Test Bank for Media and Culture 2016 Update Mass

Communication in a Digital Age 10th Edition Campbell

Martin Fabos 1457668742 9781457668746
Full download link at:
Test bank: https://testbankpack.com/p/test-bank-for-media-and-culture-an-
introduction-to-mass-communication-11th-edition-campbell-martin-fabos-
1319058515-9781319058517/

1. Competition among media meant that with the arrival of television, radio became
obsolete.
A) True
B) False

2. Guglielmo Marconi is credited with creating FM radio.

A) True
B) False

3. Guglielmo Marconi envisioned wireless telegraphy only as point-to-point

communication and not as a one-to-many mass medium.
A) True
B) False

4. Alexander Popov was a Russian academic whose experiments in wireless

communication occurred at roughly the same time as Marconi's.
A) True
B) False

5. During his lifetime, Nikola Tesla received much recognition for his wireless inventions.
A) True
B) False

6. Inventor Lee De Forest developed a vacuum tube capable of detecting and amplifying
radio signals.
A) True
B) False

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 7. The word broadcasting derives from the steel industry, in part because KDKA in
Pittsburgh was one of the first stations to begin using radio as a mass medium.
A) True
B) False

8. In its entrepreneurial phase, radio was marketed as a ship-to-shore communication

device.
A) True
B) False

9. The Titanic sank in 1912, resulting in the loss of about fifteen hundred lives; had it not
been for radio, seven hundred additional lives would have been lost.
A) True
B) False

10. Congress passed the Radio Act of 1912 in response to the sinking of the British ocean
liner Titanic.
A) True
B) False

11. The American Marconi Company had trouble developing as a business after World War
I in part because the U.S. Navy did not want a foreign-controlled company wielding so
much power in the field of emergent radio technologies.
A) True
B) False

12. Because of the role of the navy in early broadcast history, the United States today has a
national broadcasting system both controlled and supervised by the government.
A) True
B) False

13. The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was formed after World War I to give the
United States an early worldwide monopoly over radio broadcasting.
A) True
B) False

Page 2
14. During the 1920s, the United States was the only country that allowed commercial
interests to control broadcasting.
A) True
B) False

15. Network radio helped modernize America by deemphasizing local in favor of national
programs.
A) True
B) False

16. In the 1920s, CBS operated two radio networks, CBS-Red and CBS-Blue.
A) True
B) False

17. The aim of early radio networks such as CBS and NBC was to serve the public interest.
A) True
B) False

18. Under the Radio Act of 1927, broadcasters were allowed to own their radio channels.
A) True
B) False

19. The Radio Act of 1927 created the Radio Corporation of America.
A) True
B) False

20. In the 1940s, NBC willingly sold its Blue network because it was losing money.
A) True
B) False

21. With the Communications Act of 1934, the Federal Communications Commission
officially became the Federal Radio Commission.
A) True
B) False

Page 3
22. Radio soap operas got their name because they were a "clean" form of entertainment
that lived up to the social and moral codes of the time.
A) True
B) False

23. Throughout radio's early history—from the 1920s through the 1940s—advertisers
exercised very little control over program content.
A) True
B) False

24. The program Amos 'n' Andy started on Chicago radio in 1945.
A) True
B) False

25. AM is better than FM for playing music because of its greater clarity and fidelity.
A) True
B) False

26. The first transistor radio was marketed by Texas Instruments in 1953.
A) True
B) False

27. By the 1960s, most radio listening was done outside the home.
A) True
B) False

28. RCA delayed the deployment of FM radio for many decades because it was more
concerned with the development of television.
A) True
B) False

29. The first person to discover and develop FM radio in the 1920s and the 1930s was
David Sarnoff of RCA.
A) True
B) False

Page 4
30. Edwin H. Armstrong developed AM radio.
A) True
B) False

31. FM radio was an immediate commercial success and made its inventor a rich and happy
man.
A) True
B) False

32. The Top 40 format refers to the forty most popular hits in a given week as measured by
record sales.
A) True
B) False

33. The vast majority of the top radio talk-show hosts promote conservative viewpoints.
A) True
B) False

34. Country is the most popular radio format today.

A) True
B) False

35. By law, nonprofit broadcasters are allocated 25 percent of all the broadcast frequencies
in the United States today.
A) True
B) False

36. In 1948, the FCC approved 10-watt FM stations, allowing more people to participate in
radio.
A) True
B) False

37. Politicians have threatened to cut government funding for public broadcasting.
A) True
B) False

Page 5
Another document from Scribd.com that is
random and unrelated content:
 Soon after this unsuccessful expedition came the event which has
left perhaps the deepest of all the stains on the memory of Canute, the
murder of his brother-in-law and deliverer, Jarl Ulf, “the mightiest man
in Denmark after the king”. At a noble banquet which Ulf had prepared
for his kinsman, the king sat scowling gloomily. To lighten his mood Ulf
suggested a game of chess, in the course of which one of the king’s
knights was placed in jeopardy. “Take back your move,” said Canute,
“and play something else.” Indignant at this style of playing, Ulf
knocked over the chess-board and rose to leave the room. “Ha!” said the
king, “runnest thou away now, Ulf the Craven?” He turned round in the
doorway and said: “Craven thou didst not call me when I came to thy
help at the Holy River, when the Swedes were barking round thee like
hounds”. Night fell: both slept: but next morning Canute said to his page:
“Go to Jarl Ulf and slay him”. The page went, but returned with
bloodless sword, saying that the Jarl had taken refuge in the church of St.
Lucius. Another man, less scrupulous, slew him in the church-choir and
came back to boast of the deed. After this desecration the monks would
fain have closed their church, but Canute insisted on their singing the
Hours of divine service there, as if nothing had happened. As usual, his
penitence took the form of liberality. So great were the estates with
which he endowed the church, that far and wide over the country-side
spread the fame of St. Lucius.
When Canute recommenced operations in 1028 after his pilgrimage
to Rome, not war but internal revolution gave him the victory. He seems
to have had a superiority in naval forces over both the allied kings. The
Swedes, being home-sick, scattered back to their own dwellings. Olaf
fled to Russia, and a Thing, summoned by Canute at Trondhjem,
proclaimed him king over all the land of Norway. It is evident that Olaf’s
forceful, sometimes even tyrannical, proceedings had alienated many of
his subjects; but moreover Canute the Rich had, we are told, for years
been lavishing gifts on the Norwegian nobles. “For it was indeed the
truth to say of King Cnut that whenever he met with a man who seemed
likely to do him useful service, such a man received from him handfuls
of gold, and therefore was he greatly beloved. His bounty was greatest to
foreigners, and especially to those who came from furthest off.” This
description, given us in the Heimskringla, of Canute’s practisings with
the subjects of St. Olaf, suggests the question whether similar arguments
had not been used with Edric Streona, and whether the decision of the
Saxon Witenagemot in Canute’s favour may not have been bought in the
same manner as that of the Norwegian Thing.
 We must not further follow in detail the fortunes of the dethroned
King of Norway. Two years after Olaf’s expulsion from the kingdom he
returned (1030), but fell in battle with his own hostile countrymen. When
the inevitable reaction in favour of his memory set in, his body was
carried to Trondhjem and buried under the high altar of the cathedral
church. Miracles soon began to be wrought by his relics: there was a tide
of pity and remorse for their fallen hero in the hearts of his people, who
found themselves harshly dealt with by their Danish rulers. Before long
Norway recovered her independence, and then Olaf was universally
recognised as not only patriot but saint. The Church gave her sanction to
the popular verdict, and St. Olaf, or St. Olave, as he was generally called
in England, was accepted as one of the legitimate saints in her calendar,
July 29 being set apart for his honour. Though not to be compared for
holiness of character with our own St. Oswald, or even with Edwin of
Deira, he soon became an exceedingly popular saint, especially with his
old Danish antagonists. More than a dozen churches were dedicated in
his name in England, chiefly in the district where Danes predominated.
The most celebrated of these was St. Olave’s in Southwark, which gave
its name, corrupted and transformed, to the “Tooley Street” of inglorious
memory.
Of the closing years of the reign of Canute little is recorded. There
are stories, uncertain and mutually contradictory, of hostilities between
England and Normandy, arising out of Duke Robert’s championship of
the claims of the English Ethelings, sons of his aunt Emma. Whatever
truth there may be in these narratives, they must be referred to the latter
part of Canute’s reign, as Duke Robert did not come into possession of
the duchy till 1028. We may, if we please, assign to the same period the
well-known story of his vain command to the sea to retire, a story which
is told us for the first time by Henry of Huntingdon, about 120 years
after the death of Canute. As Henry tells it, the courtiers, the
blasphemous flatterers of the monarch, disappear from the scene, and it
almost seems as if Canute himself, in one of those attacks of
megalomania to which successful monarchs are liable, really thought that
he could command Nature as if she were one of his own thegns.
Learning better doctrine from the voice of the sea, he thenceforth abjured
the vain ensigns of royalty and hung his crown on the cross of the
Redeemer. To the same peaceful years we may assign the equally well-
known incident of Canute being rowed in his barge over the fens in the
cold days of early February, and hearing the song of the monks of Ely as
they celebrated the Purification of the Virgin Mary:—
 Cheerly sang the monks of Ely
As Cnut the king was passing by.
“Row to the shore, knights!” said the king,
“And let us hear these churchmen sing,”

