in him a passion for independence. Moreover there was one bulwark against arbitrary rule, which both expressed and implied in the people that raised it, an invincible purpose to resist despotic encroachments. The notion of territorial title was never involved in the idea of an Anglo-Saxon king. The 'kings were kings of tribes and peoples, but never of the land they occupy,-kings of the West-Saxons, the Mercians, or 'the Kentings, but not of Wessex, Mercia, or Kent.'

6

'So far, indeed,' continues Mr. Kemble, is this from being the case, that there is not the slightest difficulty in forming the conception of a king totally without a kingdom:

"Solo rex verbo, sociis tamen imperitabat,"

is a much more general description than the writer of the line imagined. The Norse traditions are full of similar facts. The king is, in truth, essentially one with the people; from among them he springs; by them and their power he reigns; from them he receives his name: but his land is like theirs, private property: one estate does not owe allegiance to another, as in the feudal system; and least of all is the monstrous fiction admitted, even for a moment, that the king is owner of all the land in a country.'

A full description of the rights of Royalty will be found in the Second Chapter of Mr. Kemble's Second Book. But the following are a few of the rights claimed, the privileges enjoyed, and innovations imperceptibly introduced by the Anglo-Saxon monarchs.

The king possessed the right of calling out the national levies, the posse comitatus, for the purposes of attack or defence. He could recommend the more important causes, at least, to the consideration of the public tribunals, and might take the initiative in public business. Like all other freemen, he was a landed proprietor, and depended for much of his subsistence on the cultivation of his estates. His means as a land-owner were, however, so disproportionate to his station that his principal expenditure was supplied from other sources. In the first place he was entitled to gifts in kind from his people; and in course of time, by an easy process, these freewill offerings were converted into settled payments or taxes. Like the Roman patrician and the feudal baron, the Anglo-Saxon king received also from the freemen customary aids; as, for instance, on his own marriage or that of his children, and on occasion of a progress in his kingdom, or a solemn festival at his court. conservator of the public peace, he was entitled to a portion of the fines inflicted on criminals: and if the lands of a felon were forfeited, they fell to the king as the representative of the

As

whole state. His share of booty taken in war was suitable to his rank; and as the sole protector of the stranger, he was probably entitled to a portion of the stranger's wealth or service. Tolls on land and water-carriage, the settling of the value and the form of the medium of exchange, as well as fiscal regulations generally, were among his original or acquired privileges; and treasure-trove was his, because where there is no owner, the state, of which the king is the representative, claims the accidental advantage. In the second place, he was possessed of rights which, though not directly contributing to his revenues, augmented his power and resources. He might demand the services of the freemen for receiving and conducting heralds, ambassadors, or distinguished strangers from one royal vill to another: forage, provisions, or building-materials for the royal residence were conveyed for him: accommodation was due to him when hunting or fishing, for his hawks, his hounds, and servants. The Duke, the Gerefa, perhaps even the members of the Witena-gemót, were appointed by him and as the head of the Church, he had considerable influence in the election of bishops, and in the establishment or the abolition of sees. Finally, the king had the right to divest himself of a portion of these attributes; and, by conferring them upon delegates, he might conciliate the reluctant or reward the compliant.

'But the main distinction,' Mr. Kemble observes, between the king and the rest of the people, lies in the higher value set upon his life, as compared with theirs. As the wergyld or life-price of the noble exceeds that of the freeman or the slave, so does the life-price of the king exceed that of the noble. Like all the people, he has a money value, but it is a greater one than is enjoyed by any other person in the state. So again his protection (mund) is valued higher than that of any other; and the breach of his peace is more costly to the wrong

doer.'

The right to entertain a comitatus, or body of household retainers, became, in process of time, the source of other and more extensive attributes of royalty,-in the end establishing a new order of nobles, whose origin was in the crown itself. The institution of nobles by service was indeed the principal cause of the decline and downfall of the nobles by birth and property, and therefore of an organic change in the whole system of AngloSaxon polity. Had the patricians of the Roman commonwealth agreed, at an early period, to convert their clients into a comitatus, the plebeians would never have made their way to the superior magistracies; and the history of Rome, like that of Veii and Volsinii, might have been read in the annals of some rival and conquering state.

One problem is at the root of all the revolutions of society, from Gracchine reforms to revolts of Jacquerie, viz.; how to reconcile the established divisions of property with the demands of an increasing population. Under almost any circumstances of social being, men possessed of sufficient food and clothing multiply too rapidly for their increase to be balanced by the average of natural or violent deaths. But nations which, like the Anglo-Saxon invaders of Britain, establish a given number of households upon several estates, will probably so much the sooner experience the difficulty of providing for a surplus population. In modern parlance, hands are thrown out of work; and in communities of this description, where agriculture is confined to a simple routine, and commerce does not exist, war and adventure are the resource of the unemployed. The consequence is, that the community, which cannot cast them off upon the wastes or the frontiers, will be imperilled by a floating population of the young, the hardy, and the necessitous. Manufactures are performed by household labour; emigration has its own heavy charges; the land is already divided; so that, except on the large estates of the nobles, the poor freeman cannot live without forfeiting whatever makes life valuable. Some sort of service he must perform for bread; and the most honourable and congenial is military service, which, at the same time, is the most likely to require and to recompense him. The hall of the noble and the court of the prince are seldom without incentives and encouragements to dependence and ambition.

