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must remount to a very remote fact of our history, viz. the Anglo-Saxon subjugation of Britain.

For a generation or two after the occupation of our country the AngloSaxons were in the position of an army encamped in an enemy's country. They were soldiers, liable to be called upon by their heretoga, at all times and in one mass, to protect themselves and their acquisitions against unconquered or insurgent natives. At length an internal calm succeeded; the Anglo-Saxons were in peaceable possession of their estates, and the subject natives became their obedient tenants and labourers. This state of comparative quiet, combined with the altered circumstances of the conquerors, developed a new form of an old Germanic principle. In Germany vassalage had always arisen from spontaneous adoption, and there was nothing in the nature of society there by which that obligation could be imposed through compulsion, for all Germans were equal in the eye of their law, and that congenital freedom could only be relinquished by the active wish of the individual.

But in Britain a new order of men had been produced by the work of conquest, men left personally free, but dispossessed of property, and degraded from political power, -in fact, a subject population had been formed, who became in the country the tenants and farmers of the conquerors.

In this circumstance the latter saw an opportunity or a necessity for extending to the natives compulsorily the obligation which himself and his forefathers had voluntarily accepted. In addition to the temporary or specific contracts which the Romans had introduced, they imposed the more binding and general obligation of their own barbaric vassalage.*

* The Anglo-Saxon system demanded that all men should have a lord. (L. L. Athelstan, c. b. hlaford leasum mannum.) Hallam says (View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages, ch. 2. p. 1. "Feudal System,") "There is reason to infer from the capitularies of Charles the Bald that every man was bound to attach himself to some lord, though it was the privilege of a freeman to choose his own superior. And this is strongly supported

The submission of the native to become his tenant, in the construction of the conqueror, attached the former in mind and body to the peculiar service of the proprietor. The imposition of this constructive and compulsory vassalage was a new æra in Britain. If it derogated from the freedom of his Romano-Britannic forefathers during their interval of independence, that freedom had been forfeited by defeat, and this new privilege conferred a benefit, and, by legally attaching him to his masters, identified the interests of both. If the German at times shewed himself a tyrant to his own vassals, he in turn protected them against the violence of others of his own class, for an injury inflicted upon the former was an injury to himself.†

by the analogy of our Anglo-Saxon laws, where it is frequently repeated that no man shall continue without a lord."

† Of this there can hardly be a better proof than the remarkable expressions in the Suppl. Legg. Eadgar. "Gif geneat manna hwyle forgyme leasath his hlafordes gafol, and hit him to thæm riht andagan ne gelæst, wen is gif se hlaford mildheort bith that be tha gymelæste to forgyfenesse læte, and to his gafole butan witnunge fo. Gif he thanne gelomlice thurh his bydelas his gafolas myngath and he thonne aheardath and hit thencth to

ætstrengenne, even is that thæs hlafordes grama to tham swithe weaxe that be him ne unne nather ne æha ne lifes." For the word "bedel," as an underbailiff of a manor, see Ellis's Introduction to Domesday, p. 135. Protection was a component part of the lordship, and to administer justice, in the German acceptation, was to afford to the offender a protection (or mund) against the fæhth or corporal retaliation of the injured person or his family. This was first pointed out by Montesquieu (Esprit des Lois, tome 5, liv. 3, ch. 19). A price was paid to the lord by the offender or his kindred for thus provisionally enforcing peace between the two parties. As the lord had this right, it followed naturally that his mansion or castle should be a sanctuary to the criminal who sought his protection. (Liber Constit. L. L. Ine, c. 63.) This was the privilege denominated "sac and soc," in which we have the origin of our English ham or manor, and of the French justice; in fact of an institution which appears in every country subjugated and occupied by Germanic tribes. Montesquieu, (Esprit des But to become the vassal of another was, ex vi termini, to be made amenable not only to the civil but also to the military guidance of the latter; for according to the Germanic formula each authority implied the other, as a necessary conjunct; thus the Belgic natives were admitted to the Germanic comitatus, and became the warlike assistants or attendants of the conqueror. But when matters had arrived at this stage that such a course could be taken or permitted with policy or safety, a new order of things had been evolved. How this had happened may be explained in the following manner:--The descendants of the Germans, after the work of the conquest was completed, occupied themselves with concerns of domestic or immediate interest: property, and the manifold cares of a settled life, engrossed their attention and time. It therefore became unreasonable, andout of the question, that they should be called upon, as their predecessors had been, at all times, and without intermission or proportion of task, to perform the labours of the utfare. In the early period of the occupation of Britain that course was necessary and inevitable, but, under altered circumstances, and, the establishment of internal peace, neither necessity required nor policy dictated the retention of such a custom. No army of pure Germans was needed; there was peace at home, and the foreign and native populations had resolved themselves into an aristocracy and subjects, and we have seen how the latter had become identified with their rulers, through the happy application of the great Germanic institute of vassalage. In the wars therefore of each heptarchickingdom against its neighbours, the Belgic population, at the period I now refer to, could be safely employed by their political masters, and they were employed accordingly, under the influence of reasons such as I am about to detail. The old Germanic plan suggested itself to the minds of the Ger