—an interesting ditty for us, as showing that the word “knights” still kept
that meaning of “servants” or “retainers” which it had when the New
Testament was translated into Anglo-Saxon. In the Gospels the disciples
of Christ are always called His “leorning-cnichtas”.
King Canute died at Shaftesbury on November 12, 1035, and was
buried at Winchester in the Old Minster where rested so many of the
descendants of Cerdic. Owing to his early appearance on the scene and
the various parts which he had played, we unconsciously attribute to him
a greater age than he actually attained. He was probably little, if at all,
over forty years of age when he died. The transformation of character
which he underwent, from the hard, unscrupulous robber chieftain to the
wise, just and statesmanlike king, is one of the most marvellous things in
history. Perhaps the nearest approach to it is to be found in the change
wrought in the character of Octavian. Both Canute and Augustus were
among the rare examples of men improved by success.
He left four children, Sweyn and Harold Harefoot by a wife or
concubine named Elgiva of Northampton; Harthacnut and Gunhild by
Emma of Normandy. The gossip of the day alleged that Sweyn and
Harold were not really Elgiva’s children, but the sons of ignoble parents
foisted by her on her credulous husband. This tale, however, though
echoed by the Chronicle, may have been an invention of the partisans of
their rivals. What is certain is that both Elgiva and Emma survived
Canute. Either, therefore, the former was no legally married wife, or else
she was divorced to make room for the Norman “Lady”. But the
marriages of these Scandinavian princes, Norse and Norman, were
regular only in their irregularity.
Whatever may have been the testamentary intentions of the dying
Canute, the practical result of his death was to divide his great empire in
the following manner: Norway to Sweyn (who died a few months after
his father), Denmark to Harthacnut, and England to H H .
Of the latter, the Peterborough text of the Chronicle says: “Some men
said that Harold was son of King Canute and Elgiva, daughter of
Ealdorman Elfhelm; but this seemed very incredible to many men”. Of
the two surviving sons of Canute who now for a few years fill the chief
place in English history, it must be said that they represent only the first
and worst phase of their father’s character, displaying none of the nobler,
statesmanlike qualities of his later years. We sometimes see in modern
life a man who has struggled upwards from the lowest ranks of society,
acquiring a refinement and a culture which he fails to transmit to a
wealthy but coarse-fibred son. So was it with the sons of Canute, two
dissolute young barbarians who degraded by their vices the ancient
throne which they were permitted to occupy.
The events which immediately followed the death of Canute,
obscure in themselves, are variously stated by our different authorities;
but it seems clear that the old division between Mercia and Wessex again
made itself manifest and was connected with another division, that
between the two great houses of Godwine and of Leofwine. An assembly
of the witan was held at Oxford, at which “Earl Leofric (son of
Leofwine) and nearly all the thegns north of the Thames and the sailors
in London, chose Harold as king over all England,” leaving to
Harthacnut the rule over Denmark, in which country he was then living
and reigning. There was apparently no talk of a reversion to the old line,
to the sons of Ethelred or Edmund. The dynasty of Canute represented
peace with the Danes, a respite from the terrible ravages of the previous
generation; and it was probably valued and clung to for this reason, even
as, 500 years later, English parliaments clung to the house of Tudor,
notwithstanding all the flaws in their title, as a security against the
revival of the Wars of the Roses.
This conclusion, however, was not unanimous. The witan at Oxford
had to reckon with the opposition of Wessex, under its powerful earl
Godwine, with that of “the Lady” Emma, surrounded by a strong body of
her dead husband’s house-carls or body guards (an organisation of which
the Chronicle now first makes mention); and with such force as the lad
Harthacnut from distant Denmark might be able to bring to bear for the
vindication of his claims. A compromise was arranged, which amounted
in substance, though perhaps not in form, to a division of the kingdom.
“It was decided that Emma, Harthacnut’s mother, should sit at
Winchester with the house-carls of the king, her son, and hold all Wessex
under his authority, and Earl Godwine was her most devoted servant.”
This arrangement had in it no element of permanence and might at
any moment be upset by the arrival of Harthacnut. He was, however, but
a lad of eighteen, much involved apparently in the cares of his Danish
kingdom. To Harold Harefoot, the Norman exiles, sons of Ethelred and
Emma, full-grown men, with a hope of possible support from their
cousin, the great Duke of Normandy, might well seem the most
dangerous competitors for his crown. In order to entice these rivals into
his power, Harold is said to have caused a letter to be forged, purporting
to come from “Queen Emma, a queen only in name,” and complaining of
the daily growing strength of the usurper, “who is incessantly touring
about among the cities and villages, and by threats and prayers making
for himself friends among the nobles”. “But they would much rather,”
said the letter, “that one of you reigned over them, than he to whom they
yield enforced obedience. Wherefore I pray that one of you will come to
me swiftly and secretly to receive wholesome counsel from me, and to
learn in what way the thing upon which I have set my heart can be
209
accomplished.” On the receipt of this message Alfred, the younger of
the two brothers, betook himself to the friendly coast of Flanders and
thence to England, accompanied by a small band of followers, recruited
from among the inhabitants of Boulogne, instead of the large body of
troops which Baldwin of Flanders offered him. Finding one part of the
coast occupied by a hostile force, he sailed to another, probably nearer to
Winchester; and set forth to meet his mother, thinking that he had now
escaped from all danger. He had not reckoned, however, with the astute
Earl Godwine, who was now no longer the zealous adherent of the
queen-dowager, but was prepared to make his peace with Harold by the
210
sacrifice of her son. He met the young Etheling, swore to become his
“man,” guided him to Guildford, billeted his followers about in various
inns, caused them to be supplied with meat and drink—especially the
latter—in great abundance, and so left them, promising to return on the
morrow.
That night, while they were all sleeping the deep sleep of well-plied
banqueters, the men of Harold came upon them, stealthily removed their
arms, and soon had them all fast in handcuffs and fetters. The cruel
vengeance which followed, taken upon disarmed and helpless prisoners,
excited the deep indignation of Englishmen, and found vent in a ballad,
some lines of which have made their way into that manuscript of the
Chronicle which is attributed to Abingdon:—
 Some they blinded; some they maimed;
Some they scalped, some bound with chain;
Some were sold to grievous thraldom;
Many were with tortures slain,
Never was a bloodier deed done
Since to England came the Dane.

