RISE OF WESSEX AND OF THE SOCIAL SYSTEM OF ENGLAND.

Ceawlin and his Successors—Cedwalla—Ina—Subjection to Mercia—Accession of Egbert—He subdues his Rivals—His Wars with the Welsh and Danes—Land-owning System—Local Assemblies—The Hundred Moot—The Shire Moot and its Business—Methods of Trial and Punishments—The Wergild—The Witena-gemot—Its Powers—The King—Class Distinctions—The Church.

Hitherto the rise of the kingdom of Wessex has been left out of sight in these pages; but as we are approaching the reign of the great king Egbert, it is necessary to trace the steps by which a great power had been slowly consolidated in the West under a series of able kings. We have already mentioned Ceawlin, the third of the sovereigns of the West Saxons. This prince greatly added to his authority and possessions. Besides defeating the Welsh in numerous battles, and conquering a large district north of the Thames, he seized upon the kingdom of Sussex after the death of Cissa, defeated the King of Kent, and was suspected of entertaining the ambitious project of reducing all England under his sceptre. But his subjects, headed by his nephew, Ceolric, rose against him, and met him in battle at Wodensbury. Being defeated, Ceawlin ended his days in exile. This collapse lost to the kingdom of Wessex all the country which had been annexed to the north of the Thames.

Ceolric, his nephew, succeeded him; he died in 597.

This last-named prince was followed by his brother, Ceolwulf, who defeated the South Saxons, and died in 611.

Cynegils, the son of Ceolric, succeeded him, and divided the kingdom with his brother Quicelm. The two last-named princes obtained a great victory over the Britons in 614. Before the death of Quicelm, which took place in 635, he became a Christian: after his decease the kingdom was again united under Cynegils, also a Christian, who henceforth reigned alone.

Cenwealh, his son, had to carry on a succession of wars with the kings of Mercia. Penda, whose sister he had divorced, drove him from his kingdom, and he remained in exile several years, but was afterwards restored, dying in 672. His widow, Sexburh, was chosen as his successor.

This princess reigned little more than a year, when she died. Some historians say that she was deposed by her subjects, who disliked the idea of being commanded by a woman.

Cedwalla became king in 688. During the life of his predecessor, who was jealous of the affection which the people bore him, he had been compelled to fly. He carried on severe contests with the kings of Kent. He afterwards conquered the Isle of Wight; and would have rooted out all the inhabitants, but for the remonstrances of Wilfrith, Bishop of Selsey. In 688 he undertook a journey to Rome, to receive baptism at the hands of the Pope; for although he was a Christian and a great zealot, he had never been baptised. As he travelled through France and Lombardy, he was everywhere very honourably received; and Cunibert, King of the Lombards, was particularly remarkable for the noble entertainment he gave him. When he came to Rome, he was baptised by Pope Sergius II., who gave him the name of Peter. He had always expressed a wish to die soon after his baptism, and his desire was gratified, for he died a few weeks after, at Rome, and was buried at St. Peter's Church, where a stately tomb was erected to his memory, with an epitaph showing his name, quality, age, and time of his death. His two sons being too young to succeed him, his cousin Ina mounted the throne.

Ina was a king of much ability, and reigned no less than thirty-eight years, i.e. from 688 to 726. He was a man of war, a legislator, and a saint. By arms he succeeded in reducing Kent, Sussex, and East Anglia to obedience, and fought many battles against the Welsh, building the fortress of Taunton to protect his new frontier. As a legislator he made a collection of laws seventy-six in number, which is the earliest English code still in existence with the exception of some fragments of a legal system drawn up by the kings of Kent. His holiness was seen in his large benefactions to the Church. Wessex was divided into two dioceses, the new bishop being placed at Sherborne, in Dorsetshire; he founded and endowed, moreover, several monasteries, and rebuilt the abbey of Glastonbury, the burial place of the famous king Arthur. But towards the end of his reign it did not fare well with Ina. In 714 he fought a great battle with the Mercians, in which so many were slain on either side that the issue was held to be doubtful, and this large loss of life perhaps was the cause of his subsequent defeats by the Welsh. Moreover, the members of the royal house proved rebellious, and their leader Aldbert was not defeated by Ina until a wearying contest had been waged between the two parties. In 726, therefore, Ina, tired of the world, and wishing to provide for the safety of his soul, resigned his kingdom, and went to Rome, where he was received by Pope Gregory the Second, and ended his days as a common man.

