СНАР. У. Alfred. 901 937. was substituted for the tie of blood, while the gildThe House of feast, held once a month in the common-hall, replaced the gathering of the kinsfolk round their familyhearth. But within this new family the aim of the gild was to establish a mutual responsibility as close as that of the old. "Let all share the same lot," ran its law; "if any misdo, let all bear it." A member could look for aid from his gild-brothers in atoning for any guilt incurred by mishap; he could call on them for assistance in case of violence or wrong; if falsely accused they appeared in court as his compurgators; if poor they supported, and when dead, they buried him. On the other hand he was responsible to them as they were to the state for order and obedience to the laws. A wrong of brother against brother was a wrong against the general body of the gild, and was punished by fine, or in the last resort by expulsion, which left the offender a "lawless " man and an outcast. The one difference between these gilds in country and town was that in the latter case, from their close local neighbourhood, they tended inevitably to coalesce. Imperfect as their union might be, when once it was effected, the town passed from a mere collection of brotherhoods into an organized community, whose character was inevitably determined by the circumstances of its origin. The shire. While the frith-gild was thus supplying one at least of the elements of a new municipal life within English boroughs, a new organization of the country at large was going on in the institution of the shire. In the earlier use of the word, "shire" had simply answered to "division." The town of York was parted CHAP. V. Alfred. 901937. into seven such shires. There were six "small shires " in Cornwall. The old kingdom of Deira has left The House of indications of its divisions in our Richmondshire, Kirbyshire, Riponshire, Hallamshire, Islandshire, and Norhamshire; just as their lathes and rapes represent perhaps the old shires of the kingdoms of Kent and of Surrey. The name was used even for ecclesiastical divisions of territory; a diocese is a "bishop's shire;”1 a parish is a "kirk shire." But in its later form of a territorial division for purely administrative purposes, the shire was in fact the creation of an artificial "folk." Its judicial and administrative forms were all those of the "folk" transferred within artificial boundaries, and the representative life of folk-moot and hundredmoot was thus preserved in the shire, with all its incalculable consequences in later English history. The shire, so far as we can we can see historically, is specially a West-Saxon institution. The first traces of it indeed may probably be found in the earliest ages of West-Saxon history. The original Wessex was, as we have seen, the region of the Gwent, and the earliest portion of West-Saxon conquest within that area was the region we call Hampshire. For this region we possess no earlier name, and in the name itself we find traces of a very early date, for Hampshire is but an abridged Hamtonshire, the district that found its centre in the tun that is now represented by our Southampton. Had the formation of 1 That of Ealdhelm is styled "Selwoodshire." Ethelweard, a. 709. On the other hand, we may note that Bæda knows only of "dioceses" in Wessex, as he knows only "regiones" in Mercia. The West-Saxon shires. CHAP. V. this district taken place after the revival of WinThe House of chester and the settlement of the West-Saxon kings Elfred. 901 937. and bishops there in the time of Cenwalch,' the district would naturally have taken such a name as Winchestershire, like our Leicestershire or Gloucestershire; but its name of Hamtonshire points necessarily to an earlier date than this, and one which cannot be later than the first half of the seventh century. The name however has more to tell us. A shire is necessarily a district "shorn" off from some neighbour district; and the artificial character of such a "shearing" between Hampshire and Wiltshire is shown in the absence of any distinctly marked local divisions in the bounds between the two shires, while a close connexion between the two districts is shown in the similarity of their naming. Not only does Hampshire draw its name from the "tun" of the first Gewissas at Hamton, but the "t" in our Wiltshire shows that the word is only a contracted form of Wiltonshire, or the shire that found its "tun" in our Wilton, the settlement made by the Gewissas in the valley of the little Wil or Wiley. It is possible that each tun may have been a gatheringplace of its shire-folk for moots and sacrifices; but however this may have been, we cannot fail to see in the relations of the two an indication, not only of the very early existence of the shire institution amongst the West-Saxons, but of the formation of the shire in its earliest shape round a central " tun.” The West-Saxon origin of the "shire" is confirmed of the shire. by the fact that its name first occurs in the laws of 1 Cenwalch reigned from 643 to 672 (A.S.G.). Extension CHAP. V Elfred. -- 901937. the West-Saxon Ine.1 The shire already has its shireman or shire-reeve, whose primary business must have The House of been the collection of the royal farms and dues from each district, but who in assessing these, and deciding on claims of exemption and the like, must from the first have tended to become the judicial officer we find him under Ælfred, and to take his place in the shire-moot in that capacity beside bishop and ealdorman. It is possible however that in Ine's day this shire organization did not extend beyond the area of the Gwent, with perhaps its dependency of the present Berkshire. Wessex indeed was already spreading beyond its older bounds; besides Sussex or Surrey, or the districts across the Thames, the WestSaxons to the east of Selwood saw a new Wessex to the west of that forest in the regions of the Dorsætan and of the Somersætan. Their conquests however in this quarter were far from being completed in the reign of Ine; the conquest, in fact, of the south-west dragged on until the reign of Ecgberht, and it is likely enough that amidst the troubles of the kingdom during this period, the organization of the loosely compacted folks of "sætan" or settlers that spread over its various regions did not receive any definite form till that time. From Ecgberht's day, however, we have grounds for believing that the whole of the West-Saxon kingdom was definitely ordered in separate "pagi," each with an ealdorman at its head, and these "pagi" can hardly have been other than shires.2 In 1 Thorpe, "Anc. Laws," i. 107. 2 In the course of the Danish descents at this time the Chronicle mentions ealdormen of Hamton-shire, of the Wilsætan, CHAP. V. Elfred. 901937. the names of the bulk of them however we note a The House of striking difference from the names of the two earlier shires. The district no longer draws its name from the central" tun." In the case of Somerset indeed, such a tun seems to have existed at Somerton, but it does not give its name to the shire. The Somersætan like the Dorsætan had perhaps never arrived at even the rude unity which in the Wilsætan is seen raising their central township to an importance that enabled it to supersede their name, and to give its own name to the district; while farther west the settlement was so sparse that even the settlers failed to print their name exclusively on the land, and it retained its old Welsh title of Devon or Dyvnaint side by side with Defnsætan. The shire in Mercia. In the eastern dominion of the West-Saxon kings the new institution adapted itself equally to the older kingdoms. Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Essex, became shires equally with the "sætan" of the west, though the retention of their older names showed the strength of their national tradition.1 That the shire had spread over them by Æthelstan's time we may gather from the tenor of his laws, which speak of the shire as the settled political and judicial division throughout Wessex at large. It is more doubtful when it spread 2 of Surrey, and of Berkshire, to the east of Selwood; of Dorset, Somerset, and Devon, to the west of it. Asser mentions "Wilton-scire" in 878. He speaks of Chippenham "quæ est sita in sinistrali parte Wiltun-scire" (ed. Wise), p. 30. In his translation of Orosius Alfred speaks of Halgoland as a "scyr." 1 Kent however is "Kent-shire" in the record of its folkmoot under Æthelstan. Thorpe, “Anc. Laws,” i. 216. 2 Æthelstan's laws, as I have before pointed out, only concern |