There is a persistently repeated story that a cruel parody of the Roman

decimation was inflicted on these unfortunates. By that old custom lots
were cast, and every tenth man so selected was handed over to the
executioner. Now nine out of ten were slain and only the tenth survived,
nor was even he certain of life; for after the massacre it seemed to the
tyrant’s agents that too many still survived and the sword devoured anew.
As for the unhappy Etheling himself, he was taken round by sea to the
Isle of Ely and there imprisoned. An order having been received for his
blinding, he was held down by four men while the cruel deed was done.
He seems to have survived for some weeks or months, and moved about,
a saddening figure, among the once cheery monks of Ely; but ere long he
died, either from the shock of the operation, or, as one author hints, from
insufficiency of food. It seems clear that these cruelties were not
perpetrated by Godwine himself, who judiciously disappeared as soon as
he had left the slenderly guarded prince at his supper table at Guildford;
but neither the judgment of his contemporaries nor that of posterity, with
211
one eminent exception, has acquitted the great Earl of Wessex of
complicity in the crime.
The abortive expedition of Alfred, and the defection of Earl
Godwine, left the dowager-queen in a precarious position. Moreover, the
hearts of Englishmen had begun to turn away from Harthacnut who, as
they thought, tarried too long in Denmark, and towards Harold, who was,
after all, the son of a Saxon mother (whether gentle or base born), and
who, notwithstanding the cruelty and craft which he had shown in the
affair of the Etheling Alfred, had qualities of physical strength and
fleetness which gained for him a sort of rude popularity with his
subjects. Thus it came to pass that in 1037 “Queen Emma was driven out
of the country,” as the chronicler laments, “without any tenderness of
heart, against the raging winter”. She went to the court of the hospitable
Baldwin, her nephew by marriage, who assigned to her a dwelling in the
city of Bruges and a princely maintenance. Of this, however, she took
only a small part, sufficient for her absolute needs, and gratefully refused
the rest, saying that she could do without it. So says the Flemish priest,
who doubtlessly met her about this time, and who, in gratitude for
favours received, composed the Encomium Emmæ, on which, in the
absence of better sources, we have to rely for many details of her history.
The election of Harold as king of the whole of England, which now
took place, did not pass without some opposition, especially from the
archbishop of Canterbury, Ethelnoth. When ordered to perform the
ceremony of consecration, he flatly refused, declaring that at Canute’s
command he had vowed to recognise only Emma’s son as his lawful
successor. He would not presume to keep, in defiance of the king, the
crown and sceptre, which had been committed to his charge, but, laying
them on the altar he left them to Harold to deal with as he would, only
declaring that none of his suffragan bishops should presume, on pain of
excommunication, to crown this king or to grant him episcopal
benediction. How the dispute ended Emma’s partisan does not inform us.
Probably Harold, like Napoleon, crowned himself; but we are told that
the refusal of the episcopal benediction so rankled in the young king’s
breast that he relapsed into something like paganism. When others in
Christian fashion were silently gliding into church for Divine worship,
he (the swift-footed hunter) would be surrounding the woods with his
dogs and cheering them on to the chase, or sometimes indulging in less
innocent occupations. Clearly, here was a monarch who had little love
for the Church, and whose character may therefore have been painted a
little too darkly by ecclesiastical chroniclers.
After making an ineffectual appeal for help to Edward, her surviving
son by Ethelred, Emma at last succeeded in inducing Harthacnut to leave
his beloved Denmark and attempt the invasion of England. He arrived at
Bruges, probably towards the end of 1039, with sixty-two ships, and
having no doubt made other large preparations for a hostile expedition,
but none of these were needed. Harold Harefoot died on March 17, 1040,
and was buried at Westminster. On his death a deputation was sent to
Bruges to invite H to assume the crown, “and men deemed
that they did well in doing so”. Sore, says the encomiast, was the
lamentation of the widows and orphans of Bruges, who deemed that by
the departure of the Lady Emma they were losing their best friend; but
she of course accompanied her son.
Too soon the men of both nations found that they had not done so
well as they supposed, in inviting the lad from Denmark to reign over
them. The crews of his ships were clamouring for money, and to appease
them the new king laid upon his subjects a heavier Danegeld than had
been exacted all through the reigns of Canute and Harold. Then the
Danegeld had been for sixteen ships, at the rate of eight marks for each
rower; now Harthacnut claimed the same rate of pay for his whole fleet
of sixty-two ships. It was indeed “a stern geld,” and the attempt to levy it
caused violent popular commotions. A terrible hurricane had blown the
previous year, probably injuring the harvest, and the high price of corn
resulting therefrom caused the gafol to be felt the more bitterly. “Thus all
men that had before yearned after Harthacnut became unfriendly to him.
He devised no kingly deed during all his reign, and he caused the dead
body of Harold to be taken up and shot into the marsh.” Worse than this,
he took a cruel revenge on the whole of Worcestershire for the murder of
two of his house-carls whom he had sent to exact the “stern geld” from
the citizens of Worcester. An insurrection had broken out; the house-carls
had taken refuge in a turret of the minster, but had been discovered,
dragged forth and slain. Hereupon, the enraged king ordered Godwine,
Leofric and all the great earls, to assemble their forces; and sent them,
six months after the murder, with orders to harry both city and shire. The
inhabitants, forewarned, took refuge on an island in the Severn, and
made so vigorous a defence that their lives were of necessity spared; but
the minster was burnt, the country was laid waste and the house-carls of
the king, with the followers of the earls, returned laden with booty to
their homes.
Now at last, during the short reign of Harthacnut, a brighter day
dawned for the banished son of Ethelred. Edward was invited over from
Normandy and was “sworn in as king”; that is, probably, associated in
some way with Harthacnut as ruler of the land, and recognised as his
destined successor in the event of his early death, which seems to have
been considered not improbable. The only other event recorded of the
reign of Harthacnut, “the king who devised nothing kingly,” is his
212
complicity in the murder of Eadwulf, earl of Bernicia, who had
possibly made himself conspicuous as one of Harold’s partisans. He
seems to have been invited to court that he might be formally reconciled
to the new king, but on his way he was murdered by his nephew, Siward
the Strong, who was already earl of Deira, and now, receiving as the
reward of his crime his victim’s earldom of Bernicia, ruled once again as
the kings of Northumbria had ruled aforetime, over the whole wide
region from Humber to Tweed.
 Harthacnut’s end was worthy of his life. On a day of June, 1042, a
great feast was given by a Danish nobleman, Osgod Clapa, in honour of
the marriage of his daughter. To this banquet the king was, of course,
invited, and “as he stood at his drink he suddenly fell to the ground and
was seized with dreadful convulsions. Those who were near took him up,
but he never after spake a word. He died on the 8th of June, and all the
people accepted Edward as their king, as was his right.” Harthacnut died
in the twenty-fifth year of his age, having not quite completed the second
year of his reign. Like the old Saxon kings, and like Canute his father, he
was buried in the Old Minster at Winchester.
 CHAPTER XXIV.

LEGISLATION OF THE LATER KINGS.

I the period which followed the Norman Conquest “the laws of good King
Edward” was a phrase often on the lips of Englishmen; yet it was but a
phrase, for Edward the Confessor, on the threshold of whose reign we are
now standing, added, as far as can be ascertained, no laws to the Anglo-
Saxon collection. Danish Canute, on the other hand, holds an honourable
place in our legal history; for his Dooms, which fill one hundred pages in
Liebermann’s volume, show somewhat of the instinct of a codifier as well
as a genuine desire to deal equal justice to the Danish and the English
inhabitants of the land.
From the death of Alfred—the last king whose laws have been
specially dealt with—till the death of Canute, an interval elapsed of more
than 130 years or about four generations, and in almost every reign some
fresh Dooms received the sanction of the reigning king and his witan. It will
be well for us briefly to survey the course of this legislation and to see what
light it throws on the social condition of the country, and what changes it
reveals in political institutions. When we consider the laws of this period
from a social and economic point of view, one fact stands out at once in
strong relief. The immense majority of these laws relate to one crime, theft,
and to one form of that crime, the theft of cattle. We have before us a
population of herdsmen and sheep-masters whose chief concern it is to
guard their live stock from the sly, roving cattle-lifter, and to recover them
when thus purloined. Herein these tenth-century laws bear a striking
213
resemblance to the border laws, the code according to which, in the
fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, rough justice was
administered between cattle owners and cattle raiders on both sides of the
214
Scottish border. Sometimes, too, the grievances which we hear of in
these laws and the rough redress of those grievances which they
contemplate, seem to carry us into the same world of which we have read in
stories of the Wild West of America only one generation ago. It seems
probable that the immense importance thus assigned to the possession and
the theft of cattle is partly due to the fact that, owing to the settlement of
Danes on the north-east of the Watling Street, a large part of England had
now become like Northumberland and Roxburgh, a “border country,” and
was subject to all the insecurity of that position.
In order to give greater assistance to the owner of cattle, Edward the
Elder ordained that every landowner should have men in readiness on his
land to guide those who were seeking to recover their lost property; and
these men were straitly warned not for any bribe to divert the owner from
his quest, nor give shelter to any convicted thief. Athelstan directed that if
any one claimed a beast as his rightful property, he should get one out of
five persons nominated by the judge to swear “that it is by folk-right his”;
and the defendant must get two out of ten persons similarly nominated, to
swear the contrary. But, perhaps, the most interesting of all this class of
ordinances is that contained in the Judicia Civitatis Lundoniæ, framed by
the chief officers of Church and State, the bishops and reeves (or
representatives of the king), not without the consent of all the citizens. We
have in these ordinances, under the sanction of Anglo-Saxon royalty, some
wonderfully modern devices for the interposition of the community, to
lessen the loss inflicted by robbery on the individual.
The document begins: “This is the decision which the bishops and the
reeves who belong to London, have made and secured with pledges in our
peace-guild, whether of nobles or of commonalty” (eorlisce or ceorlisce),
“to supplement the enactments made at various meetings of the witan”. The
first chapter ordains that the punishment of death shall be inexorably
inflicted on any thief over twelve years of age stealing goods to the value of
more than twelve pennies, and that any one endeavouring by force of arms
to rescue a thief shall pay a fine of 120 shillings to the king.
The second chapter introduces us to a curious arrangement between the
citizens, in the nature partly of a Trade Protection Society and partly of a
Society for Mutual Insurance against Theft. “Each one of us shall pay four
pennies to a common stock within twelve months, in order to indemnify the
owner for any animal which may have been stolen after that time, and we
will all join in the quest after the stolen animal. Every one who has a beast
worth thirty pennies shall pay his shilling, except poor widows who have no
patron or land.” It may be said, Why is the prescribed payment four pennies
at the beginning of the law and a shilling at the end? The answer no doubt is
that London still adhered to the currency of Mercia, in which only
fourpence went to the shilling. The contributors were to be arranged in ten
groups of ten each, the oldest of whom was to serve notices and keep the
accounts; and these ten seniors with “an eleventh man” whom they were to
choose, were to form a sort of governing board, keeping the money and
deciding as to contributions into, and payments out of, the common fund.
Every man who heard the summons must join in the quest after the stolen
animal so long as the trace remained. The quest was to be continued either
on the northern or southern march till every member of the guild who had a
horse was riding it. He who had no horse of his own must go and work for a
lord who should ride in the quest instead of him. Then comes the question
at what rate were the stolen beasts to be valued. The ordinary tariff of
compensation is as follows:—