Lois, tome 5, liv. 30, ch. 22,) says of the French justices, "Les justices ne doirent point leur origine aux usurpations." They were a natural growth out of the application of vassalage to a subject population, in the manner I have stated above.

mans in Britain. They now had leisure to turn to it, and, through the coalition which had grown up between the nations, it became as applicable there as in old Germany. In the latter country a portion only of the people militated in its foreign wars, whilst the remainder occupied itself with the equally necessary duties and employments of home. The labours of war were thus apportioned and intermitted.* Such was the plan which the Germans in Britain now called for, and it was, as we shall see, adopted here, though the discrepant state of the new country required and effected a modification of the ancient principle. The rateable militia of Germany could have furnished but a corps or two, or such a force only as an external enemy would not fail to deride. If, therefore, the former institute was to be reinstated, it became imperative that recourse should be had to a more liberal policy than had been previously shown on the part of the dominant caste in Britain; and, as it was now secure, so also was it politically wise and expеdient to join the original natives with the aristocracy in the wars which the latter should plan or sustain.

But nevertheless pride, and perhaps prudence, would not permit that the levy of the subject and pauperized population should be made on terms of independence, or equality with the aristocratic proprietor of a foreign birth. How, then, should the knot be untied, or the difficulty be reconciled ? The natives having subsided into a quiet order in the state, and their warlike services being required by the ambition, or for the defence, of their rulers, a plan must be devised which should secure to the one the co-operation of the other, without shaking or infringing the relations established between them as an aristocracy and an unprivileged demos.

In Germany, land belonged to no one in particular, but to all in general, and the individual was free from any adventitious attribute arising out of its possession.† In Britain, after its conquest, the German was never disconnected from land, nor the idea of the

* Cæsar, De Bello Gallico, lib. 4, c. 1. † Cæsar, De Bello Gallico, lib. vi. c. 22,

latter from him. All the lands of Britain were seized by the conquerors. The villas and cultivated estates fell to the lot of individual soldiers, while the larger mass of waste and forest territory sank into the barbarian fiscus.

The German warrior who had followed Hengest or Cerdic to our shores seized, in the scramble of conquest, the latifundium of the Roman Briton, and there he established his home, which, in after times, continued to be the ham of his successor; and we then find it endowed with the manorial privileges of sac and soc, with a civil jurisdiction and a military command over the inhabitants of the precinct.* To this estate the invader gave his own name, and the appellation so given endured to later ages. The thegn Beodric preceded the saint in the designation of that town which was originally called Beodrices-weorth, and afterwards Saint Edmund's Bury.†

In the Norman conquest of Neustria the same circumstance occurred. In that country the mansus occupied by the Scandinavian pirate Ansgod became Angoville, and other places, such as Grimonville and Herouville, received their names from the Danish chieftains Grim and Harald.‡

The historian Michelet has said, in allusion to the state of polity I am about to describe, "The land takes the place of man; to it belongs the real personality."§ We find ample corroboration of this assertion in the vestiges of our Anglo-Saxon times. With ourselves, as with the Germanized nations of the continent, land became

* Ellis's Introduction, p. 151.

+ Vide the excellent and characteristic version of Jocelin of Brakelonde, the old monk of Bury's history, which some time since issued from the pen of T. E. Tomlins, Esq. The popular favour with which this publication has been received is a cogent proof that archæology, in the hands of a talented writer, will have attractions for those whom previous study has not qualified for personal and independent research.

+ See Thierry's "Conquête de l'Angleterre," and the memoir of M. de Gerville, on the names of places in Normandy quoted in it, from tom. vii. of the Memoirs of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of France.

