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Updated: May 26, 2025
"We must ride for London, Wulf," Harold said one morning after reading a letter brought by a royal messenger. "The king has laid his orders on me to proceed at once to town, and indeed the news is well-nigh as bad as can be. The Gemot has voted the deposition of Tostig, has even had the insolence to declare him an outlaw, and has elected Morcar in his place.
The city is known to the young folk of to-day as the one in which good Robert Raikes started the first Sunday-school more than a hundred years ago. But the gemot of King William the Red, which was a far different gathering from good Mr.
The king appointed the alderman, or eorl, who was president of the shire gemot, or council, and chief judge of the county court as well as governor of the shire, but was assisted and probably controlled in his judicial capacity by justices appointed by the king, and not attached to the shire, or in any way dependent on the alderman.
They would not listen to any proposition that involved the possibility of the return of Tostig, and boldly said that if the king wished to retain Northumbria as part of his realm he must confirm the sentence of their Gemot upon Tostig, and must recognize their election of Morcar to the earldom.
No sooner did Harold hear the news that the Normans had landed and were harrying the land than he ordered the hall to be cleared and issued a summons for the assembly of a Gemot, and in an hour an assemblage of all the thanes gathered at York was held in the hall that had so shortly before been the scene of peaceful feasting.
On May 14, 1080, a full Gemot of the earldom was held at Gateshead to deal with the murder of Ligulf. This was one of those rare occasions when a strong feeling led every man to the assembly. The local Parliament took its ancient shape of an armed crowd, headed by the noblest Englishmen left in the earldom. There was no vote, no debate; the shout was "Short rede good rede, slay ye the Bishop."
But he had listened to traitors, and it might be dangerous to leave him at large when a Danish fleet, led by his old comrade Cnut, was actually afloat. Still what followed is strange indeed, specially strange with William as its chief doer. At the Midwinter Gemot of 1075-1076 Roger and Waltheof were brought to trial. Ralph was condemned in absence, like Eustace of Boulogne.
Roger was sentenced to forfeiture and imprisonment for life. Waltheof made his defence; his sentence was deferred; he was kept at Winchester in a straiter imprisonment than before. At the Pentecostal Gemot of 1076, held at Westminster, his case was again argued, and he was sentenced to death. On the last day of May the last English earl was beheaded on the hills above Winchester.
The mind of William was just now mainly given to the affairs of his island kingdom. In the winter of 1083 he hastened from the death- bed of his wife to the siege of Sainte-Susanne, and thence to the Midwinter Gemot in England. The chief object of the assembly was the specially distasteful one of laying on of a tax.
We do not understand our own political history, still less can we understand the position and the statesmanship of the Conqueror, unless we fully take in what the English constitution in the eleventh century really was, how very modern-sounding are some of its doctrines, some of its forms. Statesmen of our own day might do well to study the meagre records of the Gemot of 1047.
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