The abdication of Ina was not productive of good consequences to Wessex; and for nineteen years, from 733 to 752, the country was subject, as has already been mentioned, to the yoke of Mercia until, led by their king Cuthred, the second in succession to Ina, the people won freedom at the battle of Burford. This stage of the history of Wessex is not very important, and closes in 802, when the great king Egbert ascended the throne.

Egbert had laid claim to the throne on the death of Cynewulf, which took place in 784, but without success. Bertric was elected. Fear of the vengeance of his more successful rival caused him to take refuge at the court of Offa of Mercia, but still pursued by the jealousy of Bertric he eventually withdrew to the court of Charles the Great. A close friendship arose between the two, and Egbert modelled his after-career on that of his benefactor. On the death of Bertric he was elected in his absence by the Witena-gemot, or assembly of the wise men, in due form, and reigned until 836. At once he set himself to win a superiority over the island, as Charles had established a dominion on the continent. In the cases of the southern kingdoms his task was easy, and they submitted without a blow; East Anglia being allowed to retain her line of sovereigns as subordinate kings, Kent, Essex and Sussex being practically annexed to Wessex. But with Mercia the task was not so easy. However, in 823 he defeated the Mercians so completely at the great battle of Ellandune that their subject kingdoms, the names and extent of which are not exactly known, were at once annexed to Wessex; and four years later Mercia itself owned his supremacy, the king becoming his subordinate. In the following year Northumbria, torn to pieces by internal dissensions, submitted on similar terms. He thus became ruler over all England, and is deservedly honoured by the "Chronicle" with the title of Bretwalda, or "Wealder of Britain," which is bestowed on some of his predecessors with far more questionable propriety.

Not only did Egbert set himself the task of mastering all the English; but he determined to conquer territory from the Welsh as well. During the greater part of the reign the struggle went on with varying fortunes, the general result being that Devonshire became English, that after the subjection of Mercia the whole of Wales proper submitted (828), but that he failed to make any impression upon the Celtic peoples north of the Dee. In 835, the year before he died, the West Welsh, or Cornish, rose in arms, and were reinforced by the Danes, who now began to scourge the English coasts. Egbert, however, won a victory over them at Hengestesdun. At the time of his death this great king ruled over the whole country south of the Forth, with the exception of Cornwall and the south-west of Scotland and north-west corner of England. Evidently he must have been a man of first-rate ability; but of his personal character and disposition singularly little is known.

Before coming to the period when the Danish invasions (which, however, had already begun) became a matter of annual occurrence, it may be well to see what changes had been effected in the social system of our ancestors since their migration from the banks of the Elbe.

The system of land-owning was much changed, and private property in land became the rule rather than the exception. At first land was allotted to each village, and every family had a portion, known as a hide, as its share. The dimensions of the hide appear to have varied according to locality; as a rule it comprised from thirty to forty acres, but in later times it covered as much as a hundred and twenty. The remainder of the land was theoretically public property, and hence was called folkland; but it was in the hands of the king, who, with the assent of the Witena-gemot, made grants of it from time to time to his thegns, or to the great monasteries, when it was known as bookland, land that is granted out on copyhold tenure—to use a modern legal equivalent, which is fairly exact. Ethel, or alod, was land held by undisputed possession from the first settlement, and which could be transmitted from father to son. The owners of Ethel had no title-deeds to show, but based their claim to ownership on tradition. Later on, however, the distinction between Ethel and bookland disappears, the owners of the former finding it a safer course to get a charter for their property.

