Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/666

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special summons. I am inclined therefore to see, both in the case of Anselm and in the case of Thomas, a true gathering of the Witan of the realm. Thomas comes, like Strafford or Hastings, to answer a charge before the Court of our Lord the King in Parliament, that court, which from an assembly of the whole nation, gradually shrank up into an assembly of the present peerage. In the case of Anselm I see the same body acting, not strictly as a court, but rather as the great inquest of the nation, but at the same time fluctuating somewhat, as was but natural in that age, between its judicial and its legislative functions. But in the tribunal which sat on William of Saint-Calais I am, as I have already said, inclined to see, not the Mickle Gemót of the whole nation, but rather the King's court in a narrower sense, the representative of the ancient Theningmannagemót, the more strictly official body. Here we have no division of chambers; the proceedings are strictly those of a court trying a charge, and the King, as chief judge, is present throughout.