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Updated: May 1, 2025
As local in area as the ealdorman, for the province was his diocese and he sat by his side in the local Witenagemot, he furnished a standing check on the independence of the great nobles. But if feudalism proved too weak to conquer the monarchy, it was strong enough to paralyze its action.
During these twelve days many conferences were held between Alfred and Athelstan as to the future of the two kingdoms. While the Danes were still in the camp a witenagemot or Saxon parliament was held at Wedmore. At this Athelstan and many of the nobles and inhabitants of East Anglia were present, and the boundary of the two kingdoms was settled.
William declared that he did not propose to change the English customs but to govern as Edward the Confessor, the last Saxon king whom he acknowledged, had done. He tried to learn English, maintained the Witenagemot, and observed English practices. But he was a man of too much force to submit to the control of his people.
He had vowed, during his exile, to go on pilgrimage to Rome, but the Witenagemot refused to consent to his leaving England, and he sent the Archbishop of York to ask the advice of the Pope, Leo IX., who recommended him to perform some work of piety at home. This was the foundation of the Church of St. Peter's, in the open country, at the west end of London, and therefore called Westminster.
That was the working of the old Anglo-Saxon law, and it was a great many centuries before the notion of law changed in their minds from that. And this "unwritten law" perdures in the minds of many of the people to-day. So it was that the Witenagemot this Great Council of the realm was primarily judicial, in the first instance always judicial; that is, it never made new laws.
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