As to the administration of the English kingdoms, the important point to notice is that it was not entirely in the hands of a central authority, but each local community had its own affairs in its hands to a very considerable extent. In viewing the social organism, it will be well to start, as before, from the village community, whether in the form of vicus or rural township, town or group of houses surrounded by a quickset hedge or tun, and borough the dwellings round the fortified house (burh) of a great noble. In each of these there was a moot, or local assembly, presided over by a magistrate or reeve, who was at first elected by the general body of the inhabitants, but later on appointed by the neighbouring nobility. So, too, the judicial functions of these petty assemblies were rapidly taken from them, and cases were tried instead at the manor-courts of the great lords.

A union of villages and towns formed the hundred, and to the court of the hundred each township sent the reeve and four men. Cases which lay outside their jurisdiction were sent up from the town-moots, but here, too, the nobility began to encroach upon the rights of their weaker neighbours; and in cases where landowners had privileges known as sac and soc, the decision in their courts was final, and was not subject to the court of the hundred. The police of the hundred was provided by the system known as frankpledge (peace pledge), by which freemen were grouped into bodies of ten, in which each man had to go bail for any one of the other nine, and produce him before the court if he had done wrong. The landless man in the same way was compelled to find a lord who would be answerable for him.

The division above the hundred was the shire, usually formed on the lines of the old kingdoms, as in the case of Kent and Sussex; or sub-kingdoms as in the case of most of the midland shires. The boundaries of each shire were co-extensive with those of each bishopric. The court of the shire, or shire-moot, was presided over by the sheriff or reeve of the shire, who was appointed by the king. By his side sat the alderman or chief military officer of the shire, and the bishop. The shire-moot met twice a year, and any freeman was entitled to attend it, and to have a voice in its decisions.

Its business was two-fold, taxation and justice. Taxation was a very simple affair, being practically non-existent until the period of the Danish invasion, when, as we shall see, the obnoxious burden known as Danegeld was introduced. Its necessity was obviated by the obligation which lay upon every freeman known as the "three-fold necessity" (trinoda necessitas), by which he was bound to attend the host or fyrd in time of war, to repair the public roads, and to keep the fortifications in good order. Thus no imposts were necessary for what are some of the principal sources of modern rating; while the king lived and kept up his court upon the proceeds of the royal domains.

In the matter of justice the shire-moot acted as a court of appeal from the inferior courts. The influence of the great landowners over it must have been considerable, for the verdict was given by the twelve senior thegns. The methods of trial in this and the other courts of old England in criminal cases were three in number, a statement of innocence on oath, compurgation and ordeal. Compurgation was a mode of defence by which a man was held to have established his innocence if he could get twelve men to swear that he was not guilty of the crime in question. Ordeal was allowed as an alternative to those who failed in or shrank from the process of compurgation or of taking an oath themselves. It was practised either by boiling water or red-hot iron. The water, or iron, was consecrated by many prayers, masses, fastings, and exorcisms; after which the person accused either took up a stone sunk in the water to a certain depth, or carried the iron to a certain distance; and his hand being wrapped up, and the covering sealed for three days, if there appeared, on examining it, no marks of burning, he was pronounced innocent; if otherwise, guilty. There were other and less credible methods of trial by ordeal. The trial by cold water was one of them. The person was thrown into consecrated water; if he swam he was guilty, if he sank, innocent. It is difficult for us to conceive how any innocent person could ever escape by the one trial, or any criminal be convicted by the other. But there was another usage admirably calculated for allowing every criminal to escape who had confidence enough to try it. A consecrated cake, called a corsned, was produced; if the person could swallow and digest it, he was pronounced innocent. Walking on burning ploughshares also appears as an ordeal, but seldom, or never, except in stories that are evidently mythical.

