The Growth of the English Constitution. Freeman Edward Augustus
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Название: The Growth of the English Constitution

Автор: Freeman Edward Augustus

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СКАЧАТЬ practical power. He may become in popular belief too great and awful for the effectual exercise of power, and, by dint of his very greatness, his practical authority may be transferred to his representatives who govern in his name. He may be surrounded with a worship almost more than earthly, while the reality of power passes to a Mayor of the Palace, or is split up among the satraps of distant provinces46. But, with a race of vigorous and politic Kings ruling over a nation whose tendencies are to closer unity and not to wider separation, each step in the territorial growth of the kingdom is also a step in the growth, not only of the formal dignity, but of the practical authority of the King. The King of the English, who in the eleventh century held the direct sovereignty of all England, the over-lordship of all Britain, was a very different person from his forefather, who in the sixth century deemed that another victory over the Briton, the acquisition of another strip of British territory, another hundred, it may be, of modern Hampshire, had made him great enough to change his title of Ealdorman for that of King. Such a King was every inch a King; his personal character was of the highest moment for the good or evil fortune of his kingdom. His will counted for much in the making of the laws by which his people were to be governed, and in the disposal of honours and offices among those who were to govern under him. But yet he was not a despot; men never forgot that the King was what his name implied, the representative, the impersonation, the offspring of the people. It was from the choice of the people that he received his authority to rule over them, a choice limited under all ordinary circumstances to the royal house, but which, within that house, was not tied down by a blind regard to any particular law of succession. It was a choice which at any time could fix itself on the worthiest man of the royal house, and which, when the royal house failed to supply a fitting candidate, could boldly fix itself on the worthiest man of the whole people47. And those from whom the King first drew his power ever shared with him in its exercise. The laws, the grants, the appointments to offices, which the King made, needed the assent of the people in their national Assembly, the gathering of the Wise Men of the whole land48. And those who gave him his power and who guided him in its exercise could also, when need so called, take away the power which they had given. At rare intervals – for it is only at rare intervals that so great a step is likely to be taken – has the English nation exercised its highest power by taking away the Crown from Kings who were unworthy to wear it. I speak not of acts of violence or murder, or of processes which, though clothed under legal form, were without precedent in our history. I speak not of the secret death of Henry the Sixth or of the open execution of Charles the First. I speak of the regular process of the Law. In Northumberland the right of deposition was exercised with special frequency49. But I will speak only of that direct and unbroken line of Kings who from Kings of the West-Saxons grew into the Kings of the English. Six times at least, in the space of nine hundred years, from Sigeberht of Wessex to James the Second, has the Great Council of the Nation thus put forth the last and greatest of its powers50. The last exercise of this power has made its future exercise needless. All that in old times was to be gained by the deposition of a King can now be gained by a vote of censure on a Minister, or, in the extremest case, by his impeachment.

      But, besides that growth of the King’s power which followed naturally on the growth of the King’s dominions, another cause was busily at work which clothed him with a personal influence which was of almost greater moment than his political authority. To a large portion of his subjects, to all the men of special wealth or power, the King gradually became, not only King but lord; his subjects gradually became, not only his subjects but his men. These names may need some explanation, and I will again go back to Tacitus as our starting-point. Side by side with the political community, the King, the nobles, the popular Assembly, all of them strictly political powers, he describes another institution, a relation in itself not political but purely personal, but which gradually became of the highest political moment. This was the institution of the comitatus, the system of personal relation between a man and his lord, a relation of faithful service on one side, of faithful protection on the other. Let us again hear the words of the great Roman interpreter of our own earliest days51.

      “It is no shame among the Germans to be seen among the companions (comites) of a chief. And there are degrees of rank in the companionship (comitatus), according to the favour of him whom they follow; and great is the rivalry among the companions which shall stand highest in the favour of his chief, and also among the chiefs which shall have the most and the most valiant companions… When they come to battle, it is shameful for the chief to be surpassed in valour; it is shameful for his companions not to equal the valour of their chief. It is even a badge of disgrace for the remainder of life if a man comes away alive from the field on which his chief has fallen. To guard, to defend him, to assign their own valiant deeds to his credit, is their first religious duty. The chiefs fight for victory; the companions fight for their chief.”

      This is the description given by a Roman historian of the second century; let me set beside it the words of an English poet of the tenth. He is describing the battle of Maldon in 991, which was fought by the East-Saxons under their Ealdorman Brihtnoth against the invading Northmen. The Ealdorman has been killed; two of his followers have fled, one of them on the Ealdorman’s horse, and every word that is put into the mouth of his faithful companions turns upon the personal tie between them and their lord52.

      “Thereon hewed him

      The heathen soldiers;

      And both the warriors

      That near him by-stood,

      Ælfnoth and Wulfmær both,

      Lay there on the ground

      By their lord;

      Their lives they sold.

      There bowed they from the fight

      That there to be would not;

      There were Odda’s bairns

      Erst in flight;

      Godric from battle went,

      And the good man forsook

      That to him ofttimesHorses had given.

      He leapt on the horse

      That his lord had owned,

      On the housings

      That it not right was.”