For a horse 10 shillings.

„ an ox 30 pennies or 7½ „
„ a sheep 5 „ or 1¼ „
„ a stolen slave (theow), half a pound = 30 shillings.

Apparently if the thief was captured and compelled by a court of law to

refund a higher price than any of the above, if, for instance, he was made to
pay for a valuable ox ten shillings instead of seven shillings and a half, the
surplus was divided among the members of the guild, the owner receiving
only the sum to which he was entitled under the tariff.
The ordinance continues: “Whosoever takes up that which is the
common cause of all of us shall be our friend. We will all be one, in
friendship and in enmity. The first man to strike down a thief shall receive
twelve pennies from the common purse for having made so good a
beginning. The owner of a stolen animal is not to relax his diligence”
(because of the insurance), “but must pursue it to the end, and he shall be
reimbursed for the expenses of his journey out of the common fund.... We
will meet once a month if we have leisure ... with filling of casks and
everything else that is suitable, and we must then see which of our decisions
have been complied with, and the twelve men shall have their food together,
and eat as much as seems good to themselves and dispose of the food that is
left [to the poor] according to the will of God.”
The state of society here presented to us is one of peculiar interest. We
seem to see these cattle-owning citizens of London, whose flocks and herds
were grazing outside the walls of the city in Smithfield or Moorfields. They
follow the track of their stolen beasts across the wilds of Middlesex or
Surrey (“the Northern and the Southern March”). When the cattle are
caught, fierce vengeance is taken on the depredator. If the pursuit fails, the
luckless owner can, after all, console himself with the tariff price which he
receives from the guild treasury. And then once a month they meet to settle
the affairs of their guild, “with filling of casks and everything else that is
suitable,” and so a vista is opened, at the end of which after the lapse of
centuries, we behold the stately banquets of the Guild-hall of London.
 It is possible that to this need of grappling with agrarian crime we owe
the institution of the Hundred which was a prominent feature in the
organisation of medieval England, after as well as before the Conquest, and
exists, though now little more than a survival, even in our own day. It is at
least worthy of notice that the first clear mention of the Hundred-court,
which is in the reign of Edgar, occurs in close connexion with the theft of
cattle, and we might almost be justified in saying that this is the main
business which in those beginnings of its existence was thought likely to
come before it.
There has been much discussion as to the kind of unit, five-score of
which made up the Anglo-Saxon Hundred, but on the whole the prevailing
opinion seems to be that it was composed, in theory at least if not invariably
215
in practice, of a hundred hides or households. The charter, if we may so
call it, of the Hundred-court is furnished us by a document which is
believed to date from the reign of Edgar and which begins: “This is the
arrangement, how men shall hold the Hundred. First, that they always
gather themselves together once in four weeks: and that each man shall do
right to the rest. Second, that they set forth to ride after thieves. If occasion
arise, let a man [whose beast has been stolen] give notice to the Hundreds-
man, and he then to the Tithing-men, and let them all fare forth as God shall
point the way, that they may arrive there [at the place where the beast is
hidden]. Let them do justice on the thief as was before ordained by [King]
Edmund, and hand over the price to him who owns the animal and divide
the rest [of the fine] half to the Hundred and half to the lord.”
We observe that we have here a regular local court, armed with very
summary powers and able to inflict fines, probably heavy fines, after it has
restored the value of the stolen property to the rightful owner. Of these
fines, however, the Hundred-court may retain for itself only half, the other
half going to “the lord”. The assumption that there will be in every case a
lord, who will thus share in the profits of the criminal jurisdiction exercised
by his neighbours of the Hundred, seems to mark a step towards the
manorial jurisdiction of later centuries and strikes a somewhat different note
from that sounded in the laws of Ine. It would seem that there was a
tendency among powerful and lawless men to treat the Hundred-court with
contempt and ignore its jurisdiction. “If any one shall put difficulties in the
way and refuse to obey the decision of the Hundred and this is afterwards
proved against him, he shall pay 30 pennies to the Hundred: and for a
second offence 60 pennies, half to the Hundred and half to the lord. If he do
it the third time he shall pay half a pound (120 pennies), and for the fourth
offence he shall forfeit all that he has and be outlawed, unless the king
allow him to remain in the land.” By the time that Canute took the matter in
216
hand sharper remedies had been found to be necessary. He who refused
the judgment of the Hundred was fined—apparently for the first offence—
30 shillings, not pennies. For a similar contempt of the Earl’s court he had
to pay a fine of 60 shillings, and twice that amount for despising the
judgment of the king.
Before passing from the subject of the Hundred, it should be observed
that the corresponding institution in most of the Danish counties of England
was called the wapentake, a name which is said to be derived from that
clashing together of their weapons whereby the Scandinavians, like their
Teutonic predecessors in the days of Tacitus, were wont to signify their
assent to the propositions laid before them by the masters of their
assemblies. The counties in which the Wapentake generally took the place
of the Hundred were York, Lincoln, Nottingham, Derby, Leicester and
217
Rutland.
“And let men seek the Hundred-gemôt in such manner as was arranged
aforetime, and three times in the year let them hold the Burh-gemôt and
twice the Shire-gemôt, and there let the bishop of the shire and the
ealdorman be present, and there let both of them expound God’s law and
the world’s law.” By these words of King Edgar218 we are brought into
contact not only with the Hundred, but also with two other organisations
still very prominent in the political life of England, the Borough and the
Shire.
The Burh or Burg, in the sense of a fortified town, first comes into
notice about the beginning of the tenth century and is evidently the
offspring of the Danish invasions. Not that the word was not before that
219
time in familiar use among the Anglo-Saxons, but that it seems rather to
have denoted the walled enclosure round the dwelling of a great landowner,
than the close-packed streets of a medieval borough. The breaking of such a
burh (burh-bryce), the forcible entry into the precincts of a dwelling, was
punished by the laws of Ine and Alfred with fines carefully graduated
according to the rank of the owner. “A king’s burh-bryce is 120 shillings; an
archbishop’s, 90; another bishop’s or an ealdorman’s, 60; a twelf-hynd
man’s, 30; a six-hynd man’s, 15 shillings. The breaking down of a ceorl’s
220
hedge (edor-bryce) is 5 shillings.” The meaning of the law evidently is,
that “the man whose wer is 600 shillings will probably have some stockade,
some rude rampart round his house; he will have a burh, whereas the ceorl
whose wer is 200 shillings will not have a burh, but will only have a hedge
221
round his house”.
It was into a country full of unwalled tuns or villages, and scattered
country houses calling themselves burhs, but poorly protected by moat and
stockade, that the Danes came pouring in the reigns of Egbert, Ethelwulf
and Alfred. Winchester itself, as we have seen, was “broken down” by
them. York and London were taken, and apparently in this, the first stage of
their invasion, no town which they seriously attacked was able to resist their
onslaught. But then the invaders gave their victims a lesson in self-defence.
As soon as they had taken up a position in town or country they fortified
themselves by erecting a strong “work” (the word is of constant occurrence
in these pages of the Chronicle), and the hardest part of Alfred’s task was
often the capturing of these hastily reared Danish fortifications. In the years
of peace between the invasions of Guthrum and of Hasting, Alfred,
imitating his opponents, reared many burhs which he filled with armed
men. The establishment of these forts which stood up as islands out of the
hostile sea, had evidently much to do with the deliverance of the land from
the flood of Danish invasion in the terrible years between 892 and 896. The
entry of the Chronicle for the year 894 tells us how a portion of the
invading army was attacked “by bands of Englishmen, almost every day
and night, both from the fyrd and also from the burhs; for the king had
divided his fyrd into two parts so that they were always half at home and
half out, except the men whose duty it was to hold the burhs”. And a little
farther on we hear of the valorous deeds of the burh-ware of Chester and of
London, which had an important influence on the successful issue of the
war.
We have seen, in a previous chapter, how the stalwart brother and
sister, Edward and Ethelfled, reconquered central England for the English,
and how they secured their conquests by the great line of forts which they
planted everywhere along and sometimes far within the frontier which had
divided the two nations. Chester, Shrewsbury, Bridgnorth, Stafford,
Warwick, Bedford, Huntingdon, Manchester and many more, were burhs
which owed their foundation or renewal to the stout-hearted Lady of the
Mercians and her brother. It must not be forgotten, however, that the bulk of
the population around, and even in some of these burhs, must have
remained Danish. Leicester, Stamford and Nottingham are included in the
list of forts founded by Edward and his sister, yet they with Lincoln and
Derby made up that Danish confederation of the Five Boroughs with which
Edmund had to fight in 942 and which went over so readily to Sweyn in
1013.
 In the main, however, we may no doubt consider these new, strongly
fortified burhs or, as we may now venture to call them, “boroughs” as the
homes of loyal Englishmen, keen for resistance to an invading foe, but also
keen for commercial enterprise. Very early the kings perceived the
importance of insisting on internal peace and orderly life within the limits
of the borough. Thus Edmund claims for it the same right of inviolate
sanctuary as for the church itself. “If any man seek refuge in a church or in
my burh and any one thereafter assault him or treat him ill, he who does this
shall be liable to the same punishment as is aforesaid.” Where security was
thus provided for, against external enemies by thick walls and deep ditches,
against internal strife and anarchy by the proclamation of the king’s peace,
wealth was sure to accumulate. Markets were fixed in boroughs, and in
order to guard against the ever-dreaded theft of cattle it was ordained with
increasing stringency that purchases and sales should take place within their
222
limits. By a law of Edgar it was directed that in every [large] borough
thirty-three men should be chosen as “witnesses”; in the smaller boroughs
and the hundreds twelve would suffice; and from these we must suppose a
smaller number were chosen to attest the validity of every sale by which
cattle changed hands. Judging from the example of Londonburh, the
greatest of all the boroughs, we may conclude that in these trading, fighting,
debating communities much of the most vigorous life of England was to be
found in the tenth and eleventh centuries.
We have to note in passing that the obligation to assist in the
maintenance and repair of these national defences was one of those which
pressed upon all free Englishmen. Fyrd-fare, burh-bote and bridge-bote, the
duty of serving in the national army, the duty of building or repairing
fortresses, and the like duty in respect of bridges, constituted the triple
obligation, the often-mentioned trinoda necessitas, from which no estate of
thegn or of ceorl, with whatever other immunities it might be favoured, was
ever, except in very rare cases, allowed to be exempt.

