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THE

ORIGIN

OF

NOBILITY AND HEREDITARY HONOURS.

WHEN the Romans deserted Britain, the princes reassumed their ancient form of government; the successor of every prince claiming and taking possession of the lands of his ancestor, but not without controversy: their Tylwyth (i. e. genealogy), for want of writing, being grown uncertain, during the four hundred years and more that the Romans continued masters of the nation. Besides, the Tylwyth singers, the Bards, and Druides, having been discountenanced by the Roman governors, the genealogies were in a great measure lost, and the rights of succession and limits of territory consequently unsettled.

The northern hive of Picts and Scots took encouragement from the divisions among the British princes, and invaded them with a numerous tribe, which brought the Britons to agree upon a national council, to consult of proper measures for preserving themselves from the northern inroad; and in this general council, consisting of Princes, Edlins, and other nobles, Vortigern was chosen to be chief commander of the British princes and their forces.

But the combined power proving too weak to resist the northern incur.. sion, another council was summoned, wherein Vortigern was ordered, and directed to invite the maritime Saxons to come to their assistance.

These Saxon auxiliaries, after a fifty years' war, became at length masters of the Britons, and possessors of their lands; and, having made a complete conquest, turned to the work of legislature, to make laws for preserving the property they had obtained.

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• Kilian, voce Edel.

In time, seven Saxon kingdoms sprung up in Britain: Hengist erected the kingdom of Kent, circ. An. 457; and afterwards six others were erected: but the æra of their erection, and the bounds of their dominions being foreign to the subject of this essay, it is not necessary to dilate thereon, the more material point being to give some account of the Saxon councils, the original of the English parliaments.

This great council was called Witenagemote, a word compounded of Saxon and British: the former part of the word being Saxon, and signifying a wise man; the latter, British, denoting a council or synod: thus the term witenagemote, meant a council of wise men, or superior or noble persons. The act or ordinance made in this council, the Saxons termed gerædnisse, (i. e.) a wise law, from geradod, doctus, wise or well taught ; a definition consonant to the term witenagemote, an assembly of wise or well-taught men.

The Anglo-Saxons formed the model of their government, as it would seem, after the manner of the Goths their ancestors, who divided the spoils of the Roman empire which they acquired, viz. by general consent of the military undertakers; who, when success attended them, assembled in council, and by vote allotted to every one a part, in proportion to their merit, in the judgment of the council.

The Saxon conquerors of Britain were joint undertakers, and parcelled out the subjugated lands in such proportion as was agreed in the general council of the commanders of the enterprize.

The chief commander soon assumed the title of king, and the assistants who came along with him, under the condition of no purchase no pay, became comites regis, the king's companions and colleagues, whereby the Saxon government here became founded in property. The Capitanei, or chief officers, were not only sharers with the kings in the conquered lands, but also in the administration of the government; being members of the king's great council, and therein possessed of a deliberate authority in consenting to laws, and the highest matters of state; having likewise a judicial power as composing the supreme court of judicature of the nation.

The members of the ancient British council* consisted of the princes, their sons, the edlins of princely or noble race, the druides their priests,

and lawyers, and the governors of the people, (i. e.) one who had the rule of a village or district, or was a leader in their armies.

The Saxon witenagemote consisted of the original sharers of the lands of the conquered Britons, and these colleagues and their descendants were the Saxon nobles, who derived their nobility and power from their possessions. These capitanei, or comites, in their portion of land, held courts and judged their vassals; and, after the manner of the Britons, were petty princes in their own territories: they obliged the kings to swear to administer equal right to all, and to be obedient to all laws made and agreed upon in general council.

Æthelbert, the first christian Saxon king, made his code of laws in witenagemote, by and with the advice of his witas, (a general term for the nobles or great men,) and had his bishops and chief ecclesiastics; who, together with his lay nobility, were members of the great synods or councils.

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Kenwolf, king of Mercia, held a witenagemote, anno 811, wherein, says Mr. Tyrrell*, from the annals of Winchelcomb, the constituent members of Tyrrell, that assembly are termed merciorum optimates, episcopi, principes, comites, p. 95. procuratores, meique propinqui.

Confess. 21.

