United States or Burundi ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The folk-mote, or primary assembly, and the witenagemote, or assembly of notables. Origin of representative government in the Teutonic shire. Representation unknown to the Greeks and Romans. The ancient city as a school for political training. Intensity of the jealousies and rivalries between adjacent self-governing groups of men.
And if he looked at the subject as calmly as he would look at a controversy respecting the Roman Comitia or the Anglo-Saxon Witenagemote, he would probably think that the absence of contemporary evidence during so long a period was a defect which later attestations, however numerous, could but very imperfectly supply.
This is the origin of the Sheriff's Tourn, which decided in all affairs, civil and criminal, of whatever importance, and from which there lay no appeal but to the Witenagemote.
In the times before the Norman conquest, if not before the completed union of England under Edgar, the shire-mote or county assembly, though in theory still a folk-mote or primary assembly, had shrunk into what was virtually a witenagemote or assembly of the most important persons in the county.
The Judicia Civitatis Londoniæ afford a tolerable insight into the Saxon method of making and executing laws. First, the king called together his bishops, and such other persons as he thought proper. This council, or Witenagemote, having made such laws as seemed convenient, they then swore to the observance of them.
In the primitive process of aggregation, the shire or gau, governed by its witenagemote or "meeting of wise men," and by its chief magistrate who was called ealdorman in time of peace and heretoga, "army-leader," dux, or duke, in time of war, the shire, I say, in this form, is the largest and most complex political body we find previous to the formation of kingdoms and nations.
Fragments of a real "Church Liturgy" and "Body of Homilies," strangely disguised from the common eye, are to be found weltering in that huge froth-ocean of Printed Speech we loosely call Literature! Or turning now to the Government of men. Witenagemote, old Parliament, was a great thing. The affairs of the nation were there deliberated and decided; what we were to do as a nation.
The laws generally run in his name, with the assent of his wise men, &c. But considering the low estimation of royalty in those days, this may rather be considered as the voice of the executive magistrate, of the person who compiled the law and propounded it to the Witenagemote for their consent, than of a legislator dictating from his own proper authority.
The peers were those men who retained the right of summons to the Great Council, or Witenagemote, which has survived as the House of Lords. The peer was therefore the holder of a legislative and judicial office, which only one of his children could inherit, from the very nature of the case, and which none of his children could share with him.
They came together that beautiful September day, under the great oaks, a witenagemote of serious, liberty-loving men, ready to follow wherever their leaders pointed. Amos Ridings was the chairman, tall, grim-lipped and earnest-eyed. His curt speech carried the convention with him.
Word Of The Day