop to become Lord Chamberlain or Master of the Horse.
117. See Appendix O.
118. On the promotion of Ceorls to higher rank, the following passages are explicit. “We witan þæt þurh Godes gyfe þrǽl wærð tô þegene and ceorl wearð tô eorle, sangere tô sacerde and bôcere tô biscope,” (Be griðe and be munde. Wilkins, 112; Thorpe, i. 334; Schmid, 386). “And gif ceorl geþeàh þæt he hæfðe fullice fîf hîda agenes landes, cirican and kycenan, bell-hûs and burh-geat-setl and sunder-note on cynges healle, þonne wæs he þononforð þegen rihtes weorðe.” (Thorpe, i. 190; Schmid, 388. “Be leôd-geþincð and lage.”) The whole of this last document bears on the subject. Compare also the table of Wergilds (Schmid, 396), ii. § 9. On the first extract I may remark that the jingle of beginnings and endings has carried the lawgiver a little too far. In strictness the Ceorl could not become an Eorl (in the older sense of the word); but a Ceorl, or even a Thrall when once manumitted, might become a Thegn, and, once a Thegn, he might conceivably become an Eorl in the later sense.
119. On Commendation, see Appendix N.
120. See Appendix O.
121. “Homo”—whence “homagium,” “hommage”—is the constant technical name for the vassal. See Domesday in almost every page.
122. Palgrave, English Commonwealth, i. 354. Maine, Ancient Law, 302, who however seems to forget the Comitatus, and brings in the relation of patron and client, which however is itself a form of the Comitatus.
123. This was found in a somewhat different form on the continent. See the documents in Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, iv. 266, one of Charles the Great, which speaks “de tribus causis, de hoste publico, hoc est de banno nostro, quando publicitus promovetur, et wacta, vel pontes componendum.” Waitz remarks, “Statt der Wachtdienste wird bei den Angelsachsen und später auch auf deutschem Boden das sogenannte Burgwerk, die Hülfe beim Burgenbau, genannt.” And to the repair of bridges, some of his documents add that of churches and roads.
124. For continental exemptions under the Karlings, see Waitz, iv. 268.
125. See Appendix P.
126. See Allen, pp. 143, 153, et seqq.; also on the whole subject of the change of Folkland into Terra Regis.
128. See Eichhorn, Deutsche Staats- und Rechtsgeschichte, iii. 158.
129. This was written before the wonderful changes in Germany (August, 1866), which will supply me with abundant matter for another work.
130. On this whole subject I must again refer to Mr. Kemble, especially to his chapters on the Mark and the Shire.
131. Many of our present shires are historically divisions of kingdoms (see above, p. 48), and the word Scír, connected with scérn or shear, of course actually means division. But the word is most likely a comparatively modern one; the Shire or Pagus answers to the German Gau, on which see Kemble’s chapter on the Gá, and the chapter in the first volume of Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, “Das Dorf, die Gemeinde, der Gau.”
133. See again Mr. Kemble’s chapter on the Gerefa. The Gerefa or Reeve is an officer, especially a fiscal officer, of any kind, from a Shirereeve down to a Dykereeve—Mr. Kemble adds, to a Hogreeve. In Northern English the word, under the form of Grieve, has changed from a public to a private exactor. The word is the same as the High-Dutch Graf; only the one title has risen and the other has fallen. A Burggraf is a greater man than a Boroughreeve.
135. Tac. Germ. 11. “Si displicuit sententia, fremitu adspernantur; sin placuit, frameas concutiunt. Honoratissimum adsensus genus est, armis laudare.” Comparative Politics, 466.
136. I must again refer to Mr. Gladstone’s remarks on this subject. Cf. Historical Essays, Second Series, p. 84.
137. [Changes made since this was written have pretty well got rid of the ancient scirgemót. See vol. v. p. 465.]
