Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/287

Rh TEUTONIC POLITY.] ENGLAND 273 The enlarged family, in Greek and Latin phrase the gens, tracing by natural descent or by artificial adoption to a common forefather, real or imaginary, divine or human, is the lowest political unit. As in ancient Greece and Italy, it constantly bears the name of such supposed forefather. The ^Lscingas, the Scyldingas, a crowd of other such names, marked in Teutonic, just as in Greek, by the patronymic ending, are sometimes recorded in history or legend, some times simply left to be inferred from the local nomenclature of England and other Teutonic lands. The territory, originally the common territory, of such an enlarged or artificial family, formed the lowest territorial division, the mark or tuicnalrip. The cultivated land of each gens was fenced in by a boundary line of untilled land, forming the mark in the strictest sense. The township then and its inha bitants formed the lowest political unit, an unit having its own assembly and its own political organization. Such a political unit still forms the gemeinde, the commune, of other lands. This unit has been exposed in England to influences which have altered its character more tho roughly than it has been altered anywhere else. An ecclesiastical influence has changed the original mark into the half civil, half ecclesiastical parish. An influence of another kind changed the primitive community, holding its common land by its own right, into a body of tenants holding their land of a lord. The township which had passed through such a change became a manor. It must always be remembered that, in the primitive polity, each larger group is formed by bringing together several of the smaller. Several gentfs brought together formed in the Roman system the vtria, answering to the Attic &amp;lt;parpt aand the Spartan 01/8*7. The Teutonic counter part of this group is the hundred. The name must in its beginning have meant a real hundred of some kind; but such names soon lose their proper force, and are used in a purely conventional sense. The hundreds of England aie familiar as geographical divisions ; but their traditional organization, administrative, judicial, and military, is fast passing out of memory. When the English first landed in Britain, and for ages after, that organization was fresh and vigorous. But it is quite possible that, even before the voyage of Hengest, the mere name of hundred had become purely conventional, and had ceased to imply an actual hundred of any kind. As a group of gentes formed a curia, so a group of ciirice form a tribe. In the Teutonic nomenclature, the territory of the tribe is the gd, gau, ieod, or scir, in modern English shire, thepagus orscira of Latin writers. Gd or gau, a name familiar in Germany, but whose existence can only just be proved in England, is doubtless the elder name. Shire, from shear, does not mean a group of lesser units, but in strictness a division, something shorn off from a greater whole. Both names are historically true. Of the existing shires of England some are really primitive (jits, settlements of tribes, while others are in strictness shires, artificial divisions formed at a later time in imitation of the primitive gd. Tho West-Saxon shires are primitive gas, and two at least, those of the Sumorsaetas and the DorsjBtas, still keep the ancient tribal names. But the old tribal divisions of Mercia were wiped out in the Danish conquest of the ninth century. In the process of English re- conquest the land was mapped out afresh into shires, strictly so called, shires grouped conveniently round a central town, and bearing the name of that town instead of the name of the ancient tribe. The shire, it is needless to say, is still a living thing throughout England, and from England it has spread itself, commonly under the French name county, through all lands ruled, settled, or influenced by England The //a was the lowest group which could exist as a really distinct political power. The mark and the hundred, like the gem and the curia, do not, at least in the finished system, whether Teutonic or Greek and Italian, aspire to the character of an independent state. The gd, hke the tribe, might do so. The gd might be wholly independent ; it might be dependent on some stronger neighbour ; it might be incorporated into a kingdom, and sink into one of its geographical divisions. But in any case it kept its full and separate organization, its assembly with judicial, adminis trative, and legislative power, its chief bearing the title of Ealdorman or Alderman in peace, of Heretoga, Herzog the o-rpaTrryoi of the Athenian tribe in time of war. The alderman stood, like the territory of which he was the chief, in various relations. He might be an independent or a vassal prince ; he might, by the incorporation of hi&gd with a kingdom, have sunk into a mere magistrate, appointed by the king and assembly of the whole kingdom. But the organization of the gd 01 shire remained in either case. So the Ramnes and Titienses were independent tribes, occupy ing their several hills. They joined together, to become the tribes whose union formed the earliest Rome. A system of gas or shires is thus the oldest fully Tbe developed form of the Teutonic polity. The process of kingdo grouping independent gds into a yet greatet division was gradual, and went on much faster in some parts than others. The union of gds formed a rice or kingdom ; the chief of the group thus formed was a cyning 01 king. What, it may be asked, was the difference between king and ealdorman I The question is a hard one ; but one point of difference seems plain. The ealdorman was a ruler in peace and a captain in war. The king was more. Among the English at least, the kingly houses all claimed descent from the blood of the gods. Every king was a son of Woden. A vague religious reverence thus gathered round the king, in which the ealdorman had no share. He was also the head of the highest political aggregate which the ideas of those days had reached. He was, as his name implies, the head of the kin, the nation. The rule of the ealdorman was tribal, and merely earthly ; the rule of the king was national, and in some sort divine. Kingship then, the leadership of a nation, was, in the Nature ideas of those days, an office and not a property. As an of k &quot;g- office, it demanded qualifications. It demanded in truth the s np highest qualifications, the qualifications needed in one who was to be the leader of his people in peace and in war. Such an office could not be trusted to the chances of any law of strict hereditary descent. Or rather, the notion of any law of strict hereditary descent was a thing which had not yet presented itself to men s minds. Kingship then was elective : the leader of the people became such only by the choice of the people ; but the right of choice was not wholly unlimited ; the king, so custom and tradition taught must come of the stock of Woden. But within that stock one member of it was as sacred, as kingly, as another. Tbe son of a deceased king would doubtless be his most obvious successor, if there was nothing specially to suggest another choice ; but he had no further claim beyond any other man of his house. Traditional rule dictated that the choice should be made from the royal house ; reason dictated that it should fall on the worthiest of the royal house. The union of these two feelings led to that mixture of election and hereditary succession which we find among the ancient English, as among most other nations at the same stage. The king is chosen; but be is chosen, under all ordinary circumstances, from the one kingly line. He is not chosen as the heir or the representative or the next of kin of the former king. He is chosen as that one of thn kingly house whom the people think fit to choose. He is chosen from the house ; therefore kindred in the female line goes for nothing. The son of a king s daughter docs not belong to the kingly house ; he is therefore not elicrible for VITT -35