Bæda. the name of Eadward the Confessor, aspire to the character of codes. Just before the middle of the eighth century we have the Ecclesiastical History of Bæda, from which is derived the only substantial account of the century and a half which folArchæolog- lowed the coming of Augustine. To these imperfect records. have been added the fruits of the most careful and exhaustive archæological and geographical research. Even the physical conformation of the conquered territory has been minutely examined as one of the surest of documents bearing upon the history of the conquest itself.2 ical and geographi cal research. General the con quest, and nature of the early settlements. 3. The period of piratical visitation which began when character of the freebooters from the north appeared in the Channel as mere plunderers who simply came to harry the coast, and then to sail away again gave way about the middle of the fifth century to a period of conquest and settlement. For a century and a half after that time the coming of the Teutonic tribes into Britain assumed the form of a migration.3 All the Form of the evidence tends to show that the emigrants came in disconmigration. nected bands, more or less numerous, each under its own leader or ealdorman, who singled out some particular section of country for conquest and settlement. The fact that the invaders were compelled to cross the sea in ships, capable of transporting only small bodies of men, precludes the idea of invading hordes by which the whole land could be suddenly overrun. The weakness of the attack, and the fierceness with which it was resisted, were the dominant causes which determined the character of the conquest itself. By dint of hard fighting, bit by bit, district by district, the land was won. As we may happen to accept one or the other of two leading tion of the theories that exist as to the manner in which the land was originally distributed, the conclusion may be reached, either that the invaders divided the land according to fixed rules as they advanced, or, after the first period of struggle was over, that Distribu land. 1 Stubbs, Select Charters, etc., p. 60; Cf. Ancient Laws and Institutes of the Anglo-Saxons, Thorpe. 2 I refer chiefly to the works of Dr. Guest, contained in the volumes of Transactions of the Archeological Institute; and to Mr. Green's Making of England. 8 See Stubbs's chapter on "The Migration," Const. Hist., vol. i. p. 57. -Freeman, Origin of Eng. Nation, p. 65. 4 See entries in the E. Chron., a. 449, a. 495; Freeman, Norm. Cong., vol. i. p. 49, and Appendix K. The fact must, however, be borne in mind that each band of invaders constituted a part of a general migration. Stubbs, Const Hist. vol. i. p. 65. embodies political or a rearrangement took place according to established forms.1 No matter which theory be the true one, as to the broader aspects of the distribution the fact remains, that the invaders did settle down upon the land in marks or village-communities, and did possess it according to the principles of ownership which that system represented.2 The Teutonic host not The host only embodied within itself all the elements of political life, all the elebut its very organization presented the most natural scheme ments of of allotment upon which a division of the land could be made. ganization. The clans of kindred warriors represented the village-communities; the hundreds of warriors, the pagi or gás; while the host as a whole was in fact the state assembly, not in council but in action, the whole people in arms. When, therefore, the conquering host settled down upon a definite area of land, the state reappeared as a necessary consequence.3 Or it may have been that the invaders often came in numbers only sufficient to constitute a single group, or even one village-community. Out of the union of such communities arose gás or shires, which finally became organized into states or kingdoms. In Britain the village-community or mark is represented by the township; the pagus, gá, or shire, by a group of townships united in the district known in later times Structure of as the hundred ; while a union of pagi or gás is the primi- the primitive rice or kingdom. The political structure of the primitive kingdom. 1 Dr. Konrad Maurer, after discussing both theories, gives his adhesion to the first. Kritische Ueberschau, i. p. 100; Essays in A. S. Law, p. 57. 2 To Kemble belongs the credit of being the first to apply the results of German research into the mark system to the history of English institutions. See ch. ii. on "The Mark," and ch. iii. on "The Ga or Scir," Saxons in England, vol. i. Cf. Freeman's Norm. Conq., vol. i. p. 66; Maine, VillageCommunities, lects. i., iii., v. Mr. Morier's Essay on Land Tenure, published by the Cobden Club (Macmillan, 1870); Nasse's treatise On the Agricultural Community of the Middle Ages, Colonel Ouvry's translation (Macmillan, 1871), p. 28; Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. i. pp. 49-52, 82-85; Digby, Law of Real Property, pp. 4-8; Essays in AngloSaxon Law, p. 83; Seebohm, Eng. Village Community, Preface, x. 71. 8 Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. i. pp. 31, 4 "The township (I state the matter in my own way) was an organized, self-acting group of Teutonic families, exercising a common proprietorship over a definite tract of land, its mark, cultivating its domain on a common system, and sustaining itself by the produce.” — Maine, Village-Communities, p. 10. From the first, the township or village-community must have been regarded as forming a part of the larger aggregate, the hundred.”— Digby, Law of Real Property, p. 7. This aggregate" was originally a shire, and it never descended to the status of a hundred until the state of which it was the largest division became itself a shire. – Essays in Anglo-Saxon Law, p. 19. tive rice or The heptarchic king dom an ag gregation of primitive kingdoms. tive kingdom a re production of the civitas of Ca sar and Tacitus. state would therefore be the same, whether it arose out of the settlement of a single conquering host, or out of the gradual coalescence of smaller settlements originally isolated and independent. Before the historic period begins, the petty states or kingdoms, into which the settlers originally grouped themselves, had ceased to exist as independent communities, — they had become bound up in the larger aggregates generally known as the heptarchic kingdoms. It is possible, however, from this condition of things to reason back, and to determine with reasonable certainty the structure of these early kingdoms before the process of aggregation began. The later