gar to Wil 1066). National unity and the feudal From Ead- 8. The attempt has now been made to define with approxiliam (958- mate correctness the form which the constitution of the consolidated kingdom assumed during the century that intervenes between the accession of Eadgar the Peaceful and the tendency to beginning of the Norman conquest. With the accession of destroy it. Eadgar, and with the final extinction of the provincial kings,1 it seemed as if the work of consolidating the incoherent mass of petty states, which the victories of Ecgberht had but loosely united, had been fully and finally accomplished. As the work of consolidation advanced, the royal power grew until it reached its highest point in the person of Eadgar.2 Each step in this advance was attended by a corresponding decrease in the power and independence of the local communities. The ancient states were reduced to the rank of shires, -the ancient shires to the rank of hundreds. But the local organizations, which thus descended in status, preserved their autonomy to the greatest practicable extent; their ancient boundaries remained unchanged; in their local assemblies was still carried on all forms of administrative and judicial business in which the mass of the people were directly concerned.* The national unity which thus grew up through a premature and imperfect concentration of powers around a single throne was constantly strained and weakened by the counter-force of the provincial spirit.5 The greatest defect in the system arose out of the weakness of the tie which bound the central provincial powers of the state to the local machinery of the constitution. There was a want of strong organic connection between the king and the witan, as the representatives of the nation, and the system of provincial organization embodied in the shires, a want which was never to be supplied until representatives from the local communities finally drew together in an assembly which became coördinate with the Royal authority, prematurely developed, weakened by the counter force of the spirit. 1 See above, p. 169. 2 "But with Eadgar the glory of 3 Norm. Cong., vol. i. p. 67. "The national unity was weakened by the sense of provincial unity, and individual liberty was strengthened against the time when the national unity should be, not the centralization of powers, but the concentration of all organization; a period long distant and to be reached through strange vicissitudes. In the maintenance of provin cial courts and armies was inherent the maintenance of ancient liberty.” Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. i. p. 209. the per Under acter of the king. king's council. While this want of organic connection continued to exist, the cohesive power of national unity, which Influence of the crown embodied, necessarily depended in a great degree sonal charupon the personal character of the national chief. such rulers as Alfred, Æthelstan, Eadred, and Eadgar the royal power was strong and effective; under such a ruler as Æthelred it became in a moment nerveless and inefficient.1 Whenever the moment of weakness came, whenever the throne was filled by an irresolute ruler or a child, the provincial spirit asserted itself through the revolts of the ealdormen, the viceroys who were ever ready to win back from the king a part of the sovereign power which the local communities had lost. In this form appeared in England that feudal movement which was everywhere dissolving the continental nations into a mass of loosely united states with nobles at their head, who owned but little more than a nominal allegiance to their sovereign.2 The political history of the tury that intervenes between Eadgar and William is history of the struggle between the power of the nation embodied in the crown, and the provincial power asserted by nates, the great ealdormen, who were ever striving in the direction of feudal isolation. But the ealdorman never succeeded in becoming completely independent, and his office never became hereditary. The weakest of the successors of Elfred were strong enough to drive the greatest ealdorman into exile, and to supply his place with another. In England the crown proved mighty enough to preserve the national unity which it embodied against the feudal and provincial tendency to destroy it. But in the struggle the defensive power in which of the nation was broken; the spirit of disunion and disorder the defenwhich was ever assailing the foundations of the throne was of the equally ready to paralyze the national arm in the presence of broken. the invader. At the death of Eadred in 955 the tendency 1 Norm. Cong., vol. i. p. 78. 2 "The feudal movement, which in other lands was breaking up every nation into a mass of loosely-knit states with nobles at their head who owned little save a nominal allegiance to their king, threatened to break up England itself." Green, Hist. of the English People, vol. i. p. 94. 