tion.

fact of the

Second, the

CHAP. III. Kingdom, which was only part of it. In this inquiry two special points call for notice. There is, first, the fact Statement that the English Kings did exercise a superiority of some of the ques-kind over the whole of Britain, a fact which has someFirst, the times been called in question by local prejudice. There is, superiority. secondly, the question as to the exact nature of that force of the superiority, and as to the motives which led the Kings assumption of the tenth and eleventh centuries to assume distinctively Imperial Imperial titles. It must not be forgotten that in those days such titles were not assumed at random: the idea of the Roman Empire was still thoroughly understood, and indeed the Roman Empire itself, both in the East and in the West, was in one of its most flourishing periods.

of strictly

titles.

over Scot

land dates

Eadward

924.

No earlier

The fact that the West-Saxon or English Kings, from Eadward the Elder onwards, did exercise an external supremacy over the Celtic princes of the island is a fact too clear to be misunderstood by any one who looks the evidence Superiority on the matter fairly in the face. I date this supremacy, in the case of Scotland, from the reign of Eadward the from Elder, because there is no certain earlier instance of subthe Elder. mission on the part of the Scots to any West-Saxon King. I pass by the instances of Scottish submission to several supremacy of the earlier Northumbrian Kings, as well as what looks very like a submission of both Scots and Northumbrians to the Roman Empire itself in the person of Charles the Great. These instances do not prove the existence of any permanent superiority; they are rather analogous to the temporary and fluctuating superiority of this or that Bretwalda over the other English Kingdoms. But, from Submission the time of Eadward the Elder onwards, the case is perEcgberht, fectly clear. The submission of Wales dates from the 828; time of Ecgberht; but it evidently received a more distinct and formal acknowledgement in the reign of Eadward.

in Wessex.

of Wales to

to Eadward, 922.

See above, p. 40.

COMMENDATION OF SCOTLAND.

129

and Scot

with their

the Com

Two years before the Commendation of Scotland, all the CHAP. III. Kings and people of Wales commended themselves to the West-Saxon King; "they sought him to Lord." So, in The Welsh the accounts of the transactions both with Scotland and tish people with Strathclyde, it is stated with equal clearness that the concur people of both those countries had a share in the acts of princes in their princes by which Eadward was chosen to Father mendation. and to Lord.2 I conceive this to mean that the Scottish and Welsh princes acted in this matter by the consent and authority of whatever body in their own states answered to the Witan in England. The Commendation in both cases was a solemn national act. For the motive of the act I have already suggested a sufficient reason in fear of Eadward's power, combined with a sense of the necessity of common action with him against the heathen invaders who ravaged all parts of Britain alike. I use the Nature of feudal word Commendation, because that word seems to me better than any other to express the real state of the case. The transaction between Eadward and the Celtic princes was simply an application, on an international scale, of the general principle of the Comitatus. That relation, like all the feudal relations which it helped to the relaform, may be contracted either on the greatest or on affected by the smallest scale possible. The land which either is greatness originally granted out on a military tenure, or which ness of its allodial owner finds it expedient to convert into a fief so held, may be a Kingdom or it may be a rood of land maintaining its man. So the Lord whom a man chooses, and the man who chooses the Lord, may be of

1 Chron. 922. "And þa cyningas on Norb Wealum, Howel and Cledauc and Ieobwel, and eall Norp Weallcyn hine sohton him to hlaforde." North Wales, it must be remembered, does not mean Caernarvon as opposed to Glamorgan, but Wales as opposed to Cornwall.

2 Chron. 924. "And hine geces pa to fæder and to hlaforde Scotta cyning and call Scotta þeod.. and eac Stræcled Weala cyning and calle Stræcled Wealas."

Commen

dation;

tion un

or small

scale.