'The prince,' we proceed in Mr. Kemble's words, enriched by the contributions of his fellow-countrymen, and the presents of neighbouring states or dynasts, as well as master of more land than he requires for his own subsistence, has leisure for ambition and power to reward its instruments. On the land which he does not require for his own cultivation, he can permit the residence of freemen or even serfs, on such conditions as may seem expedient to himself or endurable to them. He may surround himself with armed and noble retainers, attracted by his liberality or his civil and military reputation, whom he feeds at his own table, and houses under his own roof; who may perform even servile duties in his household, and on whose aid he may calculate for purposes of aggression or defence. Nor does it seem probable that a community would at once discover the infinite danger to themselves that lurks in such an institution. Far more frequently must it have seemed matter of congratulation to the cultivator, that its existence spared him the necessity of leaving the plough and harrow to resist sudden incursions or enforce measures of internal police; or that the strong castle, with its band of ever-watchful defenders, existed as a garrison near the disputable boundary of the mark.'

VOL. LXXXIX. NO. CLXXIX.

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From the intimate relation between the prince and the gesið or comites there arose certain reciprocal rights and duties:-these sanctioned by custom or adopted from convenience, gradually formed themselves into a code of laws, which ultimately affected the condition and even the social existence of the freemen. In the earlier development of the comitatus, the idea of freedom is supplanted by the more questionable motive of honour, or, to speak more strictly, of rank and station. The comes may become, by gift from his employer, possessed of land, even of very large tracts. But he could not be the possessor of a free hyde, nor consequently bound to service in the general fyrd, or to suit in the folcmot. Wealth, honour, and rank were his abundantly, but not freedom. However, in exchange for freedom he escaped from the toilsome duties of the farm, and the irksome routine of the popular court and judicature, to the plenty of the castle, to its stirring adventure, and occasional repose. The markmen might raze him from their roll, and give his land to a worthier holder; but the very erazure would recommend him to a lord who regarded the mark with no favourable eye, and the loss of his portion in the free land would secure his dependence, and perhaps be compensated to him fifty fold. The tokens of his servitude were numerous and palpable. The comes, however endowed or advanced, was a menial; housed within the walls, fed at the table and clothed at the expense of his chief. His life was not his own; it had been bought with a price. He could not contract marriage, nor bequeath his property, nor exchange his master, without special permission. He might not, like the freeman, atone for his offences by a pecuniary mulct; but was liable to degradation, expulsion, and even death itself. These, however, were the casualties of his position, which he might easily avoid, and which the interest, if not the humanity, of his chief would rarely enforce. In return for his sacrifice of freedom, and his liability to disgrace, the comes obtained a maintenance, a life of adventure, and with it the chance. of preferment and his prince's favour. He had his portion of the spoil; he was admitted to the festival: for him and his fellows, as partaking the joys and sorrows of their chief, were the triumph and the banquet, the pleasures of the chace and the minstrel's song, the remembrance of danger shared and of fealty gallantly redeemed. As the royal power advanced, the place of the comes advanced also; and while the old noble by birth, as well as the ceorl, sank into a lower rank, the noble by service won for himself lands and horses, arms and jewels, and titular distinctions, ecclesiastical and civil. Finally, the nobles by birth themselves became absorbed in the ever

widening whirlpool. Day by day the freemen, deprived of their old national defences, and wringing with difficulty a pre'carious subsistence from incessant labour, sullenly yielded to a yoke which they could not shake off; and commended them'selves (such was the phrase) to the protection of a lord; till a complete change having thus been operated in the opinions of men, and consequently in every relation of society, a new order of things was consummated, in which the honours and security of service became more anxiously desired than a needy and unsafe freedom; and the alods being finally surrendered, 'to be taken back as beneficia, under mediate lords, the foundations of the royal, feudal system were securely laid on every 'side.'

The concluding chapter of the first volume is occupied with a general survey of Anglo-Saxon heathendom. The historian of an outworn creed' should be neither a missionary nor a polemic in his feelings. He may admit the creed and the legends of his forefathers to be dark, inconsistent and unsatisfying, when compared with revealed truths and with the more critical and humane spirit of a later era. But he misunderstands his office if he treats them with intolerance or disrespect. He is not an iconoclast, but an artist who, while restoring some dilapidated shrine, can never forget that it was once hallowed and is still beautiful. It is an opposite but equally grave error, to view the symbols and doctrines of an extinct faith through the medium of Pantheism. Earnest they once were, and held by earnest men; or they had never been rooted in the heart of generations, to whom nature was a living presence, and notional abstractions nearly unknown. Mr. Kemble has avoided both these mistakes, in his synoptical view of the Anglo-Saxon Pantheon. Although obliged by his limits both to condense and omit, he has illustrated the subject from many sources hitherto unexplored or unemployed; and has treated it throughout with an imaginative and philosophical vigour, which renders this chapter perhaps the most original and interesting in the volume. We have already noticed the firm tread and wide excursions of Mr. Kemble in the provinces of the jurist and the political economist. In the present chapter he has breathed into the dry bones of antiquarian research so true a spirit of poetry and eloquence, that he presents us with the theology, the ceremonies, and the superstitions of our ancestors, invested with much of their simple and earnest faith, as well as their robust, and, at times, sublime thoughtfulness. The prudence or contempt of the first Saxon Christians, indeed, has left but a sparing notice of the state of things which Augustine and his brother mission