the TYTHING, with its officer and representative, the tything-man. It was founded on no territorial basis, but was simply the embodiment of every ten households or families of such freemen as were not in the "mund," or under the protection of a superior lord. It was a police division, in which each man of the ten became responsible in some degree for all the rest, under a kind of suretyship, called Frank-Pledge. If one of them committed a crime, it was the duty of the rest to produce him in justice, that the wrong-doer might make reparation by his own property, or by personal punishment. In case of his escape, the tything was allowed to purge itself of all participation in the crime and the escape; but, failing such an exculpation, if the malefactor's property proved insufficient for the payment of the penalty, the tything was compelled to make it good. The influence of such a local system of responsibility in rude times can be easily conceived. It was the interest of every man that each should keep the peace; and in this simplest distribution of the Anglo-Saxons, we perceive at once the presence of that principle of local unity and local supervision which becomes but clearer as we carry our investigations farther.

Next in order to the tything was the HUNDRED, which was represented by its officer, the hundred-man. Concerning its organization, antiquarians have had much dispute-some holding it to be a territorial division of the country into tracts, containing each one hundred hides of land; while others with much plausibility maintain that hundreds, like the tythings, were numerically organized, containing each one hundred families. The truth is, both opinions are most probably correct. In the southern kingdoms of the Octarchy, the hundred could not have been organized on the same principle as in the northern. Sussex, for example, was divided into sixty-five hundreds, and Dorset into forty-three; while Yorkshire had but twenty-six, and Lancashire not more than six. So wide a difference as this must have arisen from a difference of plan in the construction of the hundreds; and as Alison observes, "the divisions of the north, properly called wapentakes, were planted upon a different system [from the hundreds of the south], and obtained the denomination of hundreds incorrectly, after the union of all England under a single sovereign." However this may be, the

union of the Anglo-Saxon crowns produced no change in the local law, either in the northern or the southern kingdoms; and the wapentakes of the north, like the hundreds of the south, continued in the full enjoyment of their local customs. Every hundred held a hundred court once in each month, in which it took cognizance of causes both civil and criminal. The freemen of the hundred were at once the witnesses, the judges, and the jury in these courts. The hundred-man, with an ecclesiastic, aided them with his advice on points of law or right, but the decision rested absolutely with the freemen of the hundred. So closely did our Saxon fathers guard the sovereignty of their local institutions, that it is questionable whether an appeal was suffered to be made from the decision of the hundred court, unless where litigants were residents of different hundreds. Yet it seems but reasonable to suppose that such appeals were sometimes made to the superior county courts.

The BURGH was a hundred, or, perhaps often, a union of hundreds, surrounded by a moat, wall, or stockade. Its business was transacted in its burgh courts, which had jurisdiction over causes arising within their limits.

But the most important distribution of the country was into shires, or counties, which were strictly territorial divisions, and included within definite boundaries the freemen who composed the tythings and hundreds, lords with the men belonging to their "munds," burghs with their burghers, and religious houses with their tenants and dependants. In the shire courts, whose presiding officer was called an Ealdor-man, the most important judicial business of the county was transacted at half-yearly sessions. Of their importance, Hallam observes as follows: "It has been justly remarked by Hume, that among a people who lived in so simple a manner as the Anglo-Saxons, the judicial power is always of more importance than the legislative. The liberties of the Anglo-Saxon thanes (freemen) were chiefly secured-next to their swords and free spirits-by the inestimable right of deciding civil and criminal suits in their own county courts: an institution which, having survived the Conquest, contributed in no small degree to fix the liberties of England upon a broad and popular basis.”2 The procedure of the county court was summary and simple. It

