Note 485 — Chapter VI · THE WITENA GEMÓT.

It has always been a question of deep interest in this country, what persons were entitled to attend the Gemót: and in truth very important constitutional doctrines depend upon the answer we give to it. The very first and most essential condition of truth appears to me, that we firmly close our eyes to everything derived from the custom of Parliaments, under the Norman, the Angevine or the English kings: the practice of a nation governed by the principles of Feudal law, is totally irreconcileable with the old system of personal relations which existed under the earlier Teutonic law. The next most important thing is, that we use no words but such as the Saxons themselves used: the moment we begin to talk of Tenants in capite, Vavassors, Vassals, and so forth, we introduce terms which may involve a petitio principii, and must lead to associations of ideas tending to an erroneous conclusion. One of these fallacies appears to me to lie in the assertion that a landed qualification was required for a member of the Witena gemót. One of the most brilliant, if not the most accurate, commentators on our constitutional history, Sir F. Palgrave, has raised this question. According to his view no one could be a member of that singular body which he supposes the Anglosaxon Parliament to have been, unless he had forty híds of land, four thousand acres at least according to the popular doctrine. But this whole supposition rests upon a series of fine-drawn conclusions, in my opinion, without sound foundation, and totally inconsistent with every feeling and habit of Saxon society. The monkish writer of the history of Ely—a very late and generally ill-informed authority—says that a lady would not marry some suitor of hers, because not having forty híds he could not be counted among the Proceres; and this is the whole basis of this parliamentary theory,—proceres being assumed, without the slightest reason, to mean members of the witena gemót,—and the witena gemót to be some royal council, some Curia Regis, and not at all the kind of body described in this chapter. I confess I cannot realize to myself the notion of an Anglosaxon woman nourishing the ambition of seeing her husband a member of Parliament. The passage no doubt implies that a certain amount of land was necessary to entitle a man to be classed in a certain high rank in society: and this becomes probable enough as we find a landed qualification partially insisted on with regard to the ceorl who aspired to be ranked as a thane. But this is a negative condition altogether: it is intended to repress the pretensions of those who, in spite of their ceorlish birth, assumed the weapons and would, if possible, have assumed the rights of thanes. In the Saxon custumal, called “Ranks,” it is said:—“And if a thane throve so that he became an eorl, he was thenceforth worthy of eorl-right.” Thorpe, i. 192. On this the learned editor of the Ancient Laws and Institutes observes:—“It is to this law that the historian of Ely seems to allude in the following passage, and not to any qualification for a seat in the witena gemót, as has been so frequently asserted. ‘Habuit (sc. Wulfricus abbas) enim fratrem Gudmundum vocabulo, cui filiam praepotentis viri in matrimonium coniungi paraverat, sed quoniam ille quadraginta hidarum terrae dominium minime obtineret, licet nobilis esset [that is, a thane] inter proceres tunc nominari non potuit, eum puella repudiavit.’ Gale, ii. c. 40. If we refer to the Dooms of Cnut, c. 69, we shall see that the heriots of an eorl and of a lesser thane were in the proportion of from one to eight,—a rule which may have been supposed to have arisen from a somewhat similar relation between the quantities of their respective estates; and as the possession of five hides conferred upon a ceorl the rights of a thane, the possession of forty (5 × 8) in all probability raised a thane to the dignity of an eorl.” This opinion is only a confirmation of that which I had myself formed on similar grounds long before Mr. Thorpe’s work was published: and it was apparently so understood by Phillips before either of us wrote. See Angels. Recht. p. 114, note 317, Göttingen, 1825.