138. See Appendix Q.
139. Hist. of Federal Government, i. 266. We may be sure however, both from the smaller extent of the country and from the political instincts of the Greek mind, that popular attendance never died out so completely in Achaia as it did in England. And in both cases those who lived in the neighbourhood of the place of meeting would doubtless often attend when people from a distance did not. The frequent attendance of the citizens of London in the Witenagemót may be compared with the appearance of a vast crowd of Corinthian citizens of inferior rank in an assembly held at Corinth, which is spoken of as unusual. Polybios, xxxviii. 4. Hist. Fed. Gov. i. 263.
140. Cf. Arist. Pol. iv. 5. 3. οὐ δεῖ δὲ λανθάνειν ὅτι πολλαχοῦ συμβέβηκεν ὥστε τὴν μὲν πολιτείαν τὴν κατὰ τοὺς νόμους μὴ δημοτικὴν εἶναι, διὰ δὲ τὸ ἦθος καὶ τὴν ἀγωγὴν πολιτεύεσθαι δημοτικῶς, ὁμοίως δὲ πάλιν παρ’ ἄλλοις τὴν μὲν κατὰ τοὺς νόμους εἶναι πολιτείαν δημοτικωτέραν, τῇ δ’ ἀγωγῇ καὶ τοῖς ἔθεσιν ὀλιγαρχεῖσθαι μᾶλλον. I suspect that both these descriptions are in a manner applicable to the Old-English constitution. The latter is true on the face of it; the democratic theory veiled an oligarchic reality. But it seems not unlikely that the former may be true also, and that the narrow body into which the ancient free assembly had shrunk up still in practice fairly expressed the sense of the nation.
141. Witena-Gemót = Sapientum concilium. Sir Francis Palgrave suggests (i. 143) that Witan is used in the sense of witnesses; but sapientes is the common Latin translation. The Senate of Bremen used to be called “Die Wittheit,” and the Senators of all the three Hanseatic Towns were till lately called “hoch- und wohl-Weisheit.”
142. One might say, in all seriousness, ψυχῶν σόφων τοῦτ’ ἐστὶ φροντιστήριον.
143. In 1004 Ulfkytel, acting as Ealdorman of the East-Angles (see Appendix HH), assembles the local Gemót; “Þa gerædde Ulfkytel wið þa witan on East-Englum.” The letter from the Kentish men to Æthelstan, quoted in a former note, reads like an act of acceptance, on the part of a local Gemót, of resolutions passed by the general body.
144. See Appendix Q.
146. [On the seeming difference on this point between myself and Professor Stubbs, see vol. v. p. 406.]
147. The powers of the Witan are drawn out in form by Kemble, ii. 204.
148. See Appendix R.
149. See Appendix S.
150. I shall speak of this point when I come to the disputed election after the death of Eadgar.
151. See Ælfred’s will in Cod. Dipl. ii. 112, v. 127; and the account of Æthelwulf’s will in Florence, 855. See Pauli’s Life of Ælfred, pp. 103, 104 (Eng. Trans.).
152. Taxation, in our modern sense, is seldom a matter of great importance in an early state of society. Public or demesne lands, various imposts on lands, feudal dues and compositions of various kinds, largely supply its place. Taxation in the modern sense is scarcely heard of in our earliest history, except for one shameful and unhappy purpose, that of buying off the Danish invaders. For this purpose a real tax, the famous Danegeld, was levied, and levied, as appears by several passages of the Chronicles, by the joint authority of the King and his Witan. So, during the same unhappy reign of Æthelred, we shall find the King and his Witan laying on an impost, of which I shall speak more when I come to it in the course of my narrative, one of a kind intermediate between ship-money and an Athenian λειτουργία.
153. There was a direct collision in the case of that “Good Parliament” of the eleventh century, the famous Mycel Gemót which restored Godwine and his family and drove out the foreign favourites of Eadward. But whether anybody voted against the enactment of the Laws of Æthelstan or Eadgar we have no means of knowing. We have several clear cases of parties among the Witan during a vacancy of the crown, and of differences on questions of foreign policy; but these cases do not touch the present question.
154. Laws of Æthelberht, Thorpe, i. 2. “Gif cyning his leode to him gehated, and heom mon þær yfel gedo, II bote and cyninge L scillinga.”