evidence The primi justifies the assumption, which will be adhered to throughout, that these early or primitive kingdoms were reproductions, in every material particular, of the continental Teutonic states, - the civitates of Cæsar and Tacitus.2 In tun-moot as in mark-moot,3 the assembled villagers met together to regulate their own local and agricultural concerns; in the gemot, or meeting of all the freemen resident within the pagus or early shire, we have in fact, if not in name, the hundred court of the continent; while the primitive state assembly is the folk-moot, the meeting of the whole people in arms. By adhering firmly to this conception of the structure of the petty states, or early kingdoms as they will be called, into which the conquerors originally grouped themselves, it will be possible hereafter the more clearly to explain the historical origin and structure of the various divisions and subdivisions which appear in the composition of the consoli dated kingdom of England after the work of aggregation has been finally accomplished. The new tonic. The whole fabric of the new society, which completely dis Society Teu- placed within certain limits the older Celtic society, was purely Teutonic. Its language was made up of a set of dia lects of the Low-German; the only religion which it possessed was the religion of Woden; its only conception of law 1 Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. i. p. 169. 8 See Mr. Green's graphic descrip tion of the structure of the early kingdoms in which the conquerors origi nally grouped themselves. - Making of England, pp. 169–171. Essays in Anglo-Saxon Law, p. 20. Roman and government was a purely Teutonic conception. The witness of language, of religion, and of law, all point to the one irresistible conclusion that, within the limits which the conquerors made their own while they were still heathens, the whole fabric of Romano-British life passed away.1 And this conclusion is greatly strengthened by the fate of the Roman Fate of the cities. The German instinct was averse to dwelling within cities. the confines of walled cities: in the woods and in the plain the German made his home; his boundaries were the boundaries of the mark, his walls the mound and quick-set hedge by which his "tun" or village was surrounded. The abandoned Roman cities went to ruin and decay, and with them perished the system of municipal life which they embodied.2 In the course of time, it is true, the sites of many of these deserted cities were reoccupied by the conquerors, but the new system of municipal life which they established had no The new connection with the old, it was simply the "tun" or village municipal life in a higher state of organization. But it will not suffice life. for us simply to examine the broader aspects of the new society; we must descend to details, and examine the specific forms in which the older life reappears when the work of conquest is done. system of tions of 4. The political and social life of the founders in the fa- Distinctherland rested upon two fundamental conceptions, — dis- rank: tinctions of rank and the possession of land,4-two cardinal ideas which are fully developed in the life of the village-communities when Teutonic history begins. The original basis of land-ownership was freedom; 5 the freeman alone could possess family land within the village; and upon this possession, the badge of his freedom, depended his right to par 1 Freeman's Origin of the English Nation, part ii.; Four Oxford Lectures, pp. 72-85; Green's Making of England, ch. iv.; Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. i. 61. 2 No one can successfully maintain the continuity, in Britain, of Roman municipal institutions. Cf. Kemble, Saxons in England, vol. ii. ch. vii., "The Towns; Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. i. p. 92; Green, Making of Eng land, p. 136. 8 "And even when life returned to them, it was long before the new towns The free and the unfree. The free; the ceorl. The eorl. The un ticipate in the enjoyment of the common lands, the property of the whole community.1 The free were divided into two classes, nobles and simple freemen; while the unfree consisted of agrarian dependents, who occupied their masters' lands upon the basis of a fixed contribution, and of slaves, whose condition represented the full measure of servitude.2 In the settlements made by the kindred warriors in Britain, the primitive divisions of rank distinctly reappear. In Old-English phrase the noble is the eorl, the simple freeman the ceorl; while beneath eorl and ceorl stand the unfree, representing different degrees of servitude.1 6 The ceorl in the new society is the basis of the village life, just as the simple freeman was the basis in the older society.5 He is the "wæpned man," the "free-necked man," whose neck has never been bent by a master. Within the villagecommunity he possesses the "ethel "7 or "alod," which entitles him to the enjoyment of all rights to which any other free member of the community is entitled. But in the host and in the assembly he is simply a unit with no distinction of birth to lift him above his fellows.8 In the new life as in the old the eolas or æthelings are the highest order of freemen, distinguished above the rest of their class by reason of their noble blood, and by the possession of large estates.9 The eolas, the nobles of the first settlements, and their descendants, represent the ancient nobility of immemorial descent, as distinguished from the later nobility by service. The unfree among the settlers in Britain may be grouped free; lats. in two broad divisions, -læts and slaves.10 The let was a 1 G. L. von Maurer, Markenverfassung, pp. 59-62; Dorfverfassung, pp. 61-65; Einleitung, p. 71 et seq. 2 Tac., Germ., cc. 7, 24, 25. 8 Kemble, Saxons in England, vol. i. 131-136; Freeman, Norm. Cong., vol. i. p. 55. 4 Kemble, Saxons in England, vol. i. ch. viii., "The Unfree; The Serf." 5 Green, Making of England, p. 173. • Kemble, Saxons in England, vol. i. p. 131. 7 The terms ethel and alod are usually employed by the best writers to describe the land held in full ownership. Konrad Maurer, Kritische Ueberschau, vol. i. p. 97; Kemble, Saxons in Eng land, vol. p. 88. "The ethel, hid, or alod:" Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. i. p. 75. See Sir F. Pollock's criticism upon the use of ethel and alod in an article "On Early German and English Land Laws," contained in Law Magazine and Review, London, February 1882, p. 127. 8 Freeman, Norm. Cong., vol. i. p. 55. 9 Green, Making of England, p. 174. 10 Kemble, Saxons in England, vol. i. ch. viii., "The Unfree; The Serf." |