(Vol. iv., p. 102.)
Your correspondent MR. GATTY, in a late number, has quoted a passage of
the historian Hume, which treats a certain Anglo-Saxon document as a
statute of Athelstan. As your correspondent cites his author without a
comment, he would appear to give his own sanction to the date which Hume
has imposed upon that document. In point of fact, it bears no express
date, and therefore presents a good subject for a Query, whether that or
any other era is by construction applicable to it. It is an extremely
interesting Anglo-Saxon remain; and as it bears for title, "be
leodgethincthum and lage," it purports to give legal information upon
the secular dignities and ranks of the Anglo-Saxon period. This promises
well to the archæologist, but unfortunately, on a nearer inspection, the
document loses much of its worth; for, independently of its lacking a
date, its jurisprudence partakes more of theory than that dry law which
we might imagine would proceed from the Anglo-Saxon bench.
Notwithstanding this, however, its archæological interest is great. The
language is pure and incorrupt West Saxon.
It has been published by all its editors (except Professor Leo) as
_prose_, when it is clearly not only rythmical but alliterative--an
obvious characteristic of Anglo-Saxon poetry. And it is this mistake
which has involved the further consequence of giving to the document a
legal and historical value which it would never have had if its real
garb had been seen through. This has led the critics into a belief of
its veracity, when a knowledge of its real character would have inspired
doubts. I believe that its accidental position in the first printed
edition at the end of the "Judicia" (whether it be so placed in the MS.
I know not) has assisted in the delusion, and has supplied a date to the
minds of those who prefer faith to disquisition. The internal evidence
of the document also shows that it is not jurisprudence, but only a
vision spun from the writer's own brains, of what he dreamed to be
constitutional and legal characteristics of an anterior age, when there
were greater liberty of action and expansion of mind. The opening words
of themselves contain the character of the document:--"Hit wæs hwilum."
It is not a narrative of the present, but a record of the past.
The legal poet then breaks freely into the darling ornament of
Anglo-Saxon song, alliteration: "On Engla lagum thæt leod and lagum,"
and so on to the end. As its contents are so well known and accessible,
I will not quote them, but will merely give a running comment upon
parts. "Gif ceorl getheah," &c. It may be _doubted_ whether, even in
occasional instances, the _ceorl_ at any time possessed under the
Anglo-Saxon system the power of equalising himself by means of the
acquisition of property, with the class of theguas or gentils-hommes.
But in the broad way in which the poet states it, it may be absolutely
denied, inasmuch as the acquisition of wealth is made of itself to
transform the _ceorl_ into a _thegn_: a singular coincidence of idea
with the vulgar modern theory, but incompatible with fact in an age when
a dominant caste of _gentlemen_ obtained.
It is not until the reign of Edward III. that any man, not born a
gentleman, can be distinctly traced in possession of the honours and
dignities of the country; an air of improbability is thus given which is
increased by a verbal scrutiny. In the words "gif thegen getheah thæt be
wearth to eorle," &c., the use of the word _eorl_ is most suspicious.
This is not the _eorl_ of antiquity--the Teutonic _nobilis_; it is the
official _eorl_ of the Danish and _quasi_-Danish periods. This
anachronism betrays the real date of the production, and carries us to
the times succeeding the reign of Ethelred II., when the disordered and
transitional state of the country may have excited in the mind of the
disquieted writer a fond aspiration which he clothed in the fanciful
garb of his own wishes, rather than that of the gloomy reality which he
saw before him.
The use of the _cræft_, for a vessel, like the modern, is to be found in
the _Andreas_ (v. 500.), a composition probably of the eleventh century.
The conclusion points to troubled and late times of the Anglo-Saxon
rule, when the church missed the reverence which had been paid to it in
periods of peace and prosperity.
I have said enough to show that this document cannot rank in accuracy or
truthful value with the Rectitudines or the LL. of Hen. I.
One word more. What is the meaning of _burh-geat_? _Burh_ I can
understand; authorities abound for its use as expressing the _manoir_ of
the Anglo-Saxon _thegn_. The "geneates riht" (_Rectitudines_) is
"bytlian and burh hegegian." The _ceorls_ of Dyddanham were bound to
dyke the hedge of their lords' _burh_ ("Consuetudines in Dyddanhamme,"
_Kemb_, vol. iii. App. p. 450.): "And dicie gyrde burh heges."