Witan

The Witan (lit. 'wise men') was the king's council in the

.

Terminology

The terms witan and witenagemot are increasingly avoided by modern historians, although few would go as far as Geoffrey Hindley, who described witenagemot as an "essentially Victorian" coinage.[2] The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England prefers 'King's Council', but adds that it was known in Old English as the witan.^[3] John Maddicott regarded the word witan with suspicion, even though it is used in sources such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:

But the word carries with it, however unjustifiably, a fustian air of decayed scholarship, and, in addition, its use may seem to prejudge the answer to an important question: do we have here an institution, a capitalized 'Witan', as it were, or merely a lower-case ad hoc gathering of the wise men who were the king's councillors?

For these reasons, in his study of the origins of the English parliament, he generally preferred the more neutral word 'assembly'.^[4] He described witena gemot as a rare 11th century usage, with only nine pre-Conquest examples, mainly in the crisis of 1051–52.^[5] Patrick Wormald was also sceptical, describing witena-gemot as "a word always rare and unattested before 1035".^[6]

Henrietta Leyser commented in 2017 that for decades historians avoided using the word 'witan' for assemblies in case they were interpreted as proto-parliaments, and she went on: "Recent historiography, however, has reintroduced the term since it is clear that it was generally accepted that certain kinds of business could only be transacted with a substantial number of the king's wise men, in other words, in the company of his 'witan'". She does not mention the term witenagemot.^[7]

A contemporary account of a dispute over an estate in Middlesex in the 950s refers to a decision of the Myrcna witan (Mercian witan).^[8]

Origin

It is generally accepted that the English witenagemot had its origins in ancient Germanic assemblies summoned to witness royal grants of land. Yet whatever their status before the seventh century, the nature of these assemblies in England was irrevocably changed when Christianity was introduced around 600. Hereafter, church and state were "inseparably intertwined," and this was reflected in the strong ecclesiastical element in the witan's membership and concerns; records of decisions made by witan encompass ecclesiastical and secular jurisdictions alike.^[9]

Constitution and limitations

Anglo-Saxon society was based on reciprocal arrangements between the king and all those lower in the societal order. The principal conflicts of this period, such as the

, of the eventual sole Kingdom of the English. The Chronicles in many instances cite numerous witans that were held for the aforementioned purposes, and by the aforecited monarchs of the period. The purpose of the witan, therefore, was to ensure that those who were responsible for fighting wars, and implementing laws (more so in the case of ealdormen who held administrative control over counties and major towns/cities), could not only offer input but also forestall any potential rebellion from a lack of inclusion in this process.

The exact nature of the witenagemot, however, remains "essentially vague, fluctuating, and incoherent".^[10] Nevertheless, there is much direct evidence of the witan's various activities. Knowledge about who made up the witan and who was present at their meetings is provided mainly by lists of witnesses to charters, or grants of land, which were concocted at the witenagemots.^[11] Reference to the witan's acta or official decisions are also preserved in law codes.

The first recorded act of a witenagemot was the law code issued by King Æthelberht of Kent ca. A.D. 600, the earliest document which survives in sustained Old English prose; however, the witan was certainly in existence long before this time.^[12] Altogether, about 2,000 charters and 40 law codes survive which attest to the workings of the various meetings of the witan, of which there are around 300 recorded.^[13]

These documents clearly indicate that the witan was composed of the nation's highest echelon of both ecclesiastical and secular officers. Present on the ecclesiastical side were

. Members of the royal family were also present, and the king presided over the entire body.

In his investigation into Anglo-Saxon institutions, H. M. Chadwick wrote:

I have not thought it necessary to discuss at length the nature of the powers possessed by the council [i.e., the witenagemot], for… there can be little hope of arriving at any definite conclusions on this subject. Indeed it seems at least doubtful whether the functions of the council were ever properly defined.^[14]

Similarly, in his study of the witenagemot,

The witan was noted by contemporary sources as having the singular power to ceosan to cynige, 'to choose the king' from amongst the (extended) royal family. Nevertheless, at least until the 11th century, royal succession generally followed the "ordinary system of

Liebermann's more subtle position seems to be vindicated by testimony from abbot

In addition to having a role in the 'election' of English Kings, it is often held that the witenagemots had the power to

The witan's powers are illustrated by the following event. In the year 1013 King Æthelred II (Æthelred the Unready) fled the country from

King of England

. His nickname of the 'Unræd' or 'Unready' means ill-advised, indicating that contemporaries regarded those who sat in the witan as part responsible for the failure of his reign.