156. On Ælfred’s deference to the authority of his Witan, see the quotation from his Laws, above, p. 52.
157. The reign of Æthelred in England reminds one of the generalship of Epêratos in Achaia (Polyb. v. 30; Hist. of Fed. Gov. i. 550), but happily for Achaia her General could not remain in office for thirty-eight years.
158. See Appendix D.
159. See Appendix G.
160. A ceorl might have his own loaf-eaters (Hláf-ætas. Laws of Æthelberht, 25), and this looks very like a form of the Comitatus.
161. Waitz (iii. 87), recording the homage done by Tassilo to Pippin, “ut vasses,” says, “So viel wir wissen ist es das erste Mal, dass Gebräuche und Grundsätze, welche ursprünglich offenbar auf ganz andere Verhältnisse berechnet waren, für die politisch so bedeutenden Beziehungen eines Herzogs zu dem Oberhaupt des Staates zur Anwendung kamen.”
162. Among a crowd of smaller princes the Kings of Denmark, Poland, Hungary, and Bohemia stand out conspicuous. All these were at one time or another vassals of the Empire, though all except Bohemia recovered their independence. The Kings of Poland and Bohemia received the royal title from an Imperial grant.
163. Widukind, i. 29, who however calls him Imperator prospectively. The date is fixed by the Annales Vedastini (Pertz, i. 525, ii. 205), though they give a different colouring to the transaction.
164. See Edward’s own statement, tracing his right up to the Commendation, in Trivet (p. 382, Hog) and Hemingford (ii. 196). It is a pity that any nonsense about Brutus has found its way into some copies of these documents.
165. A Highlander, with his notions (though grounded on a different principle) of personal fidelity to a chief, might perhaps have understood it; but the true Scots had very little to do with the affairs of the kingdom of Scotland.
166. See Robertson, Scotland under her Early Kings, i. 55.
167. See Appendix H.
168. Ibid.
169. See Appendix I.
170. See History of Federal Government, i. 120.
171. Again I keep clear of all mazes about Picts and Scots. My division is true upon any theory, except the wild one of Pinkerton. The Picts were either Irish or Welsh—in the wide sense of those two words.
172. See Appendix G.
173. I refer to the transactions between Æthelred and Malcolm of Cumberland, which I shall speak of in my fifth Chapter.
174. See Appendix Q.
175. See Appendix B.
176. That is of course not Constantine the Great, but Constantine the “Tyrant” of the fifth century.
177. See Appendix B.
178. For a specimen of this style see Macaulay, Hist. of Eng. i. 358.
179. See Appendix B.
180. See Appendix B.
181. The word Tyrant in those times bore a sense which may be called a monarchical antitype of its old Greek sense. The Greek tyrant was a man who obtained kingly power in a commonwealth; the tyrants of the third and fourth centuries were men who revolted against a lawful Emperor. “Licet apud nos incubator imperii tyrannus dicatur,” says Servius (ad Virg. Æn. vii. 266). In both cases, the word in strictness expresses only the origin of power, and not the mode of its exercise. Many of the so-called tyrants were excellent rulers. But the Imperial tyrant had this great advantage over the Greek tyrant, that success might turn him into a lawful Emperor, while the Greek tyrant remained a tyrant always. In mediæval writers the word is constantly used in this later Imperial sense, as equivalent to “usurper” or “pretender.”
182. After all the case of an Emperor or tyrant reigning in Britain and Britain only was excessively rare. It could have happened only in the case of those fleeting tyrants of whom the land was said to be fertile, and who rose and fell without being recorded. All the more famous men of the class, Carausius, Maximus, Constantine, possessed some part of the continental dominions of the Empire, and sought to possess the whole.
186. See Appendix B.
187. I would not be understood as asserting the justice or honesty of any such claim. The Commendation of 924 was wiped out by the renunciation of 1328. From that time Scotland must be looked on as an independent kingdom, and, as such, she rightly entered into the Union with England on equal terms.