The punishments amongst the English seem to have been exceedingly mild for some offences, since even murder might be atoned for by the payment of a fine.

The laws of Alfred enjoin that if any one know that his enemy or aggressor, after doing him an injury, resolves to keep within his own house and his own lands, he shall not fight him till he require compensation for the injury. If he be strong enough to besiege him in his house, he may do it for seven days without attacking him; and if the aggressor be willing during that time to surrender himself and his arms, his adversary may detain him thirty days; but is afterwards obliged to restore him safe to his kindred, and be content with the compensation. If the criminal fly to the church, that sanctuary must not be violated. Where the assailant has not force sufficient to besiege the criminal in his house, he must apply to the alderman for assistance; and if the alderman refuse aid, the assailant must have recourse to the king; and he is not allowed to assault the house till after this supreme magistrate has refused assistance. If any one meet with his enemy, and be ignorant that he was resolved to keep within his own lands, he must, before he attack him, require him to surrender himself prisoner, and deliver up his arms, in which case he may detain him thirty days; but if he refuse to deliver up his arms, it is then lawful to fight him. A slave may fight in his master's quarrel, and a father in his son's, with any one except his master.

Ina enacted that no man should take revenge till he had first demanded compensation, and it had been refused him.

King Edmund decreed that if a man committed a murder, he might, within a year, pay the fine, with the assistance of his relatives and friends; but if they refused to aid him, he should alone sustain the feud with the kindred of the murdered person.

There is, indeed, a law of Alfred, which makes wilful murder capital; but this seems only to have been an attempt of that great legislator towards establishing a better police in the kingdom, and probably it was not often carried into execution. By the laws of the same prince, a conspiracy against the life of the king might be redeemed by a fine.

The fine to be paid for the murder of a king, or his wergild—a word signifying the legal value of any one,—was by law 30,000 thrismas, nearly 1,300 pounds of present money. The price of the head of one of royal blood (Atheling), was 15,000 thrismas; that of a bishop's, or alderman's, 8,000; a sheriff's, 4,000; a thegn's, or clergyman's, 2,000; a ceorl's, 266. These prices were fixed by the laws of the Angles. By the Mercian law, the price of a ceorl's head was 200 shillings; that of a thegn's six times as much; that of a king's, six times more. By the laws of Kent, the price of the archbishop's head was higher than that of the king. It must be understood that where a person was unable or unwilling to pay the fine, he was put out of the protection of the law, and the kindred of the deceased had liberty to punish him as they thought proper.

The price of all kinds of wounds was likewise fixed by the English law: a wound of an inch long under the hair was paid with one shilling; one of a like size in the face, with two shillings; thirty shillings were the compensation for the loss of an ear; and so forth. There seems not to have been any difference made according to the dignity of the person. By the laws of Ethelbert, any one who committed adultery with his neighbour's wife was obliged to pay him a fine, and buy him another wife.

The court of the nation was known as the witena-gemot, or assembly of the wise men. Originally, no doubt, it was a far more popular institution than it became in later times. In theory every freeman was entitled to be present; but it was gradually confined to a small body of men, and the average number of those who attended it was about thirty. They consisted of royal officials and heads of the church, the bishops, aldermen, and personal attendants of the king spoken of in the laws and chronicles as ministri. Such a body, although it had in theory great powers, was, as Bishop Stubbs points out, practically very much under the control of a strong king.

Its powers were as follows:

(1) All laws, whether national or ecclesiastical, were made with its counsel and consent.

(2) It supervised grants of land, especially the conversion of folkland into bookland.

(3) It was a court of justice in the last resort.

(4) It laid on especial taxes, such as the Danegeld.

(5) It discussed questions of foreign policy.

(6) It elected the aldermen in conjunction with the king, and the bishops in the more important sees. Bishops were, as a rule, however, elected by the clergy.