K

CHAP. III. any possible rank, from the Emperor and the Pope with their vassal Kings down to the smallest Thegn and his neighbouring Ceorl.1 The relation is exactly the same, whatever may be the rank and power of the parties between whom it is contracted. In every case alike, faithful service is owing on the one side and faithful protection on the other. Equally in the greatest case and in the smallest, the relation may imply a strictly feudal tenure of land or it may not. Now, in recording these cases of Welsh and Scottish submission, it will be observed that the Chronicles, as if of set purpose, make use of the familiar legal phrases which express the relation of Commendation on the smaller scale. A man "chose his Lord;" he sought some one more powerful Process of than himself, with whom he entered into the relation of Comitatus; as feudal ideas strengthened, he commonly small scale. surrendered his allodial land to the Lord so chosen, and received it back again from him on a feudal tenure. This was the process of Commendation, a process of everyday occurrence in the case of private men choosing their Lords, whether those Lords were simple gentlemen Instances or Kings. And the process was equally familiar among mendation Sovereign princes themselves. Almost all the Northern among and Eastern vassals of the Western Empire, some of them Sovereign of kingly rank, became vassals by Commendation. The Commendation was doubtless in many cases far from voluntary, but the legal form was always the same. The lands of these princes were not original grants from the

Commen

dation on a

of Com

Princes.

1 I am not clear that even a Ceorl might not himself be a Hlaford to a poorer Ceorl. A Ceorl might have his own Loaf-eaters (Hláf-atas. Laws of Æthelberht, 25), which looks very like a form of the Comitatus.

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 on an Imperial grant.

COMMENDATION AMONG SOVEREIGN PRINCES.

position as if their

131

We might go on to CommenSouthern Italy com- the Nor

dation of

1053.

dation of

the Pope

by John;

the Em

Richard.

Emperors; but their owners found it expedient to come to CHAP. III. terms with their Imperial neighbour, and to place themselves and their lands in the same lands had been real Imperial grants. say that the Norman conquerors of mended themselves to the Pope whom they took prisoner, mans to and that the Sicilian Kingdoms, on the strength of that Ninth. commendation, remained for seven hundred years in the position of fiefs of the Holy See. The Kingdom of CommenEngland was, certainly once, possibly twice, commended England to to a foreign potentate. John, as all the world knows, commended his Kingdom to the Pope; and it is by no [1213.] means clear that his brother Richard had not before perhaps to that commended it to the Emperor. There was nothing peror by unusual or degrading in the relation; if Scotland, Wales, 1193. Strathclyde, commended themselves to the West-Saxon King, they only put themselves in the same relation to their powerful neighbour in which every continental prince stood in theory, and most of them in actual fact, to the Emperor, Lord of the World. Not to speak of a crowd Homage of of smaller instances, Odo, King of the West-Franks, com- Westmended himself to Arnulf of Germany, just as Howel Frank to and Constantine commended themselves to Eadward of 888. Wessex. And this commendation was made before Arnulf became Emperor and Lord of the World, while he was still the simple King of the Eastern Franks.2 The Commendation in the case of Scotland and Strathclyde was, in form at least, a perfectly voluntary act, done with the full consent of the nations in

1 Richard did homage to Henry the Sixth for some Kingdom, and was accordingly enrolled among the Princes of the Empire. But it is not clear whether the homage was done for the Kingdom of England or for an imaginary Kingdom of Provence.

2 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.

Odo the

Arnulf.

between England

and Scotland as friendly as was usual in such cases.

of Edward

CHAP. III. terested. The Kingdom of Strathclyde soon came to an end, and with the Welsh of Wales proper no permanent Relations relations of any kind could be kept up. But between the English over-lord and his Scottish vassal the mutual compact was perhaps as well kept as it ever was in such cases. It was occasionally broken and occasionally renewed; but this was no more than happened always and everywhere in those turbulent times. The relations between the English Basileus and the King of Scots may on the whole be called friendly; they were at least much more friendly than the relations which existed between the King of the West-Franks and his dangerous vassal The claims at Rouen. The original Commendation to the Eadward of the tenth century, confirmed by a series of acts of submission spread over the whole of the intermediate time, is the true justification for the acts of his glorious namesake in the thirteenth century. The only difference was that, during that time, feudal notions had greatly developed on both sides; the original Commendation of the Scottish King and people to a Lord, had changed, in the ideas of both sides, into a feudal tenure of the Change of land of the Scottish Kingdom. But this change was simply the universal change which had come over all such relations everywhere. That this point, the only point which could with any justice have been raised against Edward Plantagenet on the Scottish side, never was brought forward shows how completely the ancient notion of Commendation had gone out of mind.2 But the principal point at issue, the right of the over-lord to

Plantagenet in 1291 rest on the Commendation to Eadward the Elder

in 924.

ideas in

the meanwhile.

1 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 the nonsense about Brutus has found its way into some copies of these documents. 2 A Highlander, with his notions (though grounded on a somewhat 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.