CHAP. II. tonic Kingdom and his Celtic Empire both passed nearly untouched into the hands of the Norman Conqueror. In another preliminary Chapter I must attempt a general picture of the condition and constitution of the Kingdom and Empire thus transferred. I must then give some account of the history of Normandy up to the point which I have now reached in the history of England. I shall then be prepared to go on with the more detailed history of the Norman Conquest itself and of the causes which immediately led to it, beginning with the reign of Ethelred the Second. CHAPTER III. I THE CONSTITUTION OF ENGLAND IN THE TENTH AND ELEVENTH CENTURIES.1 HAVE no intention whatever of entering, in the pre sent Chapter, into any examination of the minute details of our early English legal antiquities, still less into the controversies to which many points relating to them. have given rise. I wish merely to give such a sketch of the political condition of England, at the time when 'I cannot, in this Chapter, lay claim to the same originality which I hope I may fairly claim in the narrative parts of this history. The early political and legal antiquities of England have been treated of by so many eminent writers that there is really little more to be done than to test their different views by the standards of inherent probability and of documentary evidence, and to decide which has the best claim to adoption. Among many other works two stand out conspicuously, Sir Francis Palgrave's History of the English Commonwealth and Mr. Kemble's Saxons in England. My readers will easily see that I have learned much from both, but that I cannot call myself an unreserved follower of either. Another most important work is Dr. Reinhold Schmid's Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen (2nd ed. Leipzig, 1858). The most valuable part is the Antiquarian Glossary, the principal articles of which swell into essays on the most important subjects suggested by the Old-English Laws, supported by the most lavish array of references for every detail. On the whole, I think I shall be commonly found maintaining the same constitutional views as Mr. Kemble, except on the point of the Imperial character of the Old-English monarchy, an aspect of it which Mr. Kemble has rather unaccountably slurred over. This point, one which so closely connects itself with other studies of mine, is perhaps the one which have thought out more thoroughly for myself than any other. Sir Francis Palgrave, with his characteristic union of research, daring, and ingenuity, was the first to call attention to the subject; but I must confess that many of his views on the matter seem to me not a little exaggerated. CHAP. III. England and Normandy began to influence each other's The OldEnglish constitu tion sur vived the Norman Conquest. The The affairs, as may make the narrative of their mutual intercourse intelligible. What the constitution was under Eadgar, that it remained under William. This assertion must be taken with all the practical drawbacks which are involved in the forcible transfer of the Crown to a foreign dynasty, and in the division of the greater part of the lands of the Kingdom among the followers of the foreign King. But the constitution remained the same; the laws, with a few changes in detail, remained the same; the language of public documents remained the same. powers which were vested in King William and his Witan remained constitutionally the same as those which had been vested in King Eadgar and his Witan a hundred years before. The change in the social condition of the country, the change in the spirit of the national and local administration, the change in the relation of the Kingdom to foreign lands, were changes as great as words can express. The practical effect of these changes was a vast increase of the royal power, and the introduction of wholly new relations between the King and every class of his subjects. But formal constitutional change there was none. I cannot too often repeat, for the saying is the very summing up of the whole history, that the Norman Conquest was not the wiping out of the constitution, the laws, the language, the national life of Englishmen. The changes which distinguish the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries from the tenth and eleventh are not owing to Conquest. any one cause. Many of them are merely the natural changes immedi ately fol lowing on the Con quest practical, not formal. Various causes of the ultimate re sults of the results of altered circumstances. Many of them are the work of lawgivers legislating for a new state of things, and, in not a few cases, confirming or restoring ancient English institutions under foreign names. Many of them are due to the ingenuity of lawyers whose minds were full of theories of law wholly alien to the principles of ancient THE ANCIENT CONSTITUTION SURVIVED THE CONQUEST. the mon old Teu the later 73 English jurisprudence. All these changes were in some CHAP. III. sort the ultimate results of the Conquest. Some of them were actually caused by that event; others were hastened by it. But of very few indeed was it the direct and immediate cause. The English Kingship gradually changed Change in from a Kingship of the old Teutonic type into a Kingship archy of the later mediæval type. The change began before from the the Norman Conquest; it was hastened by the Norman tonic to Conquest; but it was not completed till long after the medieval Norman Conquest. Such a change was not, and could type. not be, the work of one man or of one generation. But so far as it can be said to be the work of one man, so far The as there was one man who put the finishing stroke to the gradual, work, one man who gathered up detached and incoherent but brought elements into one consistent system, that man was not to perfecWilliam of Normandy, but Henry of Anjou. § 1. Origin of the Old-English Kingship. change tion by Henry the the ancient What then was the nature, and what was the origin, of Question that Kingship, which the election-the constrained and proposed, Origin and unwilling election, but still the election-of the Witan of nature of all England did, on Midwinter-day, eight hundred years English Kingship. back, entrust to William, Duke of the Normans-from that day forward William, King of the English? That election transferred to him the same internal power over his own Kingdom, the same external power over the dependent Kingdoms, which had been held by Eadgar and Ethelred, and which an earlier forced election of a foreign conqueror had transferred to the hands of Cnut the Dane. We have already traced the course of the events Recapitu by which those powers, internal and external, grew up. the growth Two Saxon chiefs, Ealdormen or Heretogan, formed a settle- of Wessex. ment on the south coast of Britain. After some years of successful warfare, they assumed the kingly title over their lation of 495. 519. CHAP. III. Own tribe.1 One of their successors incorporated some of 823-828. the other Teutonic Kingdoms with his own realm, and obtained an external suzerainty over all the other Teutons in the island and over a portion of the Celts. A series of 878-954. his successors, after long struggles, incorporated all the Teutonic states into one Kingdom, and obtained an external Empire over all the Celtic states. The Ealdorman of the Gewissas thus gradually grew into the King of the West-Saxons, the King of the Saxons, the King of the English, the Emperor of all Britain. The external aspect of this process, the dates of its several stages, I have already marked. I must now dwell a little longer on the real origin and nature of the various powers implied in those different descriptions of the ruler. Each stage marks an advance in the extent of territorial dominion; each stage marks also an advance in the amount of political authority enjoyed by the sovereign. sies alien to the Modern In following up these researches into our earliest political political Controver- antiquities it is absolutely necessary to cast away all recollections of modern political controversies. Time was when question. the whole fabric of our liberties was held to depend on the exact nature of the entry made by William the Bastard. Time was when supporters and opponents of Parliamentary Reform thought to strengthen their several positions by opposite theories as to the constitution of the Witenagemot. To this day a popular orator will sometimes think that he adds point to a declamation by bringing in Saxon Ælfred as the author of Trial by Jury, perhaps of every other privilege which other lands are held either not to possess or to have 1 The exact import of this change will be presently explained. 2 "Rex Saxonum" is a title often used by Ælfred. It is clear that he was more than King of the West-Saxons, less than King of the English. His dominions included the vast majority of the Saxon districts of England, and very little of the purely Anglian. "Rex Saxonum" therefore was his most appropriate description. |