Unknown elsewhere; but had the world never before seen anything like it? As a polity, it was no The polity of original device, but a revival of something

America to some extent the revival

of something

most ancient. I once crossed the North

Sea, and coming upon deck after a night most ancient. of storm, found the ship entering a great river, out from which rolled masses of ice. From the deck a monotonous, far-extending landscape could be seen, dotted here and there with compact red-roofed villages. Once landed, it was a journey of many leagues before the broad plains were left behind, and we reached a country more picturesque. If, however, the plains near the mouths of the rivers Weser and Elbe offer little attraction to the eye, no land is more interesting through its associations to the mind; for here lay the primeval home of the Angles and Saxons, with their kindred, the Jutes, just north, the remote forefathers of the imperial race which, now one hundred and twenty millions strong, retains substantially the language, institutions, and blood of those ancestors after the lapse of nearly two thousand years. In the ancient villages we can see distinctly a life proceeding, in some of its features, similar to that of English-speaking men at the present hour.1

The forefathers were not utter savages. Although fierce fighters, they were at the same time busy fishermen and farmers. Though hard drinkers, the scenes within their homes were often

Social and legal aspects of the civilization of the

not without a simple dignity, as the earl's

Anglo-Saxons. wife with a troop of maidens bore the bowl

1 Tacitus: Germania, XI. Constitutional Histories of Stubbs, Freeman, Gneist, Taswell-Langmead, Hannis Taylor, etc. Von Maurer: Mark-verfassung. Waitz: Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, Band I, 4.

of ale or mead about the hall while the minstrels sang.1 They possessed the runic alphabet, and showed in dress and arms an appreciation of the beautiful. The freeman in times that soon follow wore a smockfrock of coarse linen or wool falling to his knees, identical almost with that of the modern English ploughman. While it was the common garb of all classes, it was among those of good station handsomely embroidered: about feet and legs were wound linen bands, parti-colored. In winter, a hood covered the head, and over the shoulders was thrown a blue cloak, sometimes fastened by a costly clasp. For their constant warfare, the coats of ringed mail that were necessary, the swords scored with mystic runes while the hilts were finely wrought in silver and bronze, the helmets with heads of boars, wolves, or falcons for crests, all made plain the skill of the smiths. In the society all the ceorls, or land-owning freemen, stood equal; they were bound together in families in such a way that if one underwent an injury, all his kin lay under obligation to exact reparation; as also they lay under obligation to afford reparation, if one of their number had inflicted the injury. Each clan occupied its own mark, or village, a tract held by the occupiers in common. The homesteads within the tun (the stockade, quickset hedge, or protecting circle of earth) were held in severalty,

Phillips: Geschichte des Angelsächsischen Rechts. J. Toulmin Smith: Local Self-Government and Centralization, p. 29, etc. Johns Hopkins University Studies, 1st Series, I, II. J. R. Green: History of the English People, Vol. I, Chap. I. Howard: Introduction to the Local Constitutional History of United States.

1 See J. R. Green's graphic picture at the beginning of the History of the English People.

modified, however, by a reservation of public rights; but the pasture and forest, stretching far, since wealth lay largely in flocks and herds, and since a good provision of wood was necessary for the winter, were free to all inhabitants. Between the homesteads, on the one hand, and the pasture and forest, on the other, was land the tenure of which was intermediate in its character. Such was the plough-land upon which each ceorl raised food for his household and cattle, but was under restrictions imposed by the community; such, too, was the meadow, which individuals owned from early spring to the time of the hay-harvest, but which through fall and winter was common feeding-ground for the swine and kine of all.

rank.

As to station, though in a primitive village of the Angles and Saxons the ceorls formed the most nuDivisions of merous class, they by no means comprised all the people. There were besides the læts, in some districts descendants of the race from whom the soil had been conquered, in other districts later comers than the Saxons themselves. The læt had no individual holding within the tun, and no share in the common land of the mark. He was dependent upon some ceorl, was to some extent restricted in his freedom, but at the same time possessed rights which the ceorl was forced to respect. Below the lets were the theows, men and women who were distinctly slaves, captives in war perhaps, or persons fallen into this condition through debt or crime. The theow had no rights, his master having power over him for life or death: his children were born slaves; so, too, the children of a slave mother, though the father might be free. The theows were

probably few in number. As at the bottom of the Anglo-Saxon social system the slave is found, so at the top stood the eorl, atheling, or noble, who, however, had no station apart from the ceorl. He was simply the man descended from the first settler, or the man set apart "because the blood that ran in the veins of all was believed to run purest in him."1 But no power sustained him in his foremost place, except a free recognition on the part of his fellows that it was his due.

forms.

In the public life of the tribe the theow had no part, the læt little part; for the ceorl, by virtue of his possession of the land, held all power. Political In the centre of the tun was the moot-hill, or perhaps a great tree, where the freemen came together to deliberate and to govern themselves. Here was administered the business of the common pasture and forest; here the grass-land was portioned out in the early spring, and the plough-land equably allotted. In case of a change in the private holding, the seller handed to the buyer a turf or a twig cut on the ground in question, in token of the transfer. As time proceeded, the tie of kinship gave way to the tie of neighborhood, but the customs did not change. As to the territory, there remained the individual holding, the common, and the land held by intermediate tenure; as to the people, ceorl, læt, theow, ætheling, retained each his place. Above all, the moot remained the centre of life in the mark. It is probable, too, that here took place, after matters peculiar to the little community were disposed of, the choosing of

1 Sir Henry Maine: Village Communities, p. 145.

the representatives, who were to speak for those who sent them in the larger moots of the hundred and the folc.1

For before history begins, a series of moots ranging upward from the assembly of the mark in ever-widening comprehensiveness had come to pass. Marks were gathered into hundreds, districts sending, each, perhaps, one hundred men to war; and these again into the great tribe, or folc. Each division had its proper moot, the marks appearing probably by their representatives in the higher moots. On great occasions, and also at stated times, as at the solstice, the freemen gathered in thousands to the great folc-moot, dispensing with representation. The priests proclaimed silence and maintained order. Speakers were at liberty to persuade, but no one had power to command. The nation, which, upon occasion,

1 That representation appeared very early is asserted by the latest constitutional historians in general,- by none more confidently than the greatest among them, Bishop Stubbs (Constitutional History, Vol. I. pp. 44-45, 90-91, 95-96, 102-103, 114-115). There are profound and accurate scholars, however, who see no adequate proof of it. Dr. W. G. Hammond finds no sufficient evidence as to the presence of representatives in the shire-moot until after the Norman Conquest, when, according to the laws of Henry I, the reeve and four men of the town appear, if the lord and steward are absent, to remove the liability to fine of the unrepresented community. Dr. Hammond's views have been given in lectures in the law-schools of the State universities of Iowa, California, and Michigan; also of Boston University and Washington University, St. Louis. It is to be hoped that they will sometime be accessible to students in general in book form. My own examination of the passages in the Anglo-Saxon laws (Schmid: Gesetze der Angel-Sachsen, Leipsic, 1858) cited by Stubbs in support of his claim, leads me to feel that we must proceed here with caution. However, the presence of the representatives of the tuns in the higher moots at a very early day is referred to in this book as a thing probable, a position amply justified by the statements of those regarded at present as the greatest masters in this field.