THE CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND IN ITS ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT BY WILLIAM STUBBS, M. A. Regius Professor of Modern History VOL. I. SECOND EDITION Oxford AT THE CLARENDON PRESS M DCCC LXXV [All rights reserved] Lporary THE History of Institutions cannot be mastered,—can scarcely be approached,-without an effort. It affords little of the romantic incident or of the picturesque grouping which constitute the charm of History in general, and holds out small temptation to the mind that requires to be tempted to the study of Truth. But it has a deep value and an abiding interest to those who have courage to work upon it. It presents, in every branch, a regularly developed series of causes and consequences, and abounds in examples of that continuity of life, the realisation of which is necessary to give the reader a personal hold on the past and a right judgment of the present. For the roots of the present lie deep in the past, and nothing in the past is dead to the man who would learn how the present comes to be what it is. It is true, Constitutional History has a point of view, an insight, and a language of its own; it reads the exploits and characters of men by a different light from that shed by the false glare of arms, and interprets positions and facts in words that are voiceless to those who have only listened to the trumpet of fame. The world's heroes are no heroes to it, and it has an equitable consideration to give to many whom the verdict of ignorant posterity and the condemning sentence of events have consigned to obscurity or reproach. Without some knowledge of Constitutional History it is absolutely impossible to do justice to the characters and positions of the actors in the great drama; absolutely impossible to understand the origin iv of parties, the development of principles, the growth of nations in spite of parties and in defiance of principles. It alone can teach why it is that in politics good men do not always think alike, that the worst cause has often been illustrated with the most heroic virtue, and that the world owes some of its greatest debts to men from whose very memory it recoils. In this department of study there is no portion more valuable than the Constitutional History of England. I would fain hope that the labour spent on it in this book may at least not repel the student, and that the result may not wholly disappoint those friends in England, Germany and America, by whose advice it was begun, and whose sympathy and encouragement have mainly sustained me in the undertaking. To them I would dedicate a work which must stand or fall by their judgment. And I would put on record my grateful feeling for the unsparing good will with which my work in other departments has been hitherto welcomed. more special debt I would gladly acknowledge to the two Scholars who have helped me with counsel and criticism whilst passing the book through the Press; to whom I am specially drawn by their association with my early Oxford ambitions, and whose patient kindness an acquaintance of now nearly thirty years has not exhausted. KETTEL HALL, Christmas Day, 1873. CONTENTS. 1. Constitutional History, p. 1. 2. Its German origin-in France, p. 2. 3. In Spain, p. 4. 4. In Germany, p. 5. 5. In England, p. 6. 6. Ana- logy of Language, p. 7. 7. Of Religion, p. 8. 8. Of Law, p. 9. 9. Re- 10. Caesar's account of the Germans, p. 12. p. 15. 12. Germania of Tacitus, p. 16. 13. Traces of constitutional organisation; Land, p. 19. 14. Ranks, p. 21. 15. Administration, p. 26. 16. Councils and Courts of Justice, p. 28. 17. The host, p. 30. 18. Territorial divisions, p. 31. 19. General deductions, p. 31. 20. Appearance of the Franks and Saxons, p. 37. 21. The Angles and Jutes, p. 39. 22. Saxons in Germany as described by Bede, Nithard, Rudolf, and Hucbald; and noticed in the Capitularies, p. 41. 23. No- tices of the Angles in Germany, p. 47. 24. The mark system and common husbandry, p. 48. 25. Early system illustrated by the Salian |