      Presently we read of the deeds done by his Thegns over his body;

      “There was fallen

      The folk’s Elder,

      Æthelred’s Earl;

      All there saw

      Of his hearth’s comrades

      That their lord lay dead.

      Then there went forth

      The proud Thanes,

      The undaunted men

      Hastened gladly;

      They would there all

      One of two things,

      Either life forsake,

      Or the loved one wreak.”

      Then one of the Thegns speaks;

      “Neither on that folk

      Shall the Thanes twit me

      That I from this host

      Away would go

      To seek my home,

      Now mine Elder lieth

      Hewn down in battle;

      To me is that harm most;

      He was both my kinsman

      And my lord.”

      Then another speaks in answer;

      “How СКАЧАТЬ

<p>46</p>

The instances in which a great kingdom has been broken up into a number of small states practically independent, but owning a nominal superiority in the successor of the original Sovereign, are not few. In the case of the Empire I have found something to say about it in my Historical Essays, 151, and in the case of the Caliphate in my History and Conquest of the Saracens, 137. How the same process took place with the Mogul Empire in India is set forth by Lord Macaulay in his Essays on Lord Clive and Warren Hastings. But he should not have compared the great Mogul, with his nominal sovereignty, to “the most helpless driveller among the later Carlovingians,” a class whom Sir Francis Palgrave has rescued from undeserved contempt. But the breaking up of the Western Kingdom is none the less an example of the same law. The most remarkable thing is the way, or rather the three different ways, in which the scattered members have been brought together again in Germany, Italy, and France.

This process of dismemberment, where a nominal supremacy is still kept by the original Sovereign, must be distinguished from that of falling back upon Dukes or Ealdormen after a period of kingly rule. In this latter case it would seem that no central sovereignty went on.

<p>47</p>

At this time of day I suppose it is hardly necessary to prove the elective character of Old-English kingship. I have said what I have to say about it in Norman Conquest, i. 106, 596. But I may quote one most remarkable passage from the report made in 787 to Pope Hadrian the First by George and Theophylact, his Legates in England (Haddan and Stubbs, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents, iii. 453). “Sanximus ut in ordinatione Regum nullus permittat pravorum prævalere assensum: sed legitime Reges a sacerdotibus et senioribus populi eligantur.” One would like to know who the “pravi” here denounced were. The passage sounds very like a narrowing of the franchise or some other interference with freedom of election, but in any case it bears witness to the elective character of our ancient kingship, and to the general popular character of the constitution.

<p>48</p>

I have described the powers of the Witan, as I understand them and as they were understood by Mr. Kemble, at vol. i. p. 108 of the History of the Norman Conquest and in some of the Appendices to that volume. With regard to the powers of the Witan, I find no difference between my own views and those of Professor Stubbs in the Introductory Sketch to his Select Charters (p. 11), where the relations between the King and the Witan, and the general character of our ancient constitution, are set forth with wonderful power and clearness. But I find Mr. Stubbs and myself differing altogether as to the constitution of the Witenagemót. I look upon it as an Assembly of the whole kingdom, after the type of the smaller assemblies of the shire and other lesser divisions. Mr. Stubbs fully admits the popular character of the smaller assemblies, but denies any such character to the national gathering. It is dangerous to set oneself up against the greatest master of English constitutional history, but I must ask the reader to weigh what I say in note Q in the Appendix to my first volume.

<p>49</p>

I have collected some of the instances of deposition in Northumberland in the note following that on the constitution of the Witenagemót. (Norman Conquest, i. 593.) It is not at all unlikely that the report of George and Theophylact quoted above may have a special reference to the frequent changes among the Northumbrian Kings.

<p>50</p>

I have mentioned all the instances at vol. i. p. 105 of the Norman Conquest: Sigeberht, Æthelred, Harthacnut, Edward the Second, Richard the Second, James the Second. It is remarkable that nearly all are the second of their respective names; for, besides Æthelred, Edward, Richard, and James, Harthacnut might fairly be called Cnut the Second.

<p>51</p>

Tacitus, De Moribus Germaniæ, 13, 14: – “Nec rubor inter comites adspici. Gradus quinetiam et ipse comitatus habet, judicio ejus quem sectantur; magnaque et comitum æmulatio quibus primus apud Principem suum locus; et Principum cui plurimi et acerrimi comites… Quum ventum in aciem, turpe Principi virtute vinci, turpe comitatui virtutem Principis non adæquare. Jam vero infame in omnem vitam ac probrosum, superstitem Principi suo ex acie recessisse. Illum defendere, tueri, sua quoque fortia facta gloriæ ejus adsignare, præcipuum sacramentum est. Principes pro victoria pugnant; comites pro Principe.” See Allen, Royal Prerogative, 142.

<p>52</p>

The original text of the Song of Maldon will be found in Thorpe’s Analecta Anglo-Saxonica. My extracts are made from the modern English version which I attempted in my Old-English History, p. 192. I went on the principle of altering the Old-English text no more than was actually necessary to make it intelligible. When a word has altogether dropped out of our modern language, I have of course changed it; when a word is still in use, in however different a sense, I have kept it. Many words which were anciently used in a physical sense are now used only metaphorically; thus “cringe” is used in one of the extracts in its primary meaning of bowing or falling down, and therefore of dying.