Saxon legislators corresponded with neither the Cavalier nor the Puritan theory; and the modern practice of shifting the responsibility of the monarch upon his ministers would hardly have found favour in their eyes. The limited and ceremonial king, who was actually neither priest, judge, nor soldier, they would have regarded as a roi fainéant ;-a king, after the pattern of the Basilicon Doron, they would have deemed no better than a Greek tyrannus. The possible virtues of the man could not, in their estimation, have atoned for the vicious principle of his title and pretensions. Yet, whatever may have been the practice of particular tribes, kingship, in a certain sense and even with something of a jure divino import, seems rooted in the German mind and institutions. The office arose partly out of the nature of a Saxon community, and partly out of the military and migratory habits of the earliest Teutons. Each mark or gá, being in itself a state, was at times involved in war with its neighbours; while it was constantly occupied at home with the public offences or the private suits of its members. Each had also its several or its federal temple, for its peculiar or its national forms of worship. The soldier, the judge, and the priest were, therefore, as essential to its political existence, as the forest or moorland of the border to its territorial completeness. What convenience dictated, religious faith and civil tradition confirmed. The early colonists had been led by supposed descendants of the divine Opinn. They were his children, and knew his will: they were informed by his spirit, and protected by his power. Hence, in every community was implanted a Sacerdotal germ, and-since the priestly and judicial offices were at first combined-the germ also of the civil functions of kingship. The warrior stands in a different relation to the community. Peace is the natural or normal state, that for which war itself exists; and the institutions 'proper to war are the exception, not the rule.' But in a period of imperfect settlement, when the neighbouring mark might be hostile-and the Keltic perioeci or borderers, were always objects of suspicion and precaution - the exceptional state would differ but little from the natural, and the warrior be no less indispensable to society than the priest or the judge. Mr. Kemble has stated many more preliminary causes and conditions of kingship in a Teutonic community. For these we must refer to his text; while we pass on to the distinctive attributes of an AngloSaxon king.

In the late Mr. Allen's Rise and Growth of the Royal Pre'rogative,' the subject of Anglo-Saxon kingship is handled with unrivalled learning and acuteness. But he has not exhausted the question; because, at the time he wrote, some of the docu

ments, which Mr. Kemble has since procured, were not accessible. Most readers of English history may have yet to learn that royalty was much more widely spread than even over the eight kingdoms which once existed together in Saxon England. The • Codex Diplomaticus' furnishes many names of kings unmentioned by the general historians, but who were reigning at the same time with the eight, seven, or six predominant kings. The functions of these inferior kings were, however, rather sacerdotal and judicial than, strictly speaking, regal-they were, in fact, judges of a small circuit. Of all the constituents of kingship, those which appertain to war are most readily detached from the rest. The power of the sword may be delegated to younger, more adventurous, or more popular claimants; but between the pronouncer of the dooms of man and the interpreter of the will of the gods, there long prevails an intimate, though not an essential connexion. War, too, is migratory, while the temple and tribunal are the visible centres and fixed resorts of the community. The priest-judge, therefore, may easily exist beside a more powerful or enterprising brother of the throne,' without either sacrificing his own powers, or encroaching upon those of his superior. When, however, many smaller districts are combined into one, when both the tribunal and the temple or church embrace a wider circumference, and even the ordinary leader in war yields to the superior skill or valour of some fortunate competitor, the merely judicial and sacerdotal king sinks also into a subordinate rank, and becomes a subregulus, or, in Anglo-Saxon phrase, an ealdorman. From this period-the time of the military, judicial, and priestly powers having each become partially depressed we may date the establishment of kings, at once hereditary and elective, and of the kingdom in its complete Teutonic type, representing the freemen, the nobles, and the folcriht, or public law of both estates.

The position of the Anglo-Saxon king in his relations with the nobles and the freemen, was a lofty one; and even to modern conceptions his privileges were extensive. But there were many stringent and salutary checks upon a capricious or systematic abuse of power. The elective principle, though generally in abeyance, was never wholly abandoned. The territorial nobles

were not dependent on the king for their lands, their arms, or their rank; they were inspired by the love of freedom, and they retained the habit as well as the right of making and administering the laws. In his mearcmót and his shiremót the freeman possessed the machinery for combination; the pursuits of agriculture invigorated his physical powers, and both the traditions of his ancestors and the example of his neighbours fostered

in him a passion for independence. Moreover there was one bulwark against arbitrary rule, which both expressed and implied in the people that raised it, an invincible purpose to resist despotic encroachments. The notion of territorial title was never involved in the idea of an Anglo-Saxon king. The 'kings were kings of tribes and peoples, but never of the land 'they occupy,-kings of the West-Saxons, the Mercians, or 'the Kentings, but not of Wessex, Mercia, or Kent.'

So far, indeed,' continues Mr. Kemble, is this from being the case, that there is not the slightest difficulty in forming the conception of a king totally without a kingdom:;

"Solo rex verbo, sociis tamen imperitabat,"

is a much more general description than the writer of the line imagined. The Norse traditions are full of similar facts. The king is, in truth, essentially one with the people; from among them he springs; by them and their power he reigns; from them he receives his name: but his land is like theirs, private property: one estate does not owe allegiance to another, as in the feudal system; and least of all is the monstrous fiction admitted, even for a moment, that the king is owner of all the land in a country.'