188. For the Norman and French history of the tenth century there are three principal authorities. The only writer on the Norman side is Dudo, Dean of Saint Quintin, whose work will be found in Duchesne’s Rerum Normannicarum Scriptores. His history is nearly coincident with the century, going down to the death of Richard the Fearless. He is a most turgid and wearisome writer, without chronology or arrangement of any kind. He is in fact one of the earliest of a very bad class of writers, those who were employed, on account of their supposed eloquence, to write histories which were intended only as panegyrics of their patrons. It is only just before the end of his narrative that Dudo begins to be a contemporary witness; up to that time he simply repeats such traditions as were acceptable at the Norman court. Of the two French writers, Flodoard or Frodoard, Canon of Rheims (whose Annals will be found in the third volume of Pertz), is a far more valuable writer in himself, but his notices of Norman affairs are few and meagre. He perhaps avoids speaking of the terrible strangers any more than he can help. Flodoard is a mere annalist, and aspires to no higher rank, but in his own class he ranks very high. He is somewhat dull and dry, as becomes an annalist, but he is thoroughly honest, sensible, and straightforward. His Annals reach from 919 to 966, the year of his death, so that he is strictly contemporary throughout. The other French writer is Richer, a monk of Rheims, whose work was discovered by Pertz, and is printed in his third volume (also separately in his smaller collection, and in a French edition by M. Gaudet, with a French translation, 2 vols. Paris, 1845). He was the son of Rudolf, a knight and counsellor of King Lewis the Fourth, and derived much of his information from his father. He also makes use of the work of Flodoard. He goes down to 998, which was seemingly the year of his death. Richer is not content with being an annalist; he aspires to be an historian. He is much fuller and more vivid than Flodoard, but I cannot look on him as equally trustworthy. On this writer see Palgrave, History of Normandy and England, i. 748. The second volume of Sir Francis’ own work contains a most vivid, though very discursive and garrulous, history of the time before us, full of all the merits and defects of its author. I would refer to an article of mine on it in the Edinburgh Review for April 1859; also to another, “The Franks and Gauls,” in the National Review for October 1860, since reprinted in my first series of Historical Essays.
189. See Appendix A.
190. See Appendix T.
191. Will. Pict. 145. “Hujus milites Normanni possident Apuliam, devicere Siciliam, propugnant Constantinopolim, ingerunt metum Babyloni.”
192. Guil. App. apud Murat, vol. v. p. 274;
Cf. Roger of Howden (404) with his wild account of Robert Wiscard, copied from Benedict, ii. 200.
193. Matt. Paris, p. 804, Wats. “Principum mundi maximus Fredericus, stupor quoque mundi et immutator mirabilis.” P. 806. “Stupor mundi Fredericus.”
194. This time of struggle is the subject of the second volume of Sir Francis Palgrave’s History of Normandy and England. The character of the period cannot be better summed up than it is by Widukind, lib. i. c. 29; “Unde usque hodie certamen est de regno Karolorum stirpi et posteris Odonis, concertatio quoque regibus Karolorum et orientalium Francorum super regno Lotharii.” On the force of these names see Appendix T.
195. I understand by “modern France” the extent of territory which, before the annexations at the expense of the Empire began, was held either by the King of the French in domain or by princes who held of him in fief. From the France of 1870 we must take away the French part of Hennegau, Lothringen and the three Bishopricks, Elsass, the county of Burgundy, Savoy, Lyons, Bresse, the Dauphiny, Provence, Nizza, and Corsica. We must add the still independent part of Flanders, the county of Barcelona, and the Channel Islands.
196. That is, Aquitaine was, up to the Peace of Bretigny, always held in nominal vassalage to France, but, except during the momentary occupation when Philip the Fair had outwitted Edmund of Lancaster, no Parisian King was immediate sovereign of Bourdeaux till Aquitaine finally lost its independence in the fifteenth century.
197. Charles the Third is commonly said to have reunited the whole Empire of Charles the Great, and he certainly reigned over Germany, Italy, Lotharingia, and the Western Kingdom; but he never obtained the immediate sovereignty of the Kingdom of Burgundy, founded by Boso in 879. Boso was succeeded by Rudolf.
198. “The City of Revolutions begins her real history by the first French Revolution.” Palgrave, i. 282. (References to “Palgrave” will, for the future, mean the “History of Normandy and England,” not the “English Commonwealth.”)