Note 309 — Chapter IX · The State.

Leg. Ath., iv. 6. Eth., iii. 3, 13. The Folk-mote was probably the meeting of the whole people in early times, but after a king’s Ealdorman presided at it, it was surely only a meeting of the Folk under his special jurisdiction. It is last alluded to in the laws of Athelstan, being replaced probably by the biennial Shire-gemote provided by Edgar’s laws, in which the Bishop and the Ealdorman were the leading personages (Edg. ii., 5. C.S. 18). These Moots had nothing whatever to do with the government of the kingdom, which was vested in the king and his Witan,—his Court or Privy Council, not his Parliament; for the voice of “the Community” was unheard in the Witanagemote. Self-government up to a certain point is traceable in the institutions of this period, but not beyond it. The Londoners might choose their Tything-men and manage their own affairs, but the right to do so was laid down in “the ordinance which the Bishops and Reeves belonging to London ordained;” the Reeves being appointed by the Crown, and Bishops, Reeves, and Ealdormen being answerable for holding the Frith “as I and my Witan have commanded” (Ath. v. 11). It is in vain to attempt to trace the germs of the English parliamentary system in the Anglo-Saxon Witan. Our modern Parliament was gradually developed out of the right, acknowledged by “Norman feudalism,” of the whole community of freeholders to gather round the sovereign. The Majores Barones still exercise the right, once belonging to the whole community, of assembling in person; the lesser barons, and the rest of the community, whether in burgh or upland, assemble by their representatives, chosen originally by “the Reeve;” but from the reign of Henry IV. (who appears to have finally carried out the intentions of his grandfather, after a lapse of thirty years), by all freemen of a certain standing. The government of a king and his Witan—his Court or Privy Council—could only have been developed in course of time into, either a powerful but irresponsible despotism, or a feeble monarchy torn by the dissensions of a few powerful magnates contending for the real power. Such was the phase it assumed in England, unless the history of that period is gravely in error.