55

Vitellius (Tac. Hist. i. 58) was the first to employ Roman knights in offices hitherto always filled by freedmen; but the system was not fully established till the time of Hadrian (Spartianus, Hadrian, 22).

56

See Norman Conquest, i. 89, 587, and the passages here quoted.

57

Both hlàford and hlæfdige (Lord and Lady) are very puzzling words as to the origin of their later syllables. It is enough for my purpose if the connexion of the first syllable with hlàf be allowed. Different as is the origin of the two words, hlàford always translates dominus. The French seigneur, and the corresponding forms in Italian and Spanish, come from the Latin senior, used as equivalent to dominus. This is one of the large class of words which are analogous to our Ealdorman.

58

This is fully treated by Palgrave, English Commonwealth, i. 350, 495, 505.

59

On the change from the alod, odal, or eðel, a man’s very own property, to the land held of a lord, see Hallam, Middle Ages, i. 113.

60

See Norman Conquest, i. 85-88. I have there chiefly followed Mr. Kemble in his chapter on the Noble by Service, Saxons in England, i. 162.

61

See the whole history and meaning of the word in the article þegen in Schmid’s Glossary.

62

See Norman Conquest, i. 89.

63

Barbour, Bruce, i. 224:

“A! fredome is A noble thing.”

So said Herodotus (v. 78) long before:

ἡ ἰσηγορίη ὡς ἔστι χρῆμα σπουδαῖον.

64

In the great poetical manifesto of the patriotic party in Henry the Third’s reign, printed in Wright’s Political Songs of England (Camden Society, 1839), there seems to be no demand whatever for new laws, but only for the declaration and observance of the old. Thus, the passage which I have chosen for one of my mottoes runs on thus: —

“Igitur communitas regni consulatur;

Et quid universitas sentiat sciatur,

Cui leges propriæ maxime sunt notæ.

Nec cuncti provinciæ sic sunt idiotæ,

Quin sciant plus cæteris regni sui mores,

Quos relinquant posteris hii qui sunt priores.

Qui reguntur legibus magis ipsas sciunt;

Quorum sunt in usibus plus periti fiunt;

Et quia res agitur sua, plus curabunt,

Et quo pax adquiritur sibi procurabunt.”

65

On the renewal of the Laws of Eadward by William, see Norman Conquest, iv. 324. Stubbs, Documents, 25. It should be marked that the Laws of Eadward were again confirmed by Henry the First (see Stubbs, 90-99), and, as the Great Charter grew out of the Charter of Henry the First produced by Archbishop Stephen Langton in 1213, the descent of the Charter from the Laws of Eadward is very simple. See Roger of Wendover, iii. 263 (ed. Coxe). The Primate there distinctly says that he had made John swear to renew the Laws of Eadward. “Audistis quomodo, tempore quo apud Wintoniam Regem absolvi, ipsum jurare compulerim, quod leges iniquas destrueret et leges bonas, videlicet leges Eadwardi, revocaret et in regno faceret ab omnibus observari.” It must be remembered that the phrase of the Laws of Eadward or of any other King does not really mean a code of laws of that King’s drawing up, but simply the way of administering the Law, and the general political condition, which existed in that King’s reign. This is all that would be meant by the renewal of the Laws of Eadward in William’s time. It simply meant that William was to rule as his English predecessors had ruled before him. But, by the time of John, men had no doubt begun to look on the now canonized Eadward as a lawgiver, and to fancy that there was an actual code of laws of his to be put in force.

On the various confirmations of the Great Charter, see Hallam, Middle Ages, ii. 111.

66

Macaulay, ii. 660. “When they were told that there was no precedent for declaring the throne vacant, they produced from among the records of the Tower a roll of parchment, near three hundred years old, on which, in quaint characters and barbarous Latin, it was recorded that the Estates of the Realm had declared vacant the throne of a perfidious and tyrannical Plantagenet.” See more at large in the debate of the Conference between the Houses, ii. 645.

67

See Kemble, Saxons in England, ii. 186 – 194. This, it will be remembered, is admitted by Professor Stubbs. See above, note 48 to Chapter I.

68

See Kemble, ii. 199, 200, and compare page 194.

69

I have collected these passages in my History of the Norman Conquest, i. 591.

70

On the acclamations of the Assembly, see note 19 to Chapter I. I suspect that in all early assemblies, and not in that of Sparta only, κρίνουσι βοῇ καὶ οὐ ψήφῳ (Thuc. i. 87). We still retain the custom in the cry of “Aye” and “No,” from which the actual vote is a mere appeal, just like the division ordered by Sthenelaïdas when he professed not to know on which side the shout was.

71

See Norman Conquest, i. 100, and History of Federal Government, i. 263.