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The Saxon Invaders
The Saxon Invaders; Part 4

The Saxon Invaders; Part 4

Folk-moots decayed as kingdoms grew. By degrees, as England became united, and the petty Saxon Kingdomswere changed into Shires, the folk-moots became " shiremoots", courts in which suits were heard and justice was done before the Ealdorman (the Shire officer), the Sheriff (Shire-reeve, the King's officer), the Bishop (the Church officer), and the representative men of the Shire. And below the shires were smaller divisions, the Hundred and the Township (the latter of which still survives as the parish), each with its hundred moot or township moot. Here again we must notice another mark of our national character, the love of managing our own law courts. It is true that the Saxons did not use a "jury" to declare a verdict, but the plan whereby justice was done in each division before the representative men of the division is something of the same nature. It was a refusal to allow justice to belong to the king alone, or to any set of officials, since justice is the common property of the people. And then, further, when we look at this set of assemblies, one below the other, we are reminded that the policy of the Government in our own day has been to revive something of the same kind, to set up County Councils, District Councils, Parish Councils, to enlarge local government, to encourage people to manage their local affairs themselves.

Folk-moots were indeed a sort of primitive governing assembly, though they were doubtless disorderly gatherings where every freeman thought he had a right to air his own noisy opinion. But these general meetings are only possible for small tribes; kings will employ a council of picked men, more manageable and orderly. So grew up the Assembly of the Wise Men or the Witan, the body from which our Parliament has by slow degrees developed. In it sat the "ealdormen", the rulers of the shires, and the "thegns ", or chiefs of the king's bodyguard, who were the nobles and great men of the time; and when the Church was established in England, the archbishops and bishops took their places there also. This body more resembled the House of Lords than Parliament as a whole, for there were no commons to represent the people. Still, it had most of the powers which Parliament wields now. It made laws; it was consulted about affairs of state, on questions of peace and war, of treaties, of religion; it could elect a king; it could depose a king. Against a strong king it could do little. But when a king was feeble, or when the succession was in doubt, it could interfere.

And so, when in later days we find Parliament refusing to allow Charles I to make laws and govern at his will; or interfering in questions of religion, as it did in Henry VIIIs days; or offering the crown of England, as it did to William III; or deposing a king, as it did Richard II; we may remember that it was only using powers which had belonged to its ancestor, the Saxon Witan. For most of these acts there are parallels in Saxon times. Edwin of Northumbria's Witan was consulted as to whether Christianity should be adopted; it was the Witan that placed on the throne Canute and Harold; it was the Witan that declared Edwy and the incapable Ethelred the Unready deposed from the throne.

Chronology

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