CHAPTER III

THE ACCOUNT OF THE COMMUNAL SOCIETY BY TACITUS

TACITUS,1 circa A.D. 98, gives an account of the tribes settled in the north of Europe in the country between the Rhine, Danube, and Vistula, confirmed by the commentaries of Cæsar writing of Germans, Gauls, and Britons-an account which we may take as a generally accurate description of any primitive people living under tribal conditions in early times. It is singularly instructive as bearing on the conditions of many parts of the British Islands in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

In some particulars the general description given of these people is such a counterpart of the conditions obtaining at this later time in parts of Britain, that some memoranda of extracts are here inserted which, it is suggested, should be kept in mind for comparison. Whatever may be the opinion of the merits of Tacitus as a historian, there is no reason to believe that in this account he invented anything or set down aught in malice.

The most interesting feature of the description given by Tacitus is this: that it is not applicable so much to the population in the south and east of England in later times, to whom these people are supposed to have been by race allied, as to the peoples of the western part of the Islands, who are supposed to have been of Celtic and Scandinavian blood.

The Kingship.-The king who governs this community has, he says, limited powers (c. 7), only enlarged to a dictatorship in time of foreign war. He is elected by the whole body of freemen, but birth is taken into account: the most democratic of all constitutions, and the safest.

As the society described is one resting on kinship (c. 4), the king is one of a chosen family of the nation, related by race and blood to the people over whom he rules. That a people should be ruled by one alien in race and blood was impossible in any society founded on tribal lines.

As all society in the twelfth century was in part on these lines, the Norman and the Angevin, though alien in race and blood, made the most of the slender ties of marriage which connected them with the previous dynasty. Henry I. owed his safety against his brother Robert in great part to his marriage with the Saxon Matilda, and it is not improbable that a good deal of the power which enabled Henry II. to extend his authority in the Islands came from the double influence of two opposing forces: the support which the anti-tribal church and the Normans and Angevin barons would willingly give to a king who represented federal authority by the blood of a foreign conqueror, and, on the other hand, the stretching of tribal custom, which could view him as the grandson of the Saxon Matilda, and the possible remembrance of the connections of Alfred and his family with Baldwin of Flanders, whose direct descendant was the Flemish Matilda, the wife of the Conqueror. It is difficult to estimate the great part paid as to respect and loyalty to kings by the traditional genealogies handed down from memory for many generations. Harold's chief weakness was his want of the royal blood of Alfred.

"The community," says Tacitus, "choose leaders in battle for valour. They confer the dignity of chieftain on young lads, whose fathers had been pre-eminently illustrious," thus leading easily from choice by the people to hereditary honours.

The General Assembly or Folkmoot." The chiefs consult over small matters; on great the whole community decide, the matter being first discussed by the chiefs. To these assemblies they come armed" (c. 11). This is the folkmoot, the general council of all early societies, which remained to hamper the military proceedings of the tribal leaders long after it had been replaced under feudal government by a select body of king's officers for purposes of administration. Spenser tells us of the survival of the folkmoot in Ireland in his days. The divisions frequently created by the debates in the assembly during a campaign were a prominent cause of the success of the English over the tribal levies of other parts of the Islands.

The Irish Senchus Mor 2 gives us an example of such a deliberative and administrative assembly in Britain. Three kinds of assembly are mentioned: by a king, to make laws or interterritorial regulations; of the synod of the Church, to request a visitation; of the laity, for services of attack and defence. The law refers to two territories making laws to be obligatory on both. It provides for the recovery by distress, with a three days' stay, of the food tribute supplied to the assembly, assuming the provision by one member of a family who is entitled to recover it from the others; and on p. 175 a similar distress for disturbing the meeting hill.3

In the Orkneys and the Isle of Man the whole people assembled in the open to attend the Althing, the Tynwald, and the Head Court. In August 1547, we find in the Orkneys the sheriff sitting in judgment in such a primary assembly in the open air; and there were gathered together "all and sundry the inhabitants of the country of Orkney for the most part as the custom is." The actual work was done, as it always is, by a committee, a logretta or selected jury appointed by an official, the lawman, or an appointee of the earl. It is at all times a great difficulty to prevent this assembly of the people from degenerating into a cabal, which is neither representative of the nation nor efficient for any kind of work.

