The Governments of Europe | Page 5

was elective, patriarchal, and, in
respect to power, limited. Kings were elected by the important men
sitting in council, and while the dignity was hereditary in a family
supposedly descended from the gods, an immediate heir was not
unlikely to be passed over in favor of a relative who was remoter but
abler.[3] In both pagan and Christian times the royal office was
invested with a pronouncedly sacred character. As early as 690 Ine was
king "by God's grace." But the actual authority of the king was such as
arose principally from the dignity of his office and from the personal
influence of the individual monarch.[4] The king was primarily a
war-leader. He was a law-giver, but his "dooms" were likely to be
framed only in consultation with the wise men, and they pertained to
little else than the preservation of the peace. He was supreme (p. 004)

judge, and all crimes and breaches of the peace came to be looked upon
as offenses against him; but he held no court and he had in practice
little to do with the administration of justice. Over local affairs he had
no direct control whatever.
[Footnote 3: Thus, in 871, the minor children of Ethelred I. were passed
over in favor of Alfred, younger brother of the late king.]
[Footnote 4: The Anglo-Saxon king was "not the supreme law-giver of
Roman ideas, nor the fountain of justice, nor the irresponsible leader,
nor the sole and supreme politician, nor the one primary landowner; but
the head of the race, the chosen representative of its identity, the
successful leader of its enterprises, the guardian of its peace, the
president of its assemblies; created by it, and, although empowered
with a higher sanction in crowning and anointing, answerable to his
people." W. Stubbs, Select Charters Illustrative of English
Constitutional History (8th ed., Oxford, 1895), 12.]
*4. The Witenagemot.*--Associated with the king in the conduct of
public business was the council of wise men, or witenagemot. The
composition of this body, being determined in the main by the will of
the individual monarch, varied widely from time to time. The persons
most likely to be summoned were the members of the royal family, the
greater ecclesiastics, the king's gesiths or thegns, the ealdormen who
administered the shires, other leading officers of state and of the
household, and the principal men who held land directly of the king.
There were included no popularly elected representatives. As a rule, the
witan was called together three or four times a year. Acting with the
king, it made laws, imposed taxes, concluded treaties, appointed
ealdormen and bishops, and occasionally heard cases not disposed of in
the courts of the shire and hundred. It was the witan, furthermore, that
elected the king; and since it could depose him, he was obliged to
recognize a certain responsibility to it. "It has been a marked and
important feature in our constitutional history," it is pointed out by
Anson, "that the king has never, in theory, acted in matters of state
without the counsel and consent of a body of advisers."[5]
[Footnote 5: Law and Custom of the Constitution, II., Pt. 1., 7. Cf. W.

Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, I., 127.]
*5. Township, Borough, and Hundred.*--By reason of their persistence,
and their comparative changelessness from earliest times to the later
nineteenth century, the utmost importance attaches to Anglo-Saxon
arrangements respecting local government and administration. The
smallest governmental unit was the township, comprising normally a
village surrounded by arable lands, meadows, and woodland. The
town-moot was a primary assembly of the freemen of the village, by
which, under the presidency of a reeve, the affairs of the township were
administered. A variation of the township was the burgh, or borough,
whose population was apt to be larger and whose political
independence was greater; but its arrangements for government
approximated closely those of the ordinary township. A group of
townships comprised a hundred. At the head of the hundred was a
hundred-man, ordinarily elected, but not infrequently appointed by a
great landowner or prelate to whom the lands of the hundred belonged.
Assisting him was a council of twelve or more freemen. In the (p. 005)
hundred-moot was introduced the principle of representation, for to the
meetings of that body came regularly the reeve, the parish priest, and
four "best men" from each of the townships and boroughs comprised
within the hundred. The hundred-moot met as often as once a month,
and it had as its principal function the adjudication of disputes and the
decision of cases, civil, criminal, and ecclesiastical.
*6. The Shire.*--Above the hundred was the shire. Originally, as a rule,
the shires were regions occupied by small but independent tribes;
eventually they became administrative districts of the united kingdom.
At the head of the