A full description of the rights of Royalty will be found in the Second Chapter of Mr. Kemble's Second Book. But the following are a few of the rights claimed, the privileges enjoyed, and innovations imperceptibly introduced by the Anglo-Saxon

monarchs.

The king possessed the right of calling out the national levies, the posse comitatus, for the purposes of attack or defence. He could recommend the more important causes, at least, to the consideration of the public tribunals, and might take the initiative in public business. Like all other freemen, he was a landed proprietor, and depended for much of his subsistence on the cultivation of his estates. His means as a land-owner were, however, so disproportionate to his station that his principal expenditure was supplied from other sources. In the first place he was entitled to gifts in kind from his people; and in course of time, by an easy process, these freewill offerings were converted into settled payments or taxes. Like the Roman patrician and the feudal baron, the Anglo-Saxon king received also from the freemen customary aids; as, for instance, on his own marriage or that of his children, and on occasion of a progress in his kingdom, or a solemn festival at his court. As conservator of the public peace, he was entitled to a portion of the fines inflicted on criminals: and if the lands of a felon were forfeited, they fell to the king as the representative of the

whole state. His share of booty taken in war was suitable to his rank; and as the sole protector of the stranger, he was probably entitled to a portion of the stranger's wealth or service. Tolls on land and water-carriage, the settling of the value and the form of the medium of exchange, as well as fiscal regulations generally, were among his original or acquired privileges; and treasure-trove was his, because where there is no owner, the state, of which the king is the representative, claims the accidental advantage. In the second place, he was possessed of rights which, though not directly contributing to his revenues, augmented his power and resources. He might demand the services of the freemen for receiving and conducting heralds, ambassadors, or distinguished strangers from one royal vill to another: forage, provisions, or building-materials for the royal residence were conveyed for him: accommodation was due to him when hunting or fishing, for his hawks, his hounds, and servants. The Duke, the Gerefa, perhaps even the members of the Witena-gemót, were appointed by him and as the head of the Church, he had considerable influence in the election of bishops, and in the establishment or the abolition of sees. Finally, the king had the right to divest himself of a portion of these attributes; and, by conferring them upon delegates, he might conciliate the reluctant or reward the compliant.

'But the main distinction,' Mr. Kemble observes, between the king and the rest of the people, lies in the higher value set upon his life, as compared with theirs. As the wergyld or life-price of the noble exceeds that of the freeman or the slave, so does the life-price of the king exceed that of the noble. Like all the people, he has a money value, but it is a greater one than is enjoyed by any other person in the state. So again his protection (mund) is valued higher than that any other; and the breach of his peace is more costly to the wrong

of

doer.'

The right to entertain a comitatus, or body of household retainers, became, in process of time, the source of other and more extensive attributes of royalty, in the end establishing a new order of nobles, whose origin was in the crown itself. The institution of nobles by service was indeed the principal cause of the decline and downfall of the nobles by birth and property, and therefore of an organic change in the whole system of AngloSaxon polity. Had the patricians of the Roman commonwealth agreed, at an early period, to convert their clients into a comitatus, the plebeians would never have made their way to the superior magistracies; and the history of Rome, like that of Veii and Volsinii, might have been read in the annals of some rival and conquering state.

One problem is at the root of all the revolutions of society, from Gracchine reforms to revolts of Jacquerie, viz.; how to reconcile the established divisions of property with the demands of an increasing population. Under almost any circumstances of social being, men possessed of sufficient food and clothing multiply too rapidly for their increase to be balanced by the average of natural or violent deaths. But nations which, like the Anglo-Saxon invaders of Britain, establish a given number of households upon several estates, will probably so much the sooner experience the difficulty of providing for a surplus population. In modern parlance, hands are thrown out of work; and in communities of this description, where agriculture is confined to a simple routine, and commerce does not exist, war and adventure are the resource of the unemployed. The consequence is, that the community, which cannot cast them off upon the wastes or the frontiers, will be imperilled by a floating population of the young, the hardy, and the necessitous. Manufactures are performed by household labour; emigration has its own heavy charges; the land is already divided; so that, except on the large estates of the nobles, the poor freeman cannot live without forfeiting whatever makes life valuable. Some sort of service he must perform for bread; and the most honourable and congenial is military service, which, at the same time, is the most likely to require and to recompense him. The hall of the noble and the court of the prince are seldom without incentives and encouragements to dependence and ambition.

6 The prince,' we proceed in Mr. Kemble's words, enriched by the contributions of his fellow-countrymen, and the presents of neighbouring states or dynasts, as well as master of more land than he requires for his own subsistence, has leisure for ambition and power to reward its instruments. On the land which he does not require for his own cultivation, he can permit the residence of freemen or even serfs, on such conditions as may seem expedient to himself or endurable to them. He may surround himself with armed and noble retainers, attracted by his liberality or his civil and military reputation, whom he feeds at his own table, and houses under his own roof; who may perform even servile duties in his household, and on whose aid he may calculate for purposes of aggression or defence. Nor does it seem probable that a community would at once discover the infinite danger to themselves that lurks in such an institution. Far more frequently must it have seemed matter of congratulation to the cultivator, that its existence spared him the necessity of leaving the plough and harrow to resist sudden incursions or enforce measures of internal police; or that the strong castle, with its band of ever-watchful defenders, existed as a garrison near the disputable boundary of the mark.'

VOL. LXXXIX. NO. CLXXIX.

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