§ Hist. de France, lib. 4, ch. 2.

not merely a distinction of man, but appurtenant to the notion of a class of humanity; and to the present day our constitution refers to land as its fundamental principle. To demonstrate its paramount character, and its tenacious influence on the German mind, we require no further proof than is afforded by the precise and technical phraseology of Anglo-Saxon law-not the flights of metaphoric diction, or the forced analogies of the poet. An union of twelve thegns to testify the innocence of an accused was known to the tribunal as an oath of sixty hides. Everywhere is found the same language, or the same idea betrays itself. ||

Each German conqueror, in taking his share of the conquest, became a landholder, the law ever afterwards, for its own purposes, regarding him as such. Land, therefore, became his badge as well as his privilege. A German, a thegn, and a large landholder would be convertible terms. In this the conquest struck out a principle unknown to the Germanic continent. Here was the great departure from Germanic formulæ, and what followed

|| Ine's Laws, "be cyninges geneate." A king's geneat whose were is 1,200 shillings may swear "for sixtig hyda," i. e. for twelve ordinary thegns. Ibid, "be wærfæhthe tyhtlan." A man accused of wærfæhth, or the homicide of an enemy, purges himself by an oath "be thrittig hyda swa be gesithcundum men swa be ceorliscum swa hwæther swa hit sy." Alfred's Laws, "be forlegerum." The wife of a ceorl accused by the paramour of consenting to adultery purges herself "be sixtigum hida."

Property in land continued in after times to form the demarcation between the thegn and the ceorl. Nor does this position clash with the fact that in the historic times the ceorls did possess land (Judic. Civit. London). There was no restriction known to the Anglo-Saxon law upon the proprietor of allodium parting with it by sale during his lifetime, or by devise after his death. As time rolled on, land which had been the portion of the conqueror would gradually pass from the hands of the unthrifty thegn into those of the industrious or mercantile ceorl. But here the law again intervened, and pronounced that on the ceorl becoming possessed of an estate of the magnitude of five hides he should be ranked as a thegn (Judic. Civit. London).

was but an easy and natural consequence of that departure. Of old, all freemen were directly liable to the fyrd, in their personality of freemen. Subsequently, no freemen who were not landholders were so liable directly, for the law did not name or explicitly acknowledge them; but, to enable the state to avail itself of the valuable services of these men, the developed form of vassalage to which I have alluded stepped in, and, coupled with the new principle, by which land in becoming the property of individuals who formed an aristocracy played a part in the organisation of society, lent a helping hand to remove the difficulty. The king, as communis magistratus, in citing the thegn,* called upon him no longer in the character of a German freeman and warrior, but in the adventitious qualification of a landed proprietor,† assessing his liability by the number of his acres, for in proportion to their extent would be the number of the inferior vassals employed in their cultivation, whose services he could compel for general feudal purposes.

Armies could now be raised out of the two elements which entered into the composition of the nation, the German and the Belge, the ruler and the subject, without clashing with the authority of the one, or tampering with the dependence of the other.

Though the ceorls, or Belgic natives, were reinvested with a warlike character and charge, they militated under their lord, composing the useful but

* Kemble's Diplomata, vol. i. p. 119. Ethelbald of Mercia uses the phrase, "edictum regis."

ignoble mass of the army. Distinction and power were the attributes of the other class.

The ceorl was of course unnamed in the royal proclamation of the fyrd, for, in naming his lord, who legally represented him, it engaged by implication the services of the vassal also. As such, he had merged his name, and even the glory of his achievements, into the honour and advancement of his master.

It cannot be doubted, I think, that the policy of the Anglo-Saxon states in transferring the general obligation of the fyrd from the person to the land was wise and far-sighted; for, whilst it retained the military authority in the hands of the ruling caste, it was enabled at the same time, without jealousy or danger, to avail itself of the labours of the subjects.

I trust that in the foregoing remarks I have shown that the fyrd, in its organization, contains the fact of the existence of a subject people, militating under the descendants of its conquerors, the landed proprietors. The former, from other sources, we know to be the persistent Belgic population, and the latter to be the Anglo-Saxon invaders of southern Britain.

Yours, &c. Н. С. С.

Doctors' Commons.

(To be continued.)

