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THE

Retrospective Review.

VOL. VIII. PART II.

ART. I.-Chronicon Saxonicum, seu Annales rerum in Anglia præcipue gestarum a Christo nato ad annum 1554 deducti ac jam demum Latinitate donati, cum Indice rerum chronologica. Accedunt Regula ad investigandus nominum locorum Origines et nominum locorum ac virorum in chronico memoratorum explicatio. Opera et studio Edmundi Gibson, A.B. e Collegio Regina Oxonii. E Theatro Sheldoniano, A.D. 1692.

AMONG the desiderata of literary inquiry and research, there are not many perhaps to which it would be more desirable to direct an increased attention than the subject of Saxon antiquities. The constitutional history of our country, or, if we may so express ourselves, the philosophy of English history, can, in fact, be little understood without a much more extended and accurate acquaintance with the records of the earlier ages, than is to be had through the medium of our popular historians. How erroneous, nay, how completely contradictory to the ascertainable facts, many of the statements of these historians, with reference to the Saxon period, are, we might (if time would permit) have abundant opportunities of observing in the course of this article; and it will appear not a little extraordinary, that although, from the date of the revolution to the present time, we have had such a succession of new histories of England, by authors and compilers of such different views and principles, yet so little of new light should have been thrown upon the subject. The writers of those histories, as they are called, with respect to the ages in which

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the bases of our institutions are indisputably to be sought, have been content to transcribe, without examination, the errors and misrepresentations of their predecessors; and what is still worse, in too many instances, to continue the marginal quotations of reference to original authorities, without ever referring to those authorities themselves:-which, if referred to, would occasionally be found to negative, rather than to affirm, the supposititious facts they are thus popularly quoted to uphold.*

The negligent manner in which the earlier periods of our history are thus skimmed over, will, perhaps, in some degree account (though it is not the only reason) for the little estimation in which our Saxon ancestors are generally held. The study of English history has been erroneously supposed to require no commencement more remote than the period of the Norman conquest; and, perhaps, those great and powerful families who have their descent from no higher origin, by a feeling very natural to the human mind, may have little inclination for a more extended retrospect; or little suspicion, that beyond that era there is any thing to be learned that could repay the labour of inquiry: while, at the same time, the historians of the succeeding epochs have been little solicitous to elucidate the fact, that all the important and comparatively popular struggles of the early Norman periods, (and if we were to make the assertion in much broader terms, the proofs would bear us out,) were little other than struggles for the restoration of those principles and institutions, which constituted the essence of the government of our Saxon ancestors; and which the Norman sword had brought into a state of abeyance. Even the Norman barons, and Feudal proprietaries themselves, found it necessary in the process of time, for the protection of their privileges and the security of their acquired possessions, to recur to the axioms and usages of the people they had subdued; and our vaunted Magna Charta will be found, upon investigation, to be only a partial restoration of the imprescriptible claims of the Saxon constitution.

It would be perfectly startling to popular credulity, should all the instances be quoted, in which the text of Hume, in the remoter periods more especially, is at the most positive variance with the authorities he pretends to rest upon. In a series of historical inquiries, which the writer of this article had some years since particular occasion to superintend, aberrations of this kind were so frequently detected, that it became necessary to lay it down as a rule never to admit of a quotation from that popular historian, when the authorities he pretends to refer to were not accessible for the purpose of previous comparison and confirmation.

The accession of William of Normandy to the English throne was quickly followed by as great a change in our constitution as in our language, and alternate struggle and compromise was as much a consequence in the one as in the other. The ancient Saxon system was that of Allodialism, in which the freemen were the absolute proprietors, with no other condition annexed to their tenures, than that which resulted, as a necessity, from the mere possession-the duty of defending, by associate arms, the soil which, as independent warriors, in voluntary association, their arms had successively acquired. The free population, in the primitive spirit of the establishment, were accordingly an aggregate militia. Nobility (the result of established estimation) was indeed inherent in the families of their chieftains, but political rank and office rose from the people; as elevation to the throne did also from the united choice of the free population and their functionaries. The crown was therefore hereditary only in family, and the states of the kingdom decided upon what distinguished individual of that family the succession should devolve. This will be put beyond all dispute, by a diligent perusal of the ancient chronicles, and an attentive comparison of the genealogies of the respective kingdoms of the Heptarchy; and will even be confirmed by reference to the many collateral successions to the throne of the united realm. There are instances in the history of several of the Heptarchic states, and especially in the kingdom of Wessex, (which ultimately swallowed up all the rest,) of the elevation of relatives in the fourteenth or fifteenth remove, in preference to the son or next of kin. With the policy of such a system of compromise between the apparently hostile principles of election and descent we, of course, have nothing to do. No doubt instances enough might be produced from Saxon records, of the inconveniences occasionally resulting from so loose a principle of succession; but there is proof abundant that such was the Saxon tenure of the crown; and the title of our chief magistrate to the present day, King, or Conning-that is to say, the wise--continues to record the primitive condition or elective tenure of the office. The states of the kingdom designing to elevate to that station of trust and power whoever should be deemed the wisest among the descendants of the regal family: valour and ability in the field of battle being, of course, in those rude ages, necessarily regarded as among the foremost of the attributes of regal wisdom.* Such was, in its original purity, the allodial system of our Saxon ancestors.