Though in general the witan were recognized as the king's closest advisors and policy-makers, various witan also operated in other capacities; there are mentions of þeodwitan, 'people's witan', Angolcynnes witan, 'England's witan', and an Anglo-Saxon and

Even when summoned explicitly by kings, the witenagemots did not represent the political will of all England: before the unification of England in the tenth century, separate witenagemots were convened by the Kings of Essex, Kent, Mercia, Northumbria, Sussex and Wessex. Indeed, even after Wessex became the dominant power in England, supplanting the other kingdoms, local witan continued to meet until as late as 1067. In his work on Alfred the Great, historian David Sturdy argues that the witan did not embody modern notions of a 'national institution' or a 'democratic' body: "Victorian notions of a national 'witan' are crazy dreams without foundation, myths of a 'democratic parliament' that never was."^[24]

Function and legacy

Witan would advise on the administration and organization of the kingdom, dealing with issues such as taxation, jurisprudence and both internal and external security. The witenagemot was in many ways different from the future institution of the Parliament of England; it had substantially different powers and some major limitations, such as a lack of a fixed procedure, schedule, or meeting place.^[25] The witan could seek to prevent autocracy and carry on government during interregnums, but ultimately the witenagemot answered to the king. It only assembled when he summoned it.^{[citation needed]}

Though no set date was ever in use, witenagemots met at least once a year, and commonly more often. There was no single seat of a witenagemot, it being held where the king was, who typically had no single fixed court either. Witenagemots are known to have met in at least 116 locations, including

This arrangement ended after the

American Revolution

The "Saxon myth" claimed that the old Saxon witan originated in a representative assembly of English landholders. The claim was that the original assembly was then subsequently disbanded by the Norman invaders and later reappeared as the Parliament of England. This idea was held across the Thirteen Colonies in North America in the years prior to the American Revolution (1776–1783). Among the believers were Americans including Thomas Jefferson and Jonathan Mayhew.^[28]

See also

• Councils of Clovesho
• Elective monarchy
• Kurultai
• Loya Jirga, a similar concept from Afghanistan
• Majlis
• Panchayati Raj
• Thing (assembly)
• Oyomesi

Notes

References

Bibliography

• Chadwick, H. M. (1905). Studies on Anglo-Saxon Institutions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Garmonsway, George Norman, ed. (1954). The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (2nd ed.). London.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Gomme, George Laurence (1880). Primitive Folkmoots; or, Open-Air Assemblies in Britain (PDF). London: William Clowes and Sons, Ltd. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022.
• Hindley, Geoffrey (2006). A Brief History of the Anglo-Saxons. London: Robinson.
• Hodgkin, Thomas, The History of England from the Earliest Times to the Norman Conquest (New York, 1906; repr. New York 1969)
• Hollister, C. Warren. The Making of England, 55 B.C. to 1399 (7th ed. 1995) ch 3
• Lapidge, Michael; et al., eds. (2001). The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England. Wiley.
  ISBN 9-780-63122-492-1
  .
• ISBN 978-1-78076-600-3
  .
• Liebermann, Felix (1961) [1913]. The National Assembly in the Anglo-Saxon Period.
• Maddicott, J. R. (2010). The Origins of the English Parliament. Oxford University Press.
• Robertson, Agnes, ed. (1956). Anglo-Saxon Charters (2nd ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
  OCLC 504288415
  .
• Sturdy, David (1995). Alfred the Great. Constable. p. 124.
• Thorpe, Benjamin (2012) [1840]. Ancient Laws and Institutes of England: Comprising Laws Enacted Under the Anglo-Saxon Kings from Æthelbirht to Cnut, with an English Translation of the Saxon; the Laws Called Edward the Confessor's; the Laws of William the Conqueror, and Those Ascribed to Henry the First. G. E. Eyre and A. Spottiswoode, printers to the Queen's Most Excellent Majesty. p. 317.
• Whitelock, Dorothy, Review of The Witenagemot in the Reign of Edward the Confessor by Tryggvi J. Oleson, The English Historical Review 71 (1956): 640–42.
• Wormald, Patrick (1999). The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century. Oxford: Blackwell.
  ISBN 0-631-13496-4
  .

Further reading

• ISBN 9781487581817
  .
• Roach, Levi (2013). Kingship and Consent in Anglo-Saxon England, 871–978: Assemblies and the State in the Early Middle Ages. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
  ISBN 9-781-10703-653-6
  .