great importance and authority at that time, a kind of little parliament, in which a great variety of business, civil, military, and ecclesiastical, was transacted. One great or general shiregemote was held in every county in the spring, and another in autumn, at a stated time and place, where the alder man of the shire, with his assessor the shiregerieve, the bishop of the diocese, the thanes, magistrates, lawmen, and all the clergy and landholders of the county were obliged to be present.

The chief magistrate in all the states established by the Anglo-Saxons was called the cyning, or king, a title of the most honourable import in their language, as including the ideas of wisdom, power, and valour. His duties were to administer justice to his subjects, with the assistance of his court or council, in times of peace, and to command the armies of the state in times of war. The princes who performed these two offices with great abilities and success, had the greatest influence and authority; but their prerogatives were limited by the laws of the country, and none of them ever pretended to the power of making laws or imposing taxes without the consent of their wittenagemots, or assemblies of the great and wise men of their respective kingdoms, as is evinced by several Saxon laws which are still extant. These wittenagemots, or great councils, were assembled by the Saxon kings, who fixed the place and time of their meetings, presided at them in person, proposed the subjects of their deliberations, and executed their decrees. When the kingdom was suddenly invaded, the king might, by his own authority, put himself at the head of his troops to repel the invaders, but he could neither declare war nor conclude peace without the consent of the wittenagemot.

It appears to have been one of the royal preroga tives in the times of the heptarchy, and even after

the establishment of the monarchy, to appoint the aldermen, and other civil and military officers; but according to the Chron. Saxon. and Wilking's Leges Saxon. this power seems to have been afterwards vested in the wittenagemot; and the laws of Edward the Confessor say expressly, f35, that the heretoges, or dukes, and the sheriffs, were chosen by the freeholders in the folkmote, a county-court which was assembled once a year, and where all the freeholders swore allegiance to the king.

The veneration for the clergy, after the introduction of Christianity, was so great, that the AngloSaxon kings left to them for some ages the government of the church and the nomination to ecclesiastical offices; by degrees, however, they found it necessary, for the peace and good government of the state, to interfere more directly in ecclesiastical elections, and to take care that the dignities of the church should be filled by men of peaceable dispositions, and well affected to their persons and government. They were so successful in their endeavours to obtain the direction of ecclesiastical elections, that they acquired, first the right of approving, and at length that of appointing the chief dignitaries of the church.

As the king was the chief magistrate, so the wittenagemot was the highest court, in which, with the king at its head, the sovereignty resided. During the heptarchy there were as many wittenagemots as there were kingdoms. In this assembly, both ecclesiastical and political laws were made; taxes for the maintenance of the clergy and the support of government were imposed; civil and criminal causes of the greatest moment were determined, and the most important affairs of the kingdom finally regulated. All the power and wisdom of the state were presumed to be collected in the wittenagemot, which was therefore the guide and

guar

dian of the kingdom, and took cognizance of every thing that affected its safety and prosperity, as the general assemblies of the several states had formerly done in Germany, from whence the Anglo-Saxon kings had brought over this institution, as well as all those abovementioned, and which were equally adopted by all other nations of Gothic and German origin, which founded kingdoms in different parts of Europe, on the ruins of the Roman empire.

In the most ancient times, all the warriors and priests of every little state were the only members of the wittenagemot. But after the conquest and division of the lands among the chieftains and their followers, many of them who had been common soldiers receiving but a small portion of land, retired to their little farms, where they formed that new order of men unknown in Germany, and called ceorls. They no longer assisted at the wittenagemot, though they were not excluded from it by any positive law, but only by their poverty; for as soon as they acquired such an estate as enabled them to live with ease and dignity, they were declared by an express law to be thanes, and members of the wittenagemots. The qualification, in point of estate, required by that law, was the property of five hides of land; but it was gradually raised, and in the reign of Edward the Confessor it was fixed at forty hides.

Besides all the considerable proprietors of land who were entitled to attend the public councils of the nation, all the clergy, the aldermen, and magistrates, were, by virtue of their offices, and on account of their wisdom and knowledge of the laws, members of this great assembly, which for this reason was called the wittenagemot, or assembly of the wise men. Its members enjoyed several privileges, and special laws secured the liberty and safety of their persons in going to, attending at, and return

1

ing from these assemblies; but such of them as were notorious thieves were not entitled to the benefit of those laws. The oddity of this exception is very remarkable, but its necessity is easily conceived when we consider that Edmund, one of the best Anglo-Saxon kings, lost his life in 946 in excluding from his own table a man of this character.

From this brief statement of this part of the Anglo-Saxon constitution respecting their magistrates and courts of justice, gradually ascending from the court of the decennary to the wittenagemot, it appears to have been a more regular and solid fabric than could have been expected from such barbarous artists; but it was the work of many nations and of many ages, and arose by slow degrees to that beauty and firmness so justly admired.

The succession to the crown in all the kingdoms of the heptarchy was very regular at the beginning, the eldest son succeeding his father without interruption for several generations. But by degrees greater and greater breaches were made in the right of succession. At first it was thought no great stretch for the brother of the deceased prince to supplant his infant nephew, as warlike, unpolished nations could hardly form an idea of being governed by a child, or by a regent in his name. This breach becoming familiar, they proceeded to other deviations, and sometimes a prince of the royal family who was at a great distance from the throne took possession of it to the exclusion of many who were nearer; but still the veneration of the people for the family of the founder of the state was so great, that no man who was not of that family dared to cast an ambitious eye on the crown. At last, however, that veneration was so weakened by length of time, and by the vices, follies, and quarrels of the several royal families, that the thrones of all the kingdoms of the heptarchy, that of Wessex only excepted,

were seized by bold usurpers, who had no connection with the reigning family; which first involved these kingdoms in confusion, and at last in ruin.

The Anglo-Saxons, at their arrival in Britain, as all the northern nations who invaded and subdued the several provinces of the Roman empire, had no written laws, but were governed, as their ancestors had been for many ages, by certain well-known and established customs which had the force of laws. After these nations were firmly established in their new settlements, at a great distance from each other, their laws began by degrees to become a little different. But this difference, for several centuries, consisted chiefly in the various rates of the fines that were exacted from those who were guilty of certain crimes, according to the greater plenty or scarcity of money in their respective countries. When a person removed from his native country to another, he did not change his law, but his life and limbs continued to be valued at the rate fixed by the laws of his native country; and any injury that was done to him was compensated according to these laws, and not according to those of the country into which he had removed and received the injury. Thus while the fine or mulct for cutting the nose of a Spaniard was thirteen marks, the same injury on the nose of an Englishman cost only twelve shillings (Wilkins's Leges Saxon. pp. 4 and 71). When the Anglo-Saxons began to put their laws in writing, they confined themselves to putting down with great brevity some of the most capital points, leaving many others in their former state, which gave birth to that important distinction between the statute, or written, and the common, or unwritten law, which still subsists.