*Our Saxon ancestors seemed to have pushed this principle to all its consequences: for the instances are not few of the deposition of their kings in several of the states of the Heptarchy.

The Norman system on the contrary was that of Feudality; in which every thing, by a rude species of legal fiction, descended in acknowledged dependence from the throne, which was to be regarded as the sole original proprietor of the soil; and from which the nobility, or chief vassals, held the aggregate allotments of the soil, upon such conditions of suit and service as he had been pleased to dictate: the sub-vassals receiving again from these, on similar or more restrictive conditions, their inferior fiefs; and others again from them, successively, to the minutest subdivisions of territorial holding. So that the king himself was, in reality, or at least in theory, the only absolute freeholder; and what was called a freehold in Norman phraseology, could be regarded as nothing more than a species of dependent territorial possession, the conditions of whose dependence were not inconsistent with the Norman idea of the character of a freeman: that is to say-of a vassal who was homo liberalis, or a person of ingenuous race. As territorial possession was professedly held, so rank and office, of course, under this system (that is to say, in its primitive purity) were exclusively derived from the throne. The functionaries of the state were the functionaries of the king— not of the people; and the people, in fact, were politically nothing-those only excepted, who might be lifted into consideration by the honourable vassalage of territorial fiefs and as the Conquest (or the usurpations and severities by which it was succeeded) stripped the mass of the Saxon population of all landed property, the political community came to be constituted, under the Norman sway, of but a small portion of that body natural now included in the general appellation of the people.

We do not mean to assert however, (nor would the facts of ancient record bear us out in such an assertion,) that this feudal principle of original proprietorship exclusive in the throne, ever practically existed, or was practically acknowledged, in the full latitude of inference, under the Norman institutions. It was admitted indeed as a theory, and a certain homage was paid to it as a system; but it was felt nevertheless, by the superior feudalities in particular, to be only a convenient, and sometimes an inconvenient fiction. The allodial system had naturally its charms for the great proprietors; or, at least, a feeling congenial to it was natural to the pride of lordly independence and assumption. Those who, with swords in their hands, had acquired ample possessions, would be tempted to consider the power of the sword as a better title than the donation of the crown; and how strictly soever they might uphold the fictitious principle of conditional, or resumable delegation, with respect to their subordinate vassals, they would consider,

and would treat the sovereign himself, rather as the chief and president of their confederacy, than as the actual and original proprietor of their fiefs. With swords in their hands they upheld, in fact, this doctrine and the most potent and the most able, as well as the weakest and most dissolute of the Norman sovereigns, was obliged to recollect that it was necessary that he should consult and conciliate them, if he expected that they should uphold his authority. Allegiance was with them rather a conditional than an absolute obligation. In courteous denomination, they were the peers of the king; and they failed not occasionally to let him know that they were in reality such.

It is worthy also of remark, that even under the Norman institutions, the succession to the throne was never an absolute inheritance by fixed agnatic descent; but was liable to deviation by nomination of the predecessor, and subject to the assent and confirmation of the barons, or chief vassals. William the First set aside the claim of Robert, his eldest, and, with consent of his barons, bequeathed the crown of England to William Rufus, his second son. When Rufus met his death, by an ambiguous accident in the New Forest, the previous arrangement between him and Robert again was set aside; and Henry, the youngest of the sons of the Conqueror, had the possession, which he gained by intrigue and violence, confirmed to him by the election of those feudal states, whose assent appeared to be indispensable. When this same Henry the First (having no son) wished to secure the inheritance to his daughter Maud, he deemed it necessary to obtain the sanction of an oath of fealty to her from his barons; who, nevertheless, on his demise, by as bold a deviation as is exampled even in our Saxon annals, (the election of Harold, the last of our Saxon kings, alone excepted,) revoked their confirmation, and conferred the sovereign authority on Stephen, Earl of Blois : and when, after a sanguinary civil war, resulting from opposed pretensions, a compromise was found requisite, the mode and conditions of the succession, not of Maud, but of her son, Henry the Second, were adjusted by a general convention of the civil and ecclesiastical states of the kingdom.

Were we to extend our observations even far beyond the period to which our present subject (The Saxon Chronicle) properly confines us, the same conclusions would still accompany the successive facts; and would plainly demonstrate, that whatever might be the theoretical or abstract (perhaps we should say the fictitious) principle of feudal descent and property, as derivative from and inherent in the throne, the actual sovereignty, during the Norman period, was in the baronial proprietors, or principal feudatories; as, in fact, it had come to be in the Saxon aristocracy of great proprietors, during the latter ages of the Saxon era.

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