Edward the Confessor was the legislator who, in the Norman reigns, obtained so much veneration for the mildness, equity, and excellency of his laws. In his time, by his 21st law, the great men or nobles of his kingdom were thus defined†; viz. “Archiepiscopi, episcopi, comites, barones, † Lb. Edw. et omnes qui habeant sacham, socam, thol, theam, et infangthefe, etiam milites suos, et proprios servientes, scilicet dapiferos, pincernos, camerarios, pistores, et cocos sub suo friborgo habeant; et item isti suos armigeros, vel alios sibi servientes sub suo friborgo." —These barons, these procerest, were the lords of great honours and manors, who had great estates, and power, and who had knights, and potent commoners their vassals, and suitors of their court.

The Saxon kings, it should be observed, at the three high festivals of the year, Easter, Whitsuntide, and Christmas, were attended by their great counsellors, at which time the state of the nation was taken into consideration; and, when any new laws were found necessary, they were

↑ Idem, 17.

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made by the king, with the advice and consent of the nobility, who, meeting at the king's court of residence, without summons, that court obtained the name of the court de more, or ex more, because it assembled at a fixed period, according to pre-custom and usage.

Though great part of the nobility attended the king's court at these festivals, yet upon extraordinary emergencies the whole nobility were summoned by particular writs to each, and the cause of such summons expressed in the writs.

The order and degrees of the members of the Saxon witenagemote, and court ex more, from king Alfred's time to William the First, stood thus:First The Archbishop and Ethling are of the same value or estimation in the laws of Æthelstan*. The Saxon word Edling or Ethling includes Satrapa, Dux, and Comes, of royal racet, and also the other great dukes, (i. e. duces,) and earls of provinces or countries.

Second: The bishop and alderman, or judge of the county court, who was of a lower degree than the comes, as appears in the laws of Æthelstan and Canute.

Third: The third degree was the Holds and Highgereves. The first were military commanders; the last was such a person to whom the king committed the custody or charge of a county, where there was no alderman, called, in Latin, vicecomes, vicedominus.

Fourth The fourth and last degree¶ of nobility, was the mass-Thegne or Thane, and the world-Thegne or Thane. The first was a priest that was the king's chaplain, or a dignitary of the church, that had superintendancy over other priests; the last was a layman, or lord of a district or territory, having jurisdiction over one or more manors, and therefore sometimes denominated a Dynast.

Having thus shewn that the Saxon nobility arose from great possession of lands taken from the Britons, or from ministerial offices under kings, as governors of provinces, counties, tithings, hundreds, castles or boroughs, together with the prelates and other rulers of the inferior clergy, it necessarily follows to observe, that when the Normans by the conquest of England became possessors of great portions of the lands of the AngloSaxons, they similarly obtained the rank of nobles of the realm, and, as

earls, barons, and ecclesiastics, became members of the Anglo-Norman parliaments.

The Normans, who came over with duke William, claimed (agreeably to precontract) shares of the Saxon lands and estates, according to the proportion of the several undertakers' retinue and expences. Thus the companions of king William in his conquest, had the division of the lands of the Anglo-Saxons made to them in greater or lesser allotments, to hold, however, of the king in military service, to be ready to serve him in war or in council.

These were the great nobles of the kingdom, in the reigns of William * Eadmer, the Conqueror, William Rufus, and Henry I. But king Stephen, during his contentions with the empress Maud and her adherents, as the old baronies escheated, divided them into smaller tenancies, and granted them to his friends and followers, who, holding those fragments of baronies in chief of the king, produced the distinction of fees of the old, and new feofment.

King John followed Stephen's method of splitting baronies as they came into the king's hands, by escheat or attainder; which increased the barons (or rather tenants in capite) to such a number, as to be termed by Camden, seditiosa et turbulenta multitudo. But that learned gentleman was probably too severe in his animadversion, when it shall be considered, that it is to the firmness of those noble spirits, the establishment of a regular assembly of peers, and the constitution of the house of commons, is to be ascribed.

But, though it has been before mentioned that the Conqueror (^) divided

(a) It is to be remarked, that duke William claimed the crown as cousin-german to Edward the Confessor, and by virtue of the nomination of the will of the Confessor, made in his favour as his successor in the kingdom. The degree of kindred between them stood thus:— RICHARD I. Duke of Normandy.

RICHARD II.
!
ROBERT.

WILLIAM the Conqueror.

EMMA.

EDWARD the Confessor,
ob. S. P.

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