tion of the people, which consisted of the slaves of all these orders, had no actual representatives, yet the many provisions for their benefit in the laws show that they possessed humane friends in it, attentive to their interests, and compassionating their degradation: these were probably the king and the clergy. It was the interest of royalty, and congenial with the courteous feelings which have usually accompanied our kings, to increase the number of the free; because every freed slave gave the crown a new partisan, and thus lessened those of a fierce, haughty, and dangerous nobility. It was the duty and the benevolent wish of the religious, and also their interest, to pursue the same policy, and, in the mean time, to mitigate the evils of thraldom. Thus the feelings, the interests, and the reason of all classes of the Anglo-Saxon society appeared in their witena-gemot; and whoever studies the successive provisions of their legislation which have come down to us, will perceive that the state of every class was progressively meliorated by new laws as new circumstances required them; and, even as far as we can discern their operation, almost every law seems to have been an improvement. Nothing more tended to insure this effect, than the right and practice of the subject to petition his legislature; for this, in practical tendency, makes every man, who has any grievance to complain of, a kind of party to its councils, as it enables him to lay his complaint before it, as completely as if he were a member of its body. Thus as our present parliament, in its sovereign, its nobles, and its popular representatives, and in the petitions which it receives, concentres all the feelings and mind of the nation, so did the Anglo-Saxon witena-gemot; for there is good reason to believe, that the cities and burghs sent their members into its body; and if these were not at first commercial, from the poverty and low estate of the earliest Anglo-Saxon tradesmen, they were likely to be of this description, when commerce had increased into the power of giving wealth, and that wealth, of creating for the merchant an effective rank not less important in the society whom he benefited, than the born nobility, which the great so highly valued. It is to the credit of the Anglo-Saxons, that no other European branch of the Teutonic population preserved so free and so effective a witena-gemot as they did. The legislatures which continued to exist of this sort in other countries gradually dwindled into nonexistence, while the English parliament has flourished like the English nation, an example and an instrument of a national prosperity and power, exceeded by no preceding state, and equalled, if at all, by very few. To Fra Paolo's exclamation, of 66 Esto perpetua," the tendencies of the present age allow us to add the hope that, sooner or later, "Sit universa."

Where the cyning was only the temporary commander of the nation, for the purposes of war, whose function ceased when peace returned, the witena-gemot must have been the supreme

authority of the nation. But when the cyning became an established and permanent dignity, whose privileges and power were perpetually increasing till he attained the majestic prerogatives and widely-diffused property which Athelstan and Edgar enjoyed, the witena-gemot then assumed a secondary rank in the state. We will endeavour to delineate its nature and powers with fidelity, adopting no theory, but carefully following the lights which the Saxon documents afford to us.

The topics of our inquiry will be these:
What its members were styled.

Of whom it was composed.

By whom convened.

The times of its meetings.

The place.

Its business.

Its power.

The gemot and its members have various appellations in the writings of our ancestors. In their vernacular tongue they have been styled, the witena-gemot; the Engla ræd gifan (councilgivers); the witan; the Eadigra geheahtendlic ymcyme (the illustrious assembly of the wealthy); the Eadigan (the wealthy); the mycel synoth (great synod).

In the Latin phrases applied to them by our forefathers they have been called optimates; principes; primates; proceres; concionatores Angliæ, and such like.

The kings, who allude to them in their grants, call them, My witan; meorum sapientum archontum; heroicorum virorum; conciliatorum meorum; meorum omnium episcoporum et principum optimatum meorum; optimatibus nostris." All these are various phrases to express the same thing. With reference to their presumed wisdom, they were called witan; with reference to their rank and property, or nomination, they were styled eadigan, optimates, principes, proceres, &c. Other names will appear in some of the subsequent quotations.

On the question, who were the members of the witena-gemot, some certain information can be given, and some probable inferences may be made. That the bishops, abbots, eorles, ealdormen, and those who bore the title which was latinized into dux, princeps, &c., were parts of the great national council, is indisputable, from the language of the laws and the numerous charters which they signed. It is manifest, that others besides these higher nobles also attended it; and that these were thegns or ministri,

e Sax. Chron. 154. MS. Claud. A. 3. Sax. Chron. 148. Alfred's Will. Wilkins, 76, 102. Ibid. p. 10, p. 72, &c.

d Ethelward, 847. Hem. Chart. p. 15, 17, 23. MS. Claud. MS. Cleop. 3 Gale 484, 485, &c.

e

Heming, Chart. 2, 41, 57. MS. Claud. C. 9, 103, 112, 113, &c.

milites, and several who are mentioned in the charters without any designation of legal rank. Thus far the Anglo-Saxon documents give certain information. The only questionable points are, whether these thegns, milites, and others, attended like our ancient and present barons, as a matter of personal right from their rank, when summoned by the king, and with a legal claim to be so summoned; or whether they were elected representatives of any and what part of the nation, inferior in rank to the summoned nobility. After many years' consideration of the question, I am inclined to believe, that the Anglo-Saxon witena-gemot very much resembled our present parliament, in the orders and persons that composed it; and that the members, who attended as representatives, were chosen by classes analogous to those who now possess the elective franchise.

We have an expressive outline of the general construction of all the German national councils, in these words of Tacitus : "On the minor affairs the chiefs consult; on the greater, ALL. Yet so, that those things, of which the decision rests with the people, are treated of among the chiefs." This passage shows that, by the general principle of the most ancient German gemots, the people made an essential part of the assembly. Both chiefs and people deliberated, and the people decided. This being the primeval principle of the national councils of ancient Germany, before the Angles and Saxons left it, it becomes incumbent on the historical antiquary to show, not when the people acceded to the witena-gemots, but when, if ever, they were divested of the right of attending them. Of such a divestment there is no trace either in our historical or legal records.

