which title was brought in by the Normans, and is rarely met with before the conquest. Mass Thanes were those who held land in fee of the church. Middle Thanes, were such as held very small estates of the king, or parcels of land of the great king's Thanes; they were called vavassors, and their lands vavassors: they who held lands of these, were Thanes of the lowest class, and did not rank as gentlemen.

All Thanes disposed of the lands they held (and which were called block land to their heirs) but with the obligations due to those of whom they were held.

Ceorle, (whence the word churl) was a countryman or artizan who was a freeman; these Ceorles, who held lands in leases, were called sockmen, and their land sockland, of which they could not dispose, being merely tenants. Those Ceorles who acquired possession of five hides of land, with a large house, court, and bell, to call together their servants, were raised to the rank of Thanes of the lowest class. A hide of land was as much as one plough could till. The villians or slaves in the country, who were labourers bound to the service of particular persons, were capable of possessing money in property, consequently, were not strictly slaves, in the sense of the Roman law.

Witan or Wites, (i. e. wisemen,) were the magistrates and lawyers. Burgh Witten signified the magistrates of cities.

Some shires (or counties) are mentioned before king Alfred; and Assyerius speaks of earls (or counts) of Somerset, in Devonshire, in the reign of Ethelwolph: but it was Alfred who first divided the whole kingdom into shires; the shires into tithings, lathes, or wapentakes; the tithings into hundreds; and the hundreds into tenths. Each division had a court, subordinate to those that were superior, the highest in each shire being the shire Gimot, or Folk-Mote, which was held twice a year, and in which the bishop, or his deputy, and the ealderman, or his vicegerent the sheriff, presided.

*** See Seldon on the Titles of Honour; Spelman's Glossary (new ed.); Squires on the Government of the English Saxons; Dr. William Howell, in his learned General History, vol. v. p. 273.

The titles of earle and hersen were first given by Ifwar Widfame, king of Sweden, to two ministers of state, in 824. (Vide Olof Delin's New History of Sweden, c. v. vol. i. p. 334.)

ROYAL SEALS.

THE GREAT SEAL OF ENGLAND.

Its Origin-When first used-&c.

THE learned Dr. Hickes, (in Dissert. Epist. p. 64) pretends that Edward the Confessor was the first king of England who used a seal in his charters, similar to that we find in his charters given to West

minster Abbey, kept among the archives of that church; and on one of his diplomas shewn in the monastery of St. Dennis, near Paris. This is the origin of the broad seal in England.

Montfaucon exhibits three or four rough seals, found on some of the charters of the Merovigian kings, the oldest of which is one of Theodoric I. (Antiq. de la Monarchie Française.) The ancient kings of Persia and Media had their seals, (Dan. vi. 17-xiv. 13-16. Esther iii. 10.) They are also menaioned by profane authors. The Benedictines, in their new French diplomatique (t. iv. p. 100) present us the heads of seals of all the ancient kings of Fance, from Childeric, father of Cloves; of the German emperors and kings, from Charlemagne, especially from king Henry II. in the eleventh century, in imitation of the emperors of Constantinople; of the kings of Denmark, Bohemia, Hungary, &c. from the 12th century. These authors prove against Hicks, Dugdale, &c. (the latter in his antiquities of Warwickshire) that seals were used by the kings of England before St. Edward, Ethelbert, Edgar, St. Dunstan, even Offa, during the heptarchy.

St. Edward brought the more frequent use of the Royal seal from France, yet he often gave charters, attested by the subscription of many illustrious witnesses, with a cross to each name, without any Royal seal, which was the ancient custom, and continued sometimes to be used

even after the conquest. Menage and the editors of the New Latin Glossary of Du Cange, t. vi. p. 487,) by a gross mistake, attribute to the Conqueror the first use of a Royal seal in England. He only made it more solemn and common. Ingulphus (p.901); the Annals of Burton (p. 246) are to be understood, that seals were not used by particulars at the conquest; but they do not include the court; hence we learn the sense of that common assertion of our historians and lawyers, that St. Edward was the first institutor of the broad seal.

The first kings used for their seal their own image on horseback; afterwards, great men used their arms, when these became settled and hereditary. About the time of Eward the third, seals became common among all the gentry. Mackenzie and Nisbet, remark, that they served, in deeds, without the subscription of any name, till this was ordered in Scotland by James V. in 1540, and about the same time in England. (Vide Bigland's Observations on Parochial Registers, p. 81.)

ORIGIN OF THE STATUTE OF MORTMAIN.

In the flourishing times of Popery, the Clergy, ever since the introduction of Christianity into this island, had been accumulating land and riches; insomuch, that they had swelled, what at first was but a mole-hill, into a huge mountain. The enormous bulk of their possessions in the 13th century,

and what they were daily acquiring from the mistaken charity of that age, made it justly suspicious, that they might, in another century, engross the whole. Beside, it was well known, whatever lands they gained this way, that they were from thenceforward unalienable, and a dead hand was laid on them for ever. The laity had been long desirous to stem this torrent; but they wanted a king of sufficient resolution to despise the thunder of the Vatican, and effectually to put a stop to these dangerous proceedings. Such a king they found in that magnanimous prince, King Edward I., who, in the year 1279, summoned a parliament for that express purpose. When he made the proposal, it was received by the laity with universal joy; and the clergy durst not oppose it, lest a heavier blow should fall upon them. In fine, it was enacted, "that from thenceforth none should either give, sell, bequeath, or change any lands, tenements, or rents, to any religious body, without licence from the king for that purpose." This statute was called the Statute of Mortmain; because it was intended to prevent estates from falling into dead hands; that is, hands of no service to the king or the public, without hopes of ever changing their

owners.

Sir William Blackstone, speaking of this statute, says, "it closed the great gulph in which all the landed property of the kingdom was in danger of being swallowed up."