was composed of all the freemen of the county who assembled at the regular time, or on a special summons if the court were held at any other time. The ealdorman, in later times, assisted by a bishop or other ecclesiastic, presided, and, no doubt, instructed these unlearned judges, but he had no power to force or overrule their verdict. The freemen of the shire decided the whole controversy. They judged the fact and applied the law. The only duty of the ealdorman was to execute their judgments. The following account from an old chronicle of the proceedings in an Anglo-Saxon shire gemote or county court, will illustrate the summary and informal judgments of the times: "To this gemote came Edwin and spake against his mother concerning some lands. The bishop asked who would answer for her. Thurcil the White said he would answer for her if he knew the complaint, but that he was ignorant of it. Then three thanes of the gemote were showed where she lived, and rode to her and asked what dispute she had about the land for which her son was impleading her. She said that she had no land that belonged to him, and was angry with her son. So she called Lleofleda her kinswoman, the wife of Thurcil the White, and before the thanes spake thus: Here sits Lleofleda my kinswoman. I give thee both my lands, my gold, and my clothes, and all that I have after my life. Then said she to the thanes, Do thane-like, and tell well to the gemote before all good men what I have said, and tell them to whom I have given my lands and my goods, but to my son nothing; and pray them to be witnesses of this. And they did so, and rode to the gemote, and told all the good men there what she had said to them. Then stood up Thurcil the White in that gemote, and prayed all the thanes to give to his wife all the lands which her relation had given her. And they did so, and Thurcil the White rode to St. Ethelbert's church by all the folk's leave and witness, and left it to be set down in our Christ's book." The decision of the shire gemote or county court was irreversible, unless by the great council of the kingdom. Appeal from it was not permitted even to the king. Persons, such as slaves, who were not law worthy—that is, capable of bringing suits at law-or who could not obtain a hearing in their county court, might lay their cause before the king; but even Edgar, the most powerful of the Saxon

monarchs, found it necessary to proclaim by the following ordinance that he would hear none but the causes that legitimately might be brought before the throne: "Now this is the secular ordinance which I will that it be held. This then is just what I will; that every man be worthy of folk-right, as well poor as rich; and that righteous dooms be judged to him; and let there be that remission in the bot as may be becoming before God and tolerable before the world. And let no man apply to the king in any suit unless he at home may not be law worthy or cannot obtain law. If the law itself be too heavy, let him seek a mitigation of it from the king; and for any bot-worthy crime let no man forfeit more than his wer." Bot, in the glossary, signifies amends, atonement, compensation, and emancipation. A man's wer is the estimated value of his life—every man's life, among the Saxons, being estimated at a certain money value, according to his rank.

Such was the judicial system of our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, and the character of local sovereignty which attached to the assemblies of the people in their various organizations. Evidently courts like these must often have been forced, from ignorance of law, to make the law in a particular case: and it is also to be kept in mind that they were courts of voluntary jurisdiction. "All transactions by which property might be acquired or lost, the purchase and sale of land, and the payment of money, were effected in the assemblies of the hundred. Here charters and deeds were produced and read, or, if they had been lost, they were established and confirmed." The shire court possessed the same jurisdiction as that of the hundred, and (perhaps) an appellate power in addition. The precedents of each court would be remembered afterward on like occasions, and hence local customs would grow up at variance with established customs in the neighboring shires. Many such customs survive the Conquest, and continue to the present day, an irrefutable proof of local sovereignty among the Saxon people."

The general legislation of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom after the union of the crowns was done by the Witena-gemote, or council of the wise. It was composed of the archbishops, bishops, abbots, subject kings, earls, and thanes; and, as Prof. Lappenberg declares," there is no reason extant for doubting that every thane

had the right of appearing and voting in the witena-gemote, not only of his shire, but of the kingdom." The powers of this imperial council, according to Kemble, were as follows:

1. They had a right to consider every public act which could be authorized or done by the king.

2. They deliberated upon new laws which were to be added to the existing folk-right, and which were then promulgated by the joint authority of the king and the gemote.

3. They made alliances and treaties of peace.

4. On them devolved the duty of electing the king.

5. They had the right to depose a king whose government was not for the benefit of the people.

sees.

6. They, conjointly with the king, appointed prelates to vacant

7. They regulated ecclesiastical affairs.

8. They levied taxes for the public service.

9. They provided for defence, by raising forces for land and sea. 10. They had the power of recommending and assenting to grants of land.

11. They were empowered to pronounce the lands of criminals and intestates forfeit to the crown.

12. They were in certain cases a supreme court of judicature both in criminal and civil matters.

Yet, with all these weighty powers, the witena-gemote was limited in its authority, says Sir Francis Palgrave, "by the privileges of the different states composing the Anglo-Saxon empire; and which dominions, as I have often remarked, had never amalgamated into one kingdom. Kent, for instance, under the victorious Athelstane, had lost all the appearance of an independent state. But when he had made a law, by the assent of the Witan of Wessex, which, according to Lappenberg, was the great council of the united Saxon states), he could not impose it upon the men of Kent without their concurrence. He transmitted the enactment to them, and they then accepted the proposition by an address which they returned to their sovereign. I can quote the very words of such a document:

"Beloved lord, thy bishops of Kent, and all Kentshire alder