The popular part of our representation seems to have been immemorial. There is no document that marks its commencement. And if the probabilities of the case had been duly considered, it would have been allowed to be unlikely, that the sovereigns and the aristocracy of the nation would have united to diminish their own legislative power, by calling representatives from the people to share it. Neither kings nor nobles could alone confer this power; and it would have been a voluntary and unparalleled abandonment of their own exclusive prerogatives and privileges, that they should have combined to impart it to others, if these had not possessed an ancient indefeasible right of enjoying it. But, in considering the Anglo-Saxon people that were represented at the gemot, we must not confound them with our present population. Those classes only who now elect members would then have been allowed to elect them; and the numbers of the individuals composing those classes were very much smaller indeed than their present amount. The great bulk of the Anglo-Saxon

Tacitus Germ. s. 11.

population was in a servile state, and therefore without any constitutional rights. All the villani, servi, bordarii, coscetæ, cotarii and coliberti, esnes and theows; that is, all the working agricultural population, and most of those who occupied the station of our present small farmers; and in the burghs and cities, all those who were what is called the men, or low vassals of other persons, analogous to our inferior artisans and mechanics and small tradesmen, were the property of their respective lords, and with no more political rights than the cattle and furniture, with which we find them repeatedly classed and transferred. Two-thirds, at least, more probably three-fourths, of the Anglo-Saxon population were originally in this state, till voluntary or purchased emancipations, and the effects of war and invasion, gradually increased the numbers of the free. Domesday-book shows, that even in the reign of the Confessor, the largest part of the English population, was in the servile state.

The constitutional principle as to the servile population of the country seems to have been, that it was represented by its masters in the national council, like the rest of their property.

Hence it was only to the freemen of the counties, or, as we now call them, freeholders; and to the free inhabitants of the burghs or boroughs, and cities, whom we now call burgesses and citizens, that any legislative representation can have applied in the Anglo-Saxon times. The freeholders appear to have multiplied from the Northmen invasions; for greater numbers of them are enumerated in Domesday-book, in the counties which the Danish population principally colonized than in the others. These desolating wars destroyed so many nobles and their families, that many of the servile must have often become liberated from no lords or thegns surviving to claim them; and corresponding with this idea, there are many passages in our laws which are directed against those who wander over the country without having a visible owner. All such, as well as every fugitive who could escape pursuit, became in time freemen in the burghs or towns where they ultimately settled; yet these would not become electors in those places where none were allowed to be burgesses, who were not formally admitted to be such. They could only acquire a share in the elective franchise in those parts where mere house-holding was sufficient to constitute an elector; and as this large privilege was in after-times possessed in very few places, there is no reason to believe, that it was more extensively enjoyed in the Anglo-Saxon burghs.

If the freeholders of the Anglo-Saxon counties were not represented in their witena-gemot, at what other time did this important privilege originate? That it should have begun after the

See Domesday-book in Essex, Norfolk, &c.

Norman conquest is incredible. If the legislative council of the nation had been from immemorial custom confined to the king and nobles, their sturdy maintenance of all their exclusive rights and advantages, is evidence that they would not have willingly curtailed their power by so great an innovation. The pride of nobility would not have admitted unnoble freeholders to have shared in the most honourable of its privileges; and least of all would the fierce and powerful Norman lords have placed the Anglo-Saxon freemen, whom they had conquered, and with whom they were long in jealous enmity and proud hatred, in the possession of such a right. But the total absence of any document or date, of the origin of the election of representatives by the freeholders of counties, is the strongest proof we can have that the custom has been immemorial, and long preceded the Norman conquest. The fact that such representatives have been always called knights of the shire, and that milites, or an order like those afterwards termed knights, were a part of the witena-gemot, befriend this deduction. Milites or knights were not the nobles of the country, though noblemen courted the military honour of the Anglo-Saxon knighthood. So many charters of the witena-gemots exist, signed by knights or milites, that either milites had a right as such to be a part of the council, or they were sent there as the representatives of their counties. The first supposition is supported by no law or practice, and is improbable from the number of milites in the country. The latter has been the ancient custom, without any known origin or limitary date.

To the citizens and burgesses of parliament analogous remarks are equally applicable. We may find no existing writ ordering their election earlier than the 23d year of Edward I.; but the loss of the preceding records is no proof of their non-existence, and ought never to have been confounded with it. All the writs of summons of the Anglo-Saxon nobles to the witena-gemot have been lost; yet, who would infer from their non-appearance that the nobles were not summoned to the gemot, and had no right to be there. The earliest summons of the peers to parliament is usually, but erroneously, said to be that of the 49 Hen. III.; but is this a proof that they were not in parliament before? There is nothing in the earliest writ which has survived that marks such writ to have been the commencement of the custom. The truth seems to be, that this privilege has been, like the county repre

h Brady gives this writ of summons, Hist. Treat. Boroughs, p. 54.

The error on this subject shows the absurdity of dating the origin of any part of the parliamentary representation from the first writ that has happened to survive. Dugdale, and from him Hume, and a stream of writers on this subject, state the summons of the peers of the 49 Hen. III. as the most ancient that exists; and yet Selden had noticed one twenty-three years earlier. There is one to the archbishop of York, 26 Henry III. It is Dors. Claus. 26 Henry III. Mem. 13.