The Chief's Bodyguard." The chiefs compete,' says Tacitus," which shall have the most and bravest companions, for whom the chief finds horses, arms, and provisions (c. 13, 14). This bodyguard will be found in attendance on chiefs and barons in all parts of the Islands from early times. It is prominent in the Welsh customary laws under the name of the teulu; the Scandinavian kings throughout the Sagas draw towards them as such men of service any who were prominent either in arms or poetry; the relations of the Irish chief and men of his sept (ceiles) were throughout of this character, the ceile following the chief not only for defence, but "the head of every family is to go upon the plundering excursion, and with the king to make laws or interterritorial regulations." 2

In each part of the Islands, as the federal authority grows

stronger, this bodyguard of relations and dependants is put down as a political evil: Henry VII. in England forbids and disperses the crowds of retainers which had been the support of the factions of York and Lancaster; throughout Irish history the English war against the gallowglasses and numerous followers for whom the Irish chiefs find food; James I. and VI. in 1609, in the Statutes of Icolmkill, insist that the Highland chiefs should disband the men of their name and clan who were ready to fly to arms at the order of the chief. Similar provisions were made in 1715 and 1745.

As the society was founded on kinship, the chief's followers would be, in the first instance, his kinsfolk, it being an innovation which would soon occur that he took into his service or under his protection men connected with the group family by adoption or by marriage, and also unfree men to whom he would give his protection in return for services of all kinds. The entry of this last class into the community is one of the chief causes of the break-up of the tribal system.

Food-rents.-"It is the custom for the states to present cattle or grain to their chief as an honour and for providing him with necessary supplies" (c. 15). This provision of food and supplies for the chief was common to all early society before commerce led to the use of money and to the convenience of exchange. It is found in Domesday and other very early documents. As the custom continued much longer in Ireland and the Western Highlands than elsewhere, under the name of coshering, the Jacobean writers condemn the usage as one of the most evil of the customs which they imagined were peculiar to Ireland.

Military Organisation." They go into battle by families and clans (c. 7), the women accompanying them to encourage them and dress the wounds. The infantry in war is mixed with the cavalry (c. 6); chosen youths selected for strength and speed mix with the horse." This order of battle by families is inevitable, so long as the family or group family remains the unit of society. When it gives way to the individual, it is replaced by the territorial principle, so that the man may always fight next to known friends.

The Hundred." The number is fixed; a hundred' comes

ex singulis pagis' (from each township (c. 6)). They are called centeni. What was first a number is now a name and honour." This last sentence is the best and only definition of the hundred to be found in any book. It is and has always been, in all parts of the Islands (in Wales and Ireland under the name of cantrev), a division for administration. Its origin is disputed. Canon Taylor (Domesday Studies, p. 69) points out that a Hundred has been held to be a district settled by 100 warriors, which furnished 100 men to the fyrd, which contained 100 hides of land, which was occupied by 100 free families (see Cæsar, D.B.G., iv. 1). People who learnt to count more than five, like ourselves and the Scandinavians, increased the hundred, the Norse hundred always being 120, as our hundredweight is 112 lbs. It is a test of progress in civilisation.

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The Priest Judge. The Brehon." It is," he says, an indispensable duty to adopt the enmities of a father or a relative as well as their friendships" (c. 21). In a nation of freemen, who acknowledge only an authority limited by their free will, punishment of offences must avoid the appearance of personal revenge, which would lead to perpetual family retaliation. So the priests, like the Druids mentioned by Cæsar, judge and punish for all offences as a religious sanction from the gods, using, as Cæsar says, the power of excommunication, neque animadvertere, neque vincere, ne verberare quidem nisi sacerdotibus permissum" (c. 7). Both in Ireland and in the Scandinavian colonies we find a caste of priest lawyers who profess to declare custom with a semidivine origin, and have a monopoly of the declaration.

Money Payments for Crime." They hang for treason or desertion, but smaller offences, such as murder, adultery, or theft, are satisfied by money fines of horses and cattle, part to the king or to the community, and part to the injured person or his family" (c. 12). This custom, which was common to all early societies, in use in England in the thirteenth century and later, is condemned by Spenser as an exclusively Irish habit, "in many things repugning both to God's laws and man's."

Family Responsibility." Homicide is atoned for by a