* * * * *
Returning to the consideration of King Edgar’s law about local
government we observe that it ordains that the shire-gemôt shall be held
twice a year under the presidency of the bishop of the shire and the
ealdorman. The question of the origin of the existing forty counties into
which England is divided is an extremely interesting one, but it can hardly
yet be said to have received its final solution. We can see at a glance that
some of our counties such as Kent, Essex, Middlesex, Sussex, Surrey,
represent old kingdoms or sub-kingdoms of the early “Heptarchic” period.
Norfolk and Suffolk are but the two divisions of East Anglia. Yorkshire and
Northumberland may stand fairly well for Deira and Bernicia, the generous
endowment of St. Cuthbert’s tomb being interposed between them in the
shape of the county of Durham. The formation of the three counties of
Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire out of Celtic Strathclyde and its
adjoining territory is a late and somewhat obscure piece of history; while on
the other hand the emergence of Cornwall, Devon, and perhaps we may add
Somerset, out of the former kingdom of West Wales, is pretty easily
understood by what the Chronicle tells us of the successive victories of
West Saxon kings. Wessex itself, as we see from the Chronicle, must have
been at an early period, at any rate in the course of the eighth century,
divided into its four often-mentioned shires, Hampshire, Berkshire,
Wiltshire and Dorset. When, however, all these older counties have been
dealt with, there yet remains before us an interesting question as to the
formation of the counties which are still known colloquially as “the shires,”
the score of counties which lie between the Thames and the Humber,
between Wales and East Anglia, and which evidently represent pretty fairly
the old kingdom of Mercia. These, as a rule, cluster each one round some
borough which has given its name to the county. One half of these are
called after strong places which, as we are distinctly told, owed their
foundation or their renewal to Edward and Ethelfled; these ten being
223
Cheshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire,
Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Warwickshire and
Herefordshire, and we may reasonably conjecture that the remaining shires
were carved out nearly at the same time and on a similar plan. There is a
great and obvious distinction between all these midland shires named after
one central burh, and counties which recall the name of a tribe such as the
Sumorsaetan or the South Saxons. The reason for that distinction is
evidently that the Mercian shires were made as part of a definite political
organisation, after the repulse of the Danish invaders by whom many of the
224
old landmarks had been overthrown. It is probable that many territorial
divisions which would have become counties, had Mercia kept the peaceful
tenor of her way through the ninth and tenth centuries, districts such as
those of the Pecsaetan in the county of the Peak and the Gyrwas in the
county of the Fens, may have disappeared from the map of central England
owing to the ravages of the Danes. That map is in fact, as remarked by
Maitland, a palimpsest, under whose broad black county-names many
erased characters lie hidden.225
We have seen that a law of King Edgar’s ordains that the ealdorman
shall sit by the side of the bishop at the meeting of the shire, and shall
expound worldly law while the bishop gives utterance to the divine. In the
early period of the West Saxon monarchy, when there was an ealdorman to
every shire, this enactment causes no difficulty; but it is clear that during
the course of the ninth century there was a constant tendency to lessen the
number of ealdormen and increase the size of their dominions, and we can
then no longer say that every shire had its own ealdorman. Some men like
Ethelred, brother-in-law of Edward the Elder, ealdorman of Mercia; like
Athelstan the half-king of East Anglia; and like all the later Northumbrian
earls, ruled over territories as large as the old Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. In
the reign of Canute we have seen that three earls—as the ealdormen were
now called—ruled over three-fourths of England. If the law of Edgar still
continued in force, we must imagine these great officials travelling from
shire to shire, and holding the gemôt in each. It is a probable suggestion,
however, that when the power of the ealdorman was thus widely extended,
new officers, the shire-reeves, from whom our modern sheriffs derive their
title, were called into being, in order to administer the counties under the
ealdorman. This suggestion can hardly, however, be yet spoken of as more
226
than a conjecture.
The ealdorman, as was just now remarked, changed his title in the
eleventh century for that of earl. There can be no doubt that this change was
due to Danish influence and was an imitation of the word jarl, by which the
chiefs of the Danish host were often designated. Eorl was, however, also a
word known to the Anglo-Saxons, and by its use in the laws of Ine and
elsewhere it seems to have been very nearly equivalent to thegn. In the laws
of Ethelred of Kent, of Alfred and of Athelstan, it is frequently used as the
antithesis to ceorl, “no man whether eorl or ceorl” being used in the same
way that “gentle or simple” was used in the middle ages. Between this
generic use of the word, however, and the title of powerful rulers like
Leofric and Godwine there was a wide and important difference; and to
avoid confusion it seems better to use the word earl only in its later
signification, in which it replaces the term ealdorman and is equivalent to
the Danish jarl and the Latin comes. One important point to notice is that
never before the Norman Conquest does the title of earl become absolutely
hereditary, though there are certain great families which seem to have had
practically an overwhelming claim to share the earldoms among them. No
earl, however, even in the latest days of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom, seems
227
to have had a recognised right of transmitting his earldom to his son.
We have several incidental evidences of the social changes wrought by
the two unquiet centuries between Egbert and Canute. The tendency of all
those marches and counter-marches, those harryings and hardly held
“places of slaughter,” to depress the peaceful cultivator and raise the mere
fighting man, is shown by a curious document called “The Northern
People’s Laws” (North-leoda laga) and supposed to date from the tenth
century. In this document we have the most complete table of wergilds that
228
is anywhere to be found in Anglo-Saxon law. In the following table they
are, for convenience of comparison, converted into West Saxon shillings of
five penings each:—

The Wergild for the king is 18,000 shillings.

