[Sidenote:  The Sheriff.]

[Sidenote:  Sheriff’s Tourn.]

We cannot pretend to say when the Sheriff came to be substituted in the place of the Ealdorman:  some authors think King Alfred the contriver of this regulation.  It might have arisen from the nature of the thing itself.  As several persons of consequence enough to obtain by their interest or power the place of alderman were not sufficiently qualified to perform the duty of the office, they contented themselves with the honorary part, and left the judicial province to their substitute.[59] The business of the robe to a rude martial people was contemptible and disgusting.  The thanes, in their private jurisdictions, had delegated their power of judging to their reeves, or stewards; and the earl, or alderman, who was in the shire what the thane was in his manor, for the same reasons officiated by his deputy, the shire-reeve.  This is the origin of the Sheriff’s Tourn, which decided in all affairs, civil and criminal, of whatever importance, and from which there lay no appeal but to the Witenagemote.  Now there scarce remains the shadow of a body formerly so great:  the judge being reduced almost wholly to a ministerial officer; and to the court there being left nothing more than the cognizance of pleas under forty shillings, unless by a particular writ or special commission.  But by what steps such a revolution came on it will be our business hereafter to inquire.

[Sidenote:  Witenagemote.]

The Witenagemote or Saxon Parliament, the supreme court, had authority over all the rest, not upon any principle of subordination, but because it was formed of all the rest.  In this assembly, which was held annually, and sometimes twice a year, sat the earls and bishops and greater thanes, with the other officers of the crown.[60] So far as we can judge by the style of the Saxon laws, none but the thanes, or nobility, were considered as necessary constituent parts of this assembly, at least whilst it acted deliberatively.  It is true that great numbers of all ranks of people attended its session, and gave by their attendance, and their approbation of what was done, a sanction to the laws; but when they consented to anything, it was rather in the way of acclamation than by the exercise of a deliberate voice, or a regular assent or negative.  This may be explained by considering the analogy of the inferior assemblies.  All persons, of whatever rank, attended at the county courts; but they did not go there as judges, they went to sue for justice,—­to be informed of their duty, and to be bound to the performance of it.  Thus all sorts of people attended at the Witenagemotes, not to make laws, but to attend at the promulgation of the laws;[61] as among so free a people every institution must have wanted much of its necessary authority, if not confirmed by the general approbation.  Lambard is of opinion that in these early times the commons sat, as they do at this day, by representation from shires and boroughs; and he supports his opinion by very plausible reasons.  A notion of this kind, so contrary to the simplicity of the Saxon ideas of government, and to the genius of that people, who held the arts and commerce in so much contempt, must be founded on such appearances as no other explanation can account for.