MR. URBAN,

I PERCEIVE that the author of the "Royal Descents" has answered my letter on the subject of his work. There are still, however, a few points on which I differ most materially from

† The Frankish, or rather Franco-him-not least, the case of the Beau

Gallic law, as declared by Charlemagne, was founded on the same principle. He who possessed four mansi of allodium was compelled to go to war by the obligation of possessing that quota of land. He who possessed three mansi was conjoined with another to whom one mansus alone belonged, and the same fellowship affected the proprietors of two of such divisions of land. The practical operation of this arrangement, by which two or three men were made into one, and lost their individuality in the eye of the law, was this: the man who stayed at home defrayed in his proportion the expenses of the other who went out. Montesquieu, (Esprit des Lois, tom. 5, b, 30, ch. 13.)

forts; and I therefore crave your permission for a little more space in the pages of your valuable Magazine.

Were Hume the most reputable authority in the world (which your correspondent F.R. S. wholly denies in your last November number), it would be questionable how far the alleged notion of Mr. Long could be supported in the fourteenth century. According to C. E. L.'s version of the case, Edward the Third's issue pre

‡ Cnut's Laws, c. De servo deserentę dominum.

tending a title to the French throne was in point with King Stephen's claim two centuries and a half before to that of England. Stephen claimed the English crown as son of a daughter of William the First, and therefore as of better title than the empress Matilda, who was the daughter of a son. Still I never heard it contended that Stephen's "title" was viewed otherwise than as a usurper's, or that Matilda's was not the rightful claim. I always fancied that the decision on this point was as old at least as Henry the Second's reign.

With regard to the house of Escrick, C. E. L. will find that the error is not mine, but that of the Baronages. They state distinctly that Edward was the infamous Lord Howard of Escrick. It is true, they make him die before the date of the event in question; but in Baronages, I should rather have distrusted the date than the biographical fact. Dates run so many risks of error before they meet the public, that it is of common occurrence to find them incorrectly printed. One single letter, turned upside down even, will throw a date many years wrong; but it is not so easy to misplace a sentence of four or five lines. Had I observed that the Baronages made Edward Lord Howard die in 1675, I confess I should have discredited the date rather than his memoir, but for the enlightenment I have received from C. E. L. As I know by rote the leading points in most printed pedigrees, I dare say that, when writing my original communication on this subject, I trusted to my recollection of what I had read in Burke's Extinct Peerage (the best book Burke has edited), without actually referring to that, or to any other work involving the question, at the time I was writing my letter.

The exclusion of the Beauforts from Mr. Long's "Royal Descents" I still consider a grievous injustice to that family, and a direct insult to Parliament.

As Mr. Long does not allow Parliament the power of bastardizing and legitimizing, I shall leave him to settle the question with Parliament itself. I can only forewarn him, that I believe Sir Edward Coke's statement to be quite correct, viz. that the "power of Parliament is transcendant;" that it

can make, unmake, and make еxсерtions to any laws it pleases.

But has Mr. Long yet to learn that the Roman, Civil, Canon, and Scotch laws would all have made the Beauforts legitimate, solely in consequence of the ex post facto marriage? Mr. Long must remember that this too would have been the law of England (as it has been for the last seven centuries of the greater part of Europe), but for the resources of King Stephen, to secure his usurped throne. When the civil law was extending its influence over the whole of the civilized world-the whole of Europe-and would have swayed England with the rest, Stephen sacrificed the educated aristocracy, the clergy, and all the civilized, to the illiterate barbarian people (just to keep the latter in his interest), by preserving them their senseless, traditionary "common law," against the "encroachments" (as they were called) of learning, and the civil code; it was solely this fiction, the exigencies and contemptible submissions of an usurper, that excepted England from a law, remarkable for its wisdom, equity, and morality, and almost universal; yet which C. E. L. pronounces not only to be "most vicious," but incorrect in principle and equity; telling us in fact that England is right, and Europe wrong! What is the common law but the traditionary law of a tribe of savages? Read what Sir Matthew Hale says on this subject. The civil law, on the contrary, is admittedly the result of men's wisdom and experience in all civilized kingdoms, and in all ages of the world. Blackstone, with all his twaddling abuse of everything "Romish," (which he pursues so eagerly that he resembles an old woman-disciple of Lord George Gordon,) could not conceal his respect for the civil law.

To revert to the particular point of the Beauforts, and other cases of the sort. I place myself under the banner of the ever-illustrious Earls Berkeley, whose contempt for the common law, whose magnanimity and nobility in not taking advantage of its unnatural decrees, at the sacrifice of one another, will render their name greater with future ages than it has ever yet been. Let the all-wise English law consider Earl Fitzhardinge a bastard, and tell him

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