Archbishop and Etheling 9,000 „
Bishop and ealdorman 4,800 „
Hold and king’s high-reeve 2,400 „
Mass-thegn (priest) and secular thegn 1,200 „
Ceorl 160 „

Here we see that the ceorl, the free agriculturist, has sunk in the social scale.
He was a two hundred, he is now only a hundred and sixty man. The
wergilds in the upper ranks of society are, perhaps, unaltered, but, as before
remarked, we have very imperfect information about these till we come to
this very document. The important thing to observe is the position of the
hold. This is a Danish word and signifies properly a fighting man. Here,
however, this simple Danish warrior, possibly without any large landed
possessions, has only by his sword carved his way up into a position in
which he boasts a wergild fifteen times as great as that of the honest Saxon
ceorl. He is half as big a man as a bishop or ealdorman, and twice as big as
229
an ordinary thegn.

* * * * *
Another interesting document which dates probably from the reign of
Canute is that which is called the Rectitudines singularum personarum,230
and is a compendium of the whole duty of man, or at least of the services
which he is bound to render to those above him in the social order. The
thegn has his obligations—in the language of a much later age, “property
has its duties as well as its rights”—he must be “worthy of his book-right,”
that is, observe the conditions of his charter and do three things on account
of his land, serving with the fyrd, burh-building and bridge-work. Also on
many estates other obligations accrue at the king’s behest: such as making
the fence for the game on the king’s demesne; the equipment of a war-ship;
keeping watch on the coast, at the royal headquarters or in the fyrd; alms-
giving; Church-scot, and many other payments of various kinds.
 The Geneat seems to have belonged to a class dependent on a lord, but
in a certain sense superior. He had “to pay rent (land-gafol) in money or in
kind, to ride and guide, lead loads, reap and mow, cut the deer-hedge and
keep it in repair, build and fence round the fortress, make new roads to the
tun, keep ward and go errands far and near just as one may order him
about”. It is evidently supposed, however, that he has a horse, probably
several horses of his own, although he has to be thus submissive to the
bidding of a lord. We may, perhaps, see in these geneats the descendants of
ceorls who, under the pressure of the times, have lost their absolutely
independent position and have been fain to “commend” themselves to the
231
protection of some great thegn or religious house.
The cottager (cotsetla) is personally free and does not pay rent, but he
has to render a certain amount of service to his lord in return for his
holding, the normal size of which is five acres. The amount of service
varies according to the custom of different estates; but a very usual
arrangement is that he shall work every Monday throughout the year for his
lord and three days every week in harvest time.
“The Gebur’s duties,” says the document, “are various; in some places
they are heavy, in others they are quite moderate.” He seems, however, to
have somewhat less of personal freedom than the men belonging to either
of the two previous classes. His minimum of work is for two days in the
week; he has to put in three days, not only in harvest time, but from the
beginning of February to Easter; and all the time from Martinmas (Nov. 11)
till Easter he may be called upon, in rotation with his fellows, to lie out at
night beside his lord’s fold keeping watch over the sheep. On some lands
the gebur pays gafol of honey, on some of meat and on some of ale. The
lord provides him with implements for his work and utensils for his house,
but then, per contra, when his time has come to take the journey (of death)
his lord takes all that he leaves behind. Evidently the gebur is, if not yet
actually a serf, in a condition much nearer serfdom than either the geneat or
the cotsetla.
After this follow descriptions of the duties of the bee-keeper, the pork-
butcher, the swine-herd, the sower, the shepherd, the wood-ward and many
other agricultural labourers; the whole forming a most interesting picture of
a large and well-managed English estate in the eleventh century.

* * * * *
In studying the laws of Alfred’s successors throughout the tenth
century, we are struck by the evident desire of the royal legislators to draw
tighter the reins of government and to combat the tendencies towards
disintegration and anarchy which they found in the body politic. Under
Edward the Elder the great pact between Alfred and Guthrum was the
corner-stone of the social fabric and to deal out equal justice between
Englishman and Dane was the chief aim of a righteous ruler, but,
unfortunately, the king found that he had much cause to complain of timid,
corrupt and inefficient servants. The offence of oferhyrnesse, contempt of
the royal word and commandment, is one which is now first mentioned, and
of which we often hear afterwards from Edward and his descendants. Of
this offence, punishable by a fine of 120 shillings, any gerefa (“reeve” or
magistrate) was guilty who failed to administer justice according to the
testimony of the sworn witnesses, or to hold his gemot once in every four
weeks for the administration of justice. Oferhyrnesse was also the offence
of any person who presumed “to cheapen except in a port,” that is, to
conduct any process of bargain and sale except within the limits of a market
town and in the presence of a port reeve, to whose testimony he could
afterwards appeal to prove that he was not dealing in stolen goods.
Strong and vigorous ruler as Athelstan was, he needed to put forth all
his powers in order to repress the growing tendency to anarchy and
injustice. “If any of my gerefan,” says he, “disobey this edict or be more
slack concerning this matter than I have ordained, he shall pay the penalty
of his oferhyrnesse, and I will find some one else who will attend to what I
say.... I have learned that our peace is worse held than I like, and my witan
say that I have borne it too long. I have therefore ordered that all such
peace-breakers shall get out of my kingdom with wives and children, and
all that they have, and shall go whither I direct. If they return to this realm
they shall be treated like thieves caught in the act.” King Athelstan’s
influence, however, was not always exerted on the side of increased
severity. The citizens of London record that he conveyed to the archbishop
his opinion, that it was a lamentable thing that so young a man as one
between the ages of twelve and fifteen should be put to death for any
offence, or any man for stealing a chattel of less value than twelve pennies,
and that he altered the law accordingly, raising the limit of age and of value
in both cases.
In order to make the punishment of crime, especially of the one most
common crime, cattle-stealing, more certain, it was ordered by Edward the
232
Elder that every man should have his geteama, a person doubtless of
known character and position, who would act as his advocate or guarantor
in any transactions of purchase and sale. It was probably a development of
the same idea when Edgar ordained as follows: “This then is what I will,
that every man shall be under a borh whether he be within boroughs or
without them and that witnesses be appointed in every borough and in every
233
hundred”. The law was repeated and strengthened by Canute who thus
announced his decision: “And we will that every free man if he be over the
age of twelve years shall be included in a hundred and a tithing, that he may
have right to clear himself from accusation and right to receive wer if any
one assail him. Otherwise he shall have none of the rights of a free man be
he householder (heorth-faeste) or follower. Let every one then be brought
into the hundred and have a borh, and let the borh hold him and bring him
at all times to judgment. Many a powerful man wishes by hook or crook to
protect his man and thinks that he can easily do it, whether he be free or
234
theow. But we will not tolerate this injustice.”
Of this institution of the tithing, whereby the poorer class of free men
were grouped together in clusters of ten, we heard among the citizens of
London in the reign of Athelstan. That grouping was for purposes of mutual
protection; this seems rather to be in order to enforce mutual responsibility.
It is not to be wondered that organisms, so low down in the social system,
have not made much mark in the Anglo-Saxon law-book; but it seems to be
generally agreed that from them was derived that institution of frank-pledge
which, under the Norman kings, was so efficient a machine for the
repression of disorder.