8" Powerful as he might be, the cen- Struggle the the crown between as and the English ealdorman never succeeded in "In the witan the king and the local mag sive power nation was The last Danish invasion. Swegen. towards national disintegration proved strong enough to divide the realm for a time between his young nephews, Eadwig and Eadgar. And upon the death of Eadgar the struggle between the great nobles, which his firm and peaceful reign had for a time suspended, broke out afresh over the succession of his son Eadward, whom he had designated as his successor. Eadward, whose claims were disputed by his younger brother Æthelred, was elected by the witan, but in the fourth year of his reign he was removed by a cruel murder from the path of his opponent.1 3 In the unhappy reign of Ethelred whose indifference to cient constitutional rights of local in- 2 Green, Hist. Eng. People, vol. i. p. 1 For the details of these struggles, see Freeman, Norm. Cong., vol. i. pp. 42, 177, 179. 8 The very best account of the Danish conquest of England, and of the Danish kings in England, can be found in Freeman's Norm. Cong., vol i. pp. 175-356. E. Chron., a. 1010. 5 Freeman, Norm. Cong., vol. i. pp. 204-207, 243, 244. Cnut's return in the following year to complete the work which Cnut. his father had begun, he found the Ætheling Eadmund levying an army to resist him. But the power of the realm was still broken by internal dissensions. By the side of Eadmund stood the arch-traitor Eadric, Ealdorman of Mercia, whose desertion at a critical moment opened the way to the invader. After Wessex and Mercia had been overrun, Cnut sailed towards London, the last stronghold of the national cause. The death of Ethelred, which now occurred (1016), was followed by a double election. All the witan outside of the faithful city joined in the election of Cnut to the vacant throne, while the citizens of London, with such of the witan as were within the walls, united in the election of Eadmund.1 The brilliant fight which the English king now waged for a few months against Cnut was terminated by his overthrow at the battle of Assandun, which was followed by a treaty partitioning the kingdom. Upon the death of Eadmund, which soon followed the making of this treaty, Cnut was His elec elected king of all England by the witan of the whole realm. of all EngAfter the first period of cruelty which naturally attended the land. conquest had passed by, Cnut suddenly rose in moderation and wisdom to the height of the greatest of the native kings. His first important act of administration was the Divides the division of the kingdom into the four great governments of into four Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria, and East Anglia, over each of earldoms. which he appointed a great earl, with the exception of Wessex, which he retained under his own supervision. As soon as the work of organization was done, Cnut sent home most of his ships, retaining only a handful of household troops or "hus-carls" as a body-guard, it being his purpose to reign, tion as king kingdom law." not as a conqueror but as an English king, according to the forms of the ancient constitution. He was therefore ready The cry for to hearken to the cry, which soon arose from Dane and Eng"Eadgar's lishman alike, for "Eadgar's law," - not for a code of Eadgar's making, but for the law as it was administered in the peaceful days of one of the greatest of the native kings.1 Cnut had no new ideas of government to introduce; his laws are nothing more than reproductions of those of Eadgar and Æthelred; and his division of the kingdom into four great earldoms simply represented the old ducal system under a more definite form of organization. Upon the death of the great Dane the vast empire which he had built up, and of which England was only a part, fell to pieces, and the fragments were divided amongst his children. In England his death was followed by a disputed succession. For the settlement Harold and of the contest which arose between his sons, Harold and Harthacnut, the witan of the whole realm met at Oxford, and after great debate the national assembly decreed the division of the kingdom between the contestants. Thus for the last time was England divided between two acknowledged kings. Upon the death of Harold the crown passed to Harthacnut, and upon his death the nation, wearied with the brutality and misgovernment of Cnut's worthless sons, reëstablished the ancient line by the election of Eadward, the son of Ethelred and Emma, to the kingdom of his fathers. Hartha cnut: last divi sion of the realm be tween two acknowledged kings. Eadward sor. 2 The history of the reign of Eadward the Confessor is the Confes- simply a continuation of the struggles of the great nobles, whose authority completely overshadows that of the king. The feudal tendency to disruption does not prevail, simply because the great Earl Godwine, who is striving to win the crown for his own house, is strong enough to counteract it.3 Godwine. 1 "The cry is really, as an ancient writer explains it, not for the laws which such a king enacted, but for the laws which such a king observed. It is in fact a demand for good government in a time of past or expected oppression or maladministration.". Freeman, Norm. Conq., vol. i. p. 281. The "ancient writer" referred to is William of Malmesbury, who thus concludes his explanation: "In quarum custodiam etiam Regis Edwardi juratur, non quod ille statuerit, sed quod observarit." - ii. § 183. 2 "Once more, but now for the last time in English history, the land had two acknowledged kings. Harold reigned to the north of the Thames and Harthacnut to the south." — Freeman, Norm. Conq., vol. i. p. 326. 3 "Policy led the earl, as it led his son, rather to aim at winning England |