(7) It could elect and depose kings. Deposition was frequent in some kingdoms, notably in turbulent Northumbria. As to election, "the choice," says Bishop Stubbs, "was limited to the best qualified person standing in close connection to the last sovereign."

Thus we see that the English kings were elected by the assembly of the nation; and they went through some form of election, perfunctory though it was no doubt, even in times subsequent to the Norman conquest. We have already mentioned that the institution of kingship was subsequent to the invasion of Britain, and was due to the immense amount of territory that fell to the disposal of the victorious general and the accession of importance he assumed thereby. The king was the chief magistrate in peace, and the leader of the national host (fyrd) in war; and the introduction of Christianity invested him with new attributes of sanctity. Still, it is important to notice that the idea of treason, and the penalty of death attached to it, was of late development. The penalty for killing a king is only a higher wergild than in the case of an ordinary individual.

The difference between class and class becomes more sharply defined after the invasion of Britain than before it. The bodyguard of the king (comitatus or gesith) is more distinctly dependent upon him. They are known as his servants, or thegns. As regards the bulk of the people they form, however, a noble class. There were king's thegns and lesser thegns; the distinction being apparently regulated by the amount of land which they possessed.

It was possible, however, for men who were not owners of land, to rise to the rank of thegn. Thus Athelstan decreed that a merchant who made three long sea voyages on his own account should be entitled to the quality of thegn. The classes of ceorls, or freedmen, and laets, landless men who cultivated the soil for their lords, continued to exist; but there was also a class of absolute slaves usually occupied in household labour, whose position must have been most unenviable. The power of the master over his slave, however, was not unlimited, for if he beat his eyes or his teeth out, the latter might claim his liberty; and if he killed him, he paid a fine to the king, provided the slave died within a day after receiving his wound.

The English Church was on the best of relations with the various kingdoms with which its dioceses coincided. The bishop sat with the sheriff and alderman in the shire-moot, and was a member of the witena-gemot. The kings and aldermen in the same way took part in the ecclesiastical councils which were convened after the organisation of the ecclesiastical system by Theodore of Tarsus. According to his scheme of reform, a general council of the whole Church was to assemble every August, and he himself presided over two great councils at Hertford and Hatfield. The idea was not carried out after his death with perfect regularity, especially after Archbishop Egbert had successfully asserted the independence of the see of York; still such assemblies were occasionally held, and were of the greatest assistance in developing the idea of national unity. They met at some border town such as Clovesho, an unknown spot near London, where the hostile kings of Mercia, Wessex, Kent, and Essex associating with the bishops, abbots, and occasionally diocesan clergy, learnt to sink their differences, and to realise the greatness of their common interests. Even after the national assemblies had practically resolved themselves into the two provincial synods of Canterbury and York, the comparative unimportance of the northern province frequently invested the proceedings of the southern with a national character. Assemblies of each diocese were also occasionally summoned, which were largely attended by the parish priests, the parish coinciding with the townships in the same way that the diocese coincided with the kingdom or subkingdom.

The English Church was notably a learned Church, and numbered among its dignitaries Bede, the historian of the Church. Despite the intimate connection between Church and State, it was not a distinctly political Church. The sees were often set up at a distance from the great towns; and the bishops made their ecclesiastical duties the chief interest of their lives, seldom degenerating, as on the Continent, into great territorial princes. The Church was also a popular institution. It was supported by voluntary tithes which were not made imperative by law earlier than the year 787. Its main fault was a certain desultoriness of effort, which is to be traced in the failure to carry out Theodore's plans in their integrity. Learning had almost died out at the time of the accession of Alfred, and the invasions of the Danes can only be adduced as a partial excuse. We find that king complaining that very few of his clergy could translate a letter from Latin. The Church was, moreover, excessively monastic. Pious kings founded and liberally endowed numerous monasteries, which rapidly became luxurious and corrupt, until some were religious societies only in name. The system, however, had its advantages when it was necessary to furnish missionaries gratuitously to poor districts.