* * * * *
In the laws of the later Anglo-Saxon kings we seem to hear less about
oath-helping and much more about ordeals than we heard in the laws of
their predecessors. Does this change betoken the growth of superstition or a
decay of honesty and public spirit and a diminished confidence in the
veracity of the oath-helpers? The chief modes of ordeal among the Anglo-
Saxons were three, and an accused person seems to have had his right of
choosing between them. In all there was a direct appeal to the Almighty to
show by the ordeal the innocence or guilt of the accused; and the Church by
solemn services, prayers and fastings gave her sanction to the appeal. (1) If
the ordeal was by cold water, the accused person was hurled into a vessel of
water, after a prayer had been uttered that “the creature, water” might reject
this person if he were guilty or receive him if innocent, according to the
course of nature, into her bosom. In this ordeal to float was fatal, to sink
was salvation. (2) In the ordeal of fire the accused must carry a mass of red-
hot iron weighing one pound a distance of nine feet, or must plunge his
hand up to the wrist into a vessel of boiling water to pick out of it a stone.
After either of these trials the hand was bandaged and sealed up. If, after the
lapse of three days, when the bandages were removed, there was raw flesh
visible, the man was guilty, if the hand showed clean skin he was innocent.
If the crime laid to his charge were that of conspiring against the king’s life,
then the ordeal must be of threefold severity; the mass of hot iron must
weigh three pounds, or the arm of the accused must be plunged in up to the
elbow. (3) The ordeal of the test-morsel (corsnaed) was chiefly practised
upon ecclesiastics and consisted in the obligation to swallow a piece of
bread or cheese upon which a solemn anathema had been pronounced for
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any but an innocent partaker. As Ethelred said in one of his laws: “If an
accusation is laid against a servant of the altar who has no friends and who
cannot call upon any oath-helper, let him go to the corsnaed and there fare
as God shall will”.

* * * * *
The judicial processes even in the ordinary courts of the realm certainly
seem to us sufficiently blundering and barbarous; but at the end of the
period which we are now considering, other courts of private jurisdiction
were coming into being, and whether they administered better or worse
justice who shall say? In the reign of Canute we first find a clear case of a
grant of sake and soke to the Archbishop of Canterbury, a kind of grant
which was given with lavish hand by the king whose reign lies next before
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us, Edward the Confessor. Without entering upon the question whether
the Danish king was really the first to bestow this special privilege upon his
courtiers, lay or ecclesiastical, we may safely assert that, at any rate in the
eleventh century, our kings were freely attaching judicial functions to the
ownership of lands. For this is, undoubtedly, what is meant by these words
sake and soke, or sac and soc. The first probably means a “matter” or
“cause”;237 the second, “a seeking out” or “inquiry”. The meaning in any
case is clear. The abbot or wealthy thegn who “had sake and soke” had,
merely in right of the king’s grant, and generally as appurtenant to the land
which the king had given him, the right to try causes of dispute arising in
his district. Apparently that right included both what we should call civil
and criminal causes; and, of course, the right must have carried with it
power to enforce his decisions, and also—no unimportant matter—the right
to receive the fines and other profits arising from the administration of
justice.
What may have been the limits of this jurisdiction—for there must
surely have been some causes too grave for any mere holder of sake and
soke to meddle with—and how it may have impinged upon the sphere in
which shire-mot and burh-mot exercised their powers, are questions the
answer to which is not yet before us. It is evident, however, that we have
here judicial tribunals which might very easily grow into the manorial
courts which flourished under the Norman and Plantagenet kings and the
survivals of which exist among us to this day. And altogether the whole
effect produced on our minds by a comparison of the laws of these later
kings with the laws of the heptarchic kings is, that during the three centuries
which elapsed from Ine to Canute the distinction between classes had been
growing broader, that the eorl was mightier and the ceorl much weaker than
in that older stratum of society; that, though certainly feudalism was not yet
materialised in England, the spirit which prompted it was in the air; and
that, possibly, even without any Norman Conquest, something like the
Feudal System might have come, by spontaneous generation, in our land.
 CHAPTER XXV.

EDWARD THE CONFESSOR.

(1042–1066.)
E , son of Ethelred, last visible scion of the old royal West Saxon
stock, seems to have succeeded, on Harthacnut’s death, without opposition,
to the throne of his forefathers. If the most powerful man in the kingdom,
Earl Godwine, had any reason to fear the accession of the brother of the
murdered Alfred, he determined to run all risks, and by actively co-
operating in the new king’s election to establish a claim on his gratitude
which might outweigh the remembrance of the deeds done by the zealous
adherent of Harold Harefoot. The large influence of Godwine in the king’s
counsels did not imply, as it would have done some years before, the
continuance in power of the king’s mother. On the contrary, in the very next
year after Edward’s accession, and seven months after his coronation at
Winchester, the king, with his three most powerful subjects, Godwine,
Leofric and Siward, rode from Gloucester to Winchester (November 16,
1043), and coming suddenly upon “the Lady” Emma, deprived her of all the
vast treasures that she had accumulated, “her lands, her gold, her silver and
her precious things untellable,” and ordained that she should live thereafter,
unimprisoned indeed, but deprived of all her ancient state, in the royal city
of Winchester. Thus she lived on for eight years longer, till her death on
March 14, 1052; but in all the stirring scenes which preceded that event the
238
busy, managing “Old Lady” seems to have taken no part. Her party, if
she had one, struck down by that hasty ride of the king and his three nobles,
never after raised its head. The reason assigned by the chronicler for this
harsh procedure toward the widow and mother of two kings, seems to bear
the stamp of truth. “This was done,” he says, “because she was, before, very
hard on the king her son, and she did less for him than he would, both
before he was king and afterward,” meaning no doubt both before and after
his association with Harthacnut. In other words, the queen-dowager, who
evidently disliked her first husband and gave all her pent-up love to her
second, had become so complete a Dane at heart that she would not lift a
finger to help the surviving son of Ethelred, and for this unfriendliness she
was sorely punished when he had power to avenge his wrongs.
Soon after Emma’s downfall, the place of “Lady” in the palace of
Winchester was again filled, by the marriage of Edward to Edith, daughter
of Earl Godwine (January 23, 1045). It was a marriage only in name; for the
king, to the admiration of his monastic biographers, retained through life
the virgin purity of his saintliness; but the daughter of Godwine
undoubtedly exercised some influence on the counsels of her royal spouse,
though in what direction that influence was exerted is one of the not fully
solved riddles of this difficult reign. The reign is difficult, chiefly because
of the singular nullity of the sovereign’s character. Religious and kindly
natured, Edward (who received after his death the half canonisation
conveyed in the title of “Confessor”) seems to have had scarcely a will or
mind of his own. He is always under the dominion of some stronger nature,
Saxon earl, or Norman bishop, or wedded queen: and it is rarely possible to
discover what were his own true sympathies and antipathies. We have
constantly to guess to which of his councillors we must attribute the praise
or the blame of the actions which were nominally his own.
To avoid confusion, it will be well to describe the events of this reign
under four heads: foreign relations; internal troubles; wars with the Scots;
and wars with the Welsh.
To us, who judge after the event, the dissolution of the splendid Anglo-
Scandinavian Empire of Canute seems a natural and inevitable consequence
of the death of its founder; but in all likelihood it was not so regarded by
contemporary observers. Both Magnus of Norway and Sweyn of Denmark
may well have aspired to rule England as heirs or quasi-heirs of Canute the
Rich, and in order to guard against their attacks, the new King of England
was compelled to keep a large fleet in readiness, which was generally
assembled at Sandwich.
Magnus of Norway was a bastard son of St. Olaf’s, whose very name
bore witness to the irritable temper of his father. His mother, Alfhild, when
in travail, was brought nigh unto death, and when the child was born the by-
standers were for long in doubt whether it were alive. But the king was
asleep, had given strict orders that he should never be roused from his
slumbers, and none, not even his favourite minstrel Sigvat, dared to
disobey. Fearing lest the child, dying unbaptised, should become “the
devil’s man,” a priest hastily baptised it, the minstrel standing god-father,
and giving it the name Magnus in honour of Carolus Magnus, “the king
whom he knew to be the best man in all the world”. (And this was full two
centuries after the death of Charlemagne.) The anger of the awakened king,
when he learned what had happened during his slumbers, was charmed
away by the smooth-tongued Sigvat. Thus did the name Magnus enter not
only into the dynastic lists, but into the common family nomenclature of
Norway and Iceland.
The child Magnus, grown to man’s estate and succeeding to his father’s
kingdom, vindicated the unconscious prophecy of his name, and was for a
time the greatest monarch of the North. Whereas in the previous generation,
Denmark had conquered Norway, it now seemed probable that Norway
would conquer Denmark, so hard was the king of the latter country pressed
by Magnus. This Danish king was Sweyn, not, of course, the son of Canute,
who had died some years before, but Sweyn Estrithson, son of the murdered
Ulf (of the overthrown chess-board) and of Canute’s sister, Estrith. As Ulf’s
sister was Gytha, wife of Earl Godwine, Godwine’s many sons and
daughters were of course first cousins to the King of Denmark.
In the year 1047 Sweyn Estrithson, vigorously attacked by Magnus,
sent an earnest petition to England that fifty ships might be despatched to
his succour. “But this seemed an ill counsel to all people, because Magnus
had great sea-power, nor was it adopted.” Unhelped, Sweyn was expelled
from his kingdom. The Danes had to pay money to their conquerors—a new
and bitter experience for them—and to own Magnus for their king. There,
however, the career of Norwegian conquest stopped. In that very year,
Magnus, when riding through the forest, was thrown violently by his shying
steed against the trunk of a tree and received an injury from which he died.
His uncle, Harold Hardrada, who succeeded him, and who will be heard of
again in the history of England, could not prevent Denmark from reverting
to its former ruler, Sweyn Estrithson, who founded there a dynasty which
endured for 300 years.
Though schemes of conquest, such as are attributed to Magnus, died
with him, there was some renewal of the old piratical raids. In 1048 two
Norse buccaneers came with twenty-five ships to Sandwich, were repelled
from Thanet, but successfully raided Essex, and sailing thence to
“Baldwin’s land” (Flanders), found there a ready market for the fruits of
their cruel industry. The shelter given by Flanders to these and other
depredators, induced Edward to acquiesce the more willingly in a proposal
made to him by his kinsman, the Emperor Henry III., that he should help to
guard the narrow seas against Baldwin, who had broken out into rebellion
against the empire, had demolished the palace reared by Charlemagne at
Nimeguen, and had done many other ill turns to his sovereign lord. To
punish these despites Henry had gathered a large army, and Edward helped
him by keeping guard with a fleet at Sandwich. No naval engagement
followed, but the pressure thus effected by land and sea was effectual, and
before long “the emperor had of Baldwin all that he would”.
The Emperor Henry III., who thus drew Edward into the circle of
European politics, was chiefly memorable for the beneficial influence
which he exerted on the papal court, procuring the election of bishops of
high character, generally Germans, instead of the dissolute lads who had
been too often of late intruded into the papacy. One of the best of Henry’s
German popes was Bruno of Toul, who ruled as Leo IX. from 1048 to 1054.
To him in the year 1049 Edward, by the advice of his witan, sent as
ambassadors the Bishops of Sherborne and Worcester, to pray for
absolution from a vow of pilgrimage to the Holy Land, which he had made
in his years of poverty and apparently hopeless exile. The Witenagemot
represented to him with good reason that the fulfilment of such a vow
would now be inconsistent with his higher duties to his country and his
subjects; and the aid of the pope was sought to cut the casuistic knot. In the
following year the two bishops returned, bringing the papal absolution from
the vow of pilgrimage, coupled, it is said, with an injunction to build or
restore a monastery in honour of St. Peter, and fill it with monks who
should spend their days in prayer and psalmody. The condition was one in
itself delightful to the heart of the pious king. From the unfulfilled vow of
pilgrimage, from the journey of the two bishops to Rome, and from the
reply of the venerable Leo, sprang that noble sanctuary, the name of which
will endure as long as men speak the English language, the great Abbey of
Westminster.

