CHAP. I. The England of it would have been practically effective for the purposes of public order had any adequate machinery existed for imposing the will of the folk on accuser Egbert. and accused. But the folk-moot had no direct means of enforcing its doom. If a man thrice refused, after due summons, to appear before it, or appeared but refused to bow to its decision, he put himself indeed by his very act out of the folk, and out of its protection; he became in a word, an "outlaw," who might be hunted down like a wolf, and knocked on the head by any man who met him.1 But beyond this general hostility the folk had no means of forcing such an offender to submit to its judgment. A yet weightier obstacle to efficient justice was often found in the course of procedure itself. Accuser and accused brought kinsmen and friends in their train to the folk-moot, whether to sway its doom or to enforce it, or to guard against vengeance without law. With such a crowd of adherents at the moot, it must always have been hard for meaner men to get justice against king's thegn or country thegn, and as the nobles rose to a new height above the people, it was easy for them to hold hundred-moot and even folk-moot at bay. Kent was among the most civilized and orderly parts of England, but at an even later time than this we find the great men of Kent setting the doom of its folk-moot absolutely at defiance.2 It was this difficulty more than all else that must have led to the passing of the "folk's justice" into "the justice of the king." From the earliest days 1 "Ess. in Ang.-Sax. Law," 271, 275, 283. 2 Thorpe, "Anc. Laws," i. 217. The "king's justice." CHAP. I. the king had been recognized not only as a political The and military leader, but as a judge; and he was the England of Ecgberht. one judge whose position gave him the power of enforcing his dooms, for by himself or by his ealdorman the whole military strength of the kingdom or shire could be called out to bring a culprit to submission. It was natural that as the local courts found themselves more and more helpless against the great lords they should appeal to a force before which the greatest lords must bow; and that the baffled Witan of Kent should pray Æthelstan that "if any man be so rich or of so great kin that he cannot be punished or will not cease from his wrong-doing, you may settle how he may be carried away into some other part of your kingdom, be the case whose it may, whether of villein or thegn." The extension, too, of thegnhood, and the growth of private jurisdictions or sokes, exempt from the common jurisdiction of the hundred-moot, gave a new scope to the justice of the king.2 As such private jurisdictions grew more and more frequent, they not only weakened the older justice of the people, but forced on the royal court a large development of its judicial activity, if the justice of the lords was to be hindered from passing into a means of extortion and tyranny. The king's court. 1 Such a development was made easy by the very character of the king's court. The English king was a great landowner, and like other great landowners he 1 Thorpe, "Anc. Laws," i. 217. 2 Stubbs, "Const. Hist." i. 214, &c. "It is probable that, except in a few special cases, the sac and soc thus granted were before the Conquest exemptions from the hundred courts only, and not from those of the shire." CHAP. I. The was driven from one "vill" to another for actual subsistence. He was in constant motion, for payments England of were made in kind, and it was only by moving from Ecgberht, manor to manor that he could eat up his rents. A Northumbrian king had to consume his customary dues in one vill at the foot of the Cheviots and in another on the Don. A king of Wessex had no other means of gathering his rents from his demesne on the Exe or on the Thames. The king's court therefore was really a moving body, a little army eating its way from demesne to demesne, but with a home. in our modern sense nowhere, encamping at one or another spot only for so long as the rent-in-kind sufficed, and then after a day or two rolling onward. In the stories of the time we see the king's forerunners pushing ahead of the train, arriving in haste at the spot destined for the next halt, broaching the beer-barrels, setting the board, slaying and cooking the kine, baking the bread; till the long company come pounding in through the muddy roads, horsemen and spearmen, thegn and noble, bishop and clerk, the string of sumpter horses, the big waggons with the royal hoard or the royal wardrobe, and at last the heavy standard borne before the king himself. Then follows the rough justice-court, the hasty council, the huge banquet, the fires dying down into the darkness of the night, till a fresh dawn wakes the fore-runners to seek a fresh encampment. Such was in greater or less degree the life of every 1 See for Ine, Will. Malmesbury, "Gest. Reg." (Hardy), vol. i. p. 49; for Æthelstan, the Saxon Life of Dunstan (Memorials of Dunstan, pp. 17, 18). England of court on CHAP. I. great noble, and such necessarily was that of the king. The But with the growing consolidation of England into a Ecgberht. single realm these movements took a more ceremonious The and political form. Custom came to regulate the progress. seeming disorder of the royal progress; each manor, each town, knows and makes its customary payments in kind, thegn and villein render their customary service, while the royal clerk reads from the custom-roll and ticks off the dues paid and the service done. "Watching the king," in fact, finding horses for his journey, or boats for his sail, guarding his person, supplying his larder, become the customary tenures by which towns hold their freedom. The progresses grow regular and methodical; men know when their king will be among them, they know where to bring their suit, their plea, their gift to him. As the king moves through forest and waste, his progress is a chase; he finds his foresters in waiting with the villeins bound to customary service in driving the deer. As he passes over the "king's highway," landlord and thegn are called to give account for broken road or broken bridge. In his rough justice-court there is the appeal to be heard, the false moneyer to be branded, the outlaw to be hanged at the nearest oak. The king's peace" is about him as he goes; his "grith," the breach of which no fine can atone for,1 spreads for a given space around his court: a double "bôt" and fine protects all who are on their way to him; if a brawler fight over his cups in the king's hall, he may die at the king's will. The court 1 Æthelr. iii. 2 Thorpe, "Anc. Laws," i. 293. itself is no longer the mere train of personal attendants which followed a provincial king; it is CHAP. I. The England of a little army that needs its officers to order and Ecgberht. marshal it, its chamberlain to command the household to deck the rough halls with courtly hangings for the king's stay, to issue from the hoard the gold drinking-cups for the king's table, to pay and command the body guard; its staller to order its movements, to direct the horses, the sumpter mules, the long string of waggons, as well as to " park" the vast encampment for the night; its dish-thegn and cupthegn to provide the beeves and bread, the wines and ale, for its daily consumption. The creation of these great officers of the household, some of whom we find already existing in Elfred's time, was one of the most important results of the royal progresses. But a yet more important result was the impulse they gave to the change in our system of justice, for at a time when the public needs called for a judicial power which should be strong enough to enforce its doom upon noble and churl, and supreme alike over folk-moot and soke, the progresses of the king carried such a power into every corner of the realm. Growth of the The developement however of English justice was but one of the influences that were telling through- kingship. out the period on the transformation of the English kingship. As England drew together into its Three Kingdoms the wider dominion of the king removed him further and further from his people, lifting him higher and higher above the nobles, and clothing him more and more with a mysterious dignity. Every reign raised the sovereign in the social scale. The Ꭰ |