The Growth of the English Constitution. Freeman Edward Augustus

of the Scriptures, the word King, in any of its forms, is not found. The word there used is Thiudans35. And there is a third word Drihten, which in English is most commonly used in a religious sense36. I would ask you to bear with me while I plunge for a moment into some obsolete Teutonic etymologies, as I think that the analogies of these three words are not a little interesting. All three names come from, or are closely connected with, words meaning the race or people. One of those words, Cyn or Kin, we still keep in modern English with no change of sound and with very little change of meaning. Now, the word Cyning, in its shortened form King, either comes straight from the substantive Cyn, or else from a closely connected adjective Cyne, noble, just like the Latin generosus from Genus, which, let me add, is the same word as our English Cyn. Let no one delude you into thinking that King has anything to do with the canning or cunning man. The man who first said that it had had simply not learned his Old-English grammar37. It has to do with Cyn and Cyne, and it may be taken as “the noble one,” or, as ing is the Teutonic patronymic, any one that chooses may thus form Cyning from Cyn, and make the King, not the father of his people, but their offspring38. Now the other two names, Thiudans or Theoden, and Drihten, have dropped out of our language, and so have the two words with which they are connected, just as Cyning is connected with Cyn. Thiduans or Theoden comes from Thiuda or Theod, also meaning people, a word which you will recognize in many of the old Teutonic names, Theodric, Theodberht, Theodbald, and the like. So Drihten either comes straight from Driht, a family or company, or else, just like Cyn and Cyne, from an adjective driht meaning noble or lordly. All these three names expressing kingship have thus to do with words meaning the race or people. They imply the chief of a people, something more than the chief of a mere tribe or district. Now in our Old-English Chronicles, when they tell how the first English Conquerors, Hengest and Horsa, settled in Kent, they do not call them Cyningas but Heretogan, Leaders or Dukes. It is not till after some victories over the Britons that we hear that Hengest took the rice or kingdom, and that his son Æsc is called King. So in Wessex, the first conquerors Cerdic and Cynric are called Ealdormen when they land; but, when they have established a settled dominion at the expense of the Welsh, we read that they too took the rice, and the leaders of the West-Saxons are henceforth spoken of as Kings39. It is plain then that the first leaders of the English settlements in Britain, when they came over, bore only the lowlier title of Heretoga or Ealdorman; it was only when they had fought battles and found themselves at the head of a powerful and victorious settlement on the conquered soil that they were thought worthy of the higher title of Kings. And we may further believe that, with all their exploits they would not have been thought worthy of it, if they had not been held to come of the blood of the Gods, of the divine stock of Woden.

      We thus see that kingship in the strict sense of the word, as distinguished from the government of Dukes or Ealdormen, had its beginning among the English in Britain, not in the very first moment of the Conquest, but in the years which immediately followed it, within the lifetime of the first generation of conquerors. The same distinction which we find among the Angles and Saxons we find also among the kindred nations of Scandinavia. When the Danes and Northmen began those invasions which led to such important settlements in Northern and Eastern England, we always find two marked classes of leaders, the Kings and the Jarls, the same word as Eorl. Of these the Jarls answer to the English Ealdormen40. The distinction is again clearly marked, when we read that the Old-Saxons, the Saxons of the mainland, were ruled, not by Kings, but by what our Latin writer is pleased to call Satraps– that is, of course, Dukes or Ealdormen41. But it is most strongly marked of all in several accounts where we read of nations which had been united under Kings falling back again upon the earlier dominion of these smaller local chiefs. Thus the Lombards in Italy, who had been led by Kings to their great conquest, are said for a while to have given up kingly government, and to have again set up a rule of independent Dukes. So the West-Saxons in our own island are said at one time to have cast away kingly government, and to have in the like sort fallen back on the rule of independent Ealdormen42. In all these cases, we should be glad to know more clearly than we do what was the exact distinction between the King and the Duke or Ealdorman. But it is plain that the King was the representative of a closer national unity, while the Ealdorman represented the tendency on the part of each tribe or district to claim independence for itself. The government of the Ealdorman may not have been less effective than that of the King. If we remember the distinction drawn by Tacitus as to the respective qualifications for the two offices, we may even believe that the rule of the Ealdorman may have been the more effective. But we may be sure that the Ealdorman was felt to be, in some way or other, less distant from the mass of his people than the King was; the place of King could be held only by one of the stock of Woden; the place of Ealdorman, it would seem, was open to any man who showed that he possessed the gifts which were needed in a leader of men.

      Kingship thus became the law of all the Teutonic tribes which settled in Britain and whose union made up the English nation. That union, we must always remember, was very gradual. Step by step, smaller Kings or independent Ealdormen admitted the supremacy of a more powerful King. Then, in a second stage, the smaller state was absolutely incorporated with the greater. Its ruler now, if he continued to rule at all, ruled no longer as an independent or even as a vassal sovereign, but as a mere magistrate, acting by the deputed authority of the sovereign of whom he held his office43. The settlement made by Cerdic and Cynric on the southern coast grew, step by step, by the incorporation of many small kingdoms and independent Ealdormanships, into the lordship of the whole Isle of Britain, into the immediate kingship of all its English inhabitants. The Ealdorman of a corner of Hampshire thus grew step by step into the King of the West-Saxons, the King of the Saxons, the King of the English, the Emperor of all Britain, the lord, in later times, of a dominion reaching into every quarter of the world44. But the point which now concerns us is that, with each step in the growth of the King’s territorial dominion, his political authority within that dominion has grown also. The change from an Ealdorman to a King, the change from a heathen King to a Christian King crowned and anointed, doubtless did much to raise the power and dignity of the ruler who thus at each change surrounded himself with new titles to reverence. But this was not all. The mere increase in the extent of territorial dominion would at each step work most powerfully to increase the direct power of the King, and still more powerfully to increase the vague reverence which everywhere attaches to kingship. In Homer we read of Kings, some of whom were “more kingly,” more of Kings, than others. So it was among ourselves. A King who reigned over all Wessex was more of a King than a King who reigned only over the Isle of Wight, and a King who reigned over all England was more of a King than a King who reigned only over Wessex45. The greater the territory over which a King reigns the less familiar he becomes to the mass of his people; he is more and more shrouded in a mysterious awe, he is more and more looked on as a being of a different nature from other men, of a different nature even from other civil magistrates and military leaders, however high their authority and however illustrious their personal character. Such a separation of the King from the mass of his people may indeed, in some states of things, lead, not to the increase, but to the lessening of his practical power. He may become in popular belief too great and awful for the effectual exercise of power, and, by dint of his very greatness, his practical authority may be transferred to his representatives who govern in his name. He may be surrounded with a worship almost more than earthly, while the reality of power passes to a Mayor of the Palace, or is split up among the satraps of distant provinces46. But, with a race of vigorous and politic Kings ruling over a nation whose tendencies