ANGLO-SAXON FREEDOM.

CHAPTER I.

THE PRIMITIVE SAXONS.

100 B.C.-449 A.D.

ON the 30th of April, 1789, Washington, as the first President of the United States, took a solemn oath to maintain the Federal Constitution. The Declaration of Independence had been made fourteen years before; the Revolutionary War had been fought through; the Constitution painfully formulated, and after the most anxious fears, ratified.

tions had been held in due form. had been built and launched.

The first elecThe ship of state One last anxious

moment remained, when, for the first time, steam was turned into the new machinery. Would the contrivance work that had been set in order with

such pains? As Washington took the oath, the pulsations began of the mighty engine whose accomplishment through the hundred years need not here be rehearsed. Government of the people, by the people, and for the people, went into operation, a thing at that time unknown elsewhere among civilized nations.

1

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

most ancient. I once crossed the North

of something 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, legal aspects the scenes within their homes were often

Social and

of the civiliza

tion 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.

Divisions of rank.

As to station, though in a primitive village of the Angles and Saxons the ceorls formed the most numerous class, they by no means comprised all the people. There were besides the læets, 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 Below the læts were the were distinctly slaves,

ceorl was forced to respect. theows, men and women who

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.