* * * * *
The internal history of England during the twenty-two years of
Edward’s reign is chiefly a record of the struggles of two or three great
nobles for supremacy in his councils. It is true that some measures were
taken for lightening the burdens of the people. “In the year 1049,” says the
Abingdon chronicler, “King Edward paid off nine ships and they went away
with their ships and all: and five ships remained, and the king promised
them twelve months’ pay. In the next year he paid off all the shipmen.” The
result is told us by his brother chronicler: “In 1052 [1051] King Edward
took off the army tax (here-gyld) which King Ethelred formerly instituted.
It was thirty-nine years since he began it: and this gyld oppressed the
English people during all that time. This tax ever claimed priority over all
the other gylds by which the people were in various ways oppressed.” As
 239
has been pointed out, the tax here spoken of is not the Danegeld, a levy
of money to be paid as blackmail to foreign invaders, but it is here-gyld,
“army tax,” or rather, in strictness, “navy tax,” a levy of money to be paid to
the naval defenders of the country, an imposition therefore which may be
fittingly compared to the ship money of the Middle Ages. But the
previously quoted entry concerning the exactions in the reign of Harthacnut
shows how easily the here-gyld might be increased till it became an
intolerable burden, and we can thus the better understand the joy of the
nation at its removal.
The position of Edward appears during the whole of his reign to have
been not unlike that of the later kings of the two first Frankish dynasties. If
he were not a mere roi fainéant, a puppet in the hands of an all-powerful
Mayor of the Palace, he was at any rate like a Carolingian Louis or Lothair,
with large theoretical claims, with little real power, and quite overshadowed
by a few great earls, who had not indeed yet made their offices hereditary;
who were still in theory removable officers of the crown; but who ruled
wide provinces, raised considerable armies among their own house-carls,
and above all, possessed wealth probably much exceeding any that could be
found in the treasure-house of the king. One of these great French nobles,
Hugh the Great, had so played his cards as to prepare the way for the
elevation of his own son to the actual seat of royalty, when the time should
come for its relinquishment by the descendants of Charlemagne. It seems
not improbable that the example of Hugh the Great was much before the
eyes of Godwine, and that through life he kept steadily in view the
possibility that sons issuing from his loins might one day sit upon the
English throne, now after five centuries about to be left vacant by the dying
dynasty of Cerdic.
Godwine, Leofric and Siward: these were the three greatest names in
the English Witan when Edward came to the throne, and all three should be
still memorable to Englishmen; Godwine, by reason of his great place in
history, and the other two by reason of their renown in English poetry;
Leofric being commemorated in the Godiva of Tennyson, and Siward in the
Macbeth of Shakespeare.
The kingdom of England, imperfectly welded together by Egbert and
Alfred, and since then modified by the large infusion of Scandinavian blood
into its northern and eastern districts, showed throughout this period a
strong tendency to split up again into its three old divisions, Northumbria,
Mercia and Wessex. Northumbria, as we have seen, was reconstituted as
one earldom by the bloody deed of Siward the Strong, who slew his uncle
Eadwulf, and so joined Bernicia to Deira. A strong, stern, unscrupulous
Dane, whose martial character is attested by the well-known story of his
death (hereafter to be related), he nevertheless seems to have ruled well his
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great province and was apparently a loyal subject of King Edward.
Leofric, son of Leofwine, was sprung, as has been said, from a family
which for more than two centuries had been eminent in Mercia, and it is
probable that he and his offspring bore with unconcealed dislike the
overshadowing competition of the great upstart house of Godwine. He is
often spoken of as Earl of Mercia, and perhaps had some sort of pre-
eminence over other earls in that district, but his immediate jurisdiction
seems to have been confined to the three counties of Cheshire, Shropshire
and Staffordshire. Godwine’s nephew by marriage, Beorn, son of Ulf and
Estrith, was quartered on his eastern flank in Derby, Nottingham, Leicester
and Lincoln. Sweyn, Godwine’s eldest son, ruled the Mercian counties of
Hereford, Gloucester and Oxford, besides a part of Wessex. Well might the
proud Mercian noble feel that his title was but a mockery, while such large
slices of Mercia were given to his rivals. Both Leofric and his wife Godiva
were munificent benefactors to the Church. Whatever may be the
foundation for the beautiful legend of Godiva’s absolute surrender of
herself for the lightening of her people’s burdens, we certainly should not,
from his record in history, have inferred that her husband Leofric was an
avaricious or close-fisted lord.
We turn to the earldoms which throughout the greater part of Edward’s
reign were subject to the family of Godwine. He himself held, of course,
that great and enriching office, the earldom of Wessex, which had been long
ago conferred upon him by Canute, and which practically included all the
lands south of the Thames; excepting that Somerset and Berkshire appear to
have been carved out of them, to form what in later times would have been
called an appanage for his eldest son, Sweyn, in addition to the three
Mercian counties which, as we have already seen, were included in his
earldom. His second son, Harold, called Earl of the East Angles, ruled not
only the two strictly East Anglian shires, but also Huntingdon, Cambridge
241
and Essex, which probably included Middlesex. The three sons who
came next in order, Tostig, Gyrth and Leofwine, were but boys at the time
of Edward’s accession and were as yet unprovided with earldoms; but even
so, it is evident if we look at the map, that more than half, and that the
fairest half, of England was subject to Earl Godwine and his family.
Of the character of this man, certainly the most powerful and probably
the ablest Englishman of his time, very varying judgments were formed,
even in his lifetime; and after his death the antipathy of the Norman and the
regretful sympathy of the Saxon writers, naturally led to very divergent