religious character of the war against the northmen gave a religious character to the sovereigns who waged it.  The king, if he was no longer sacred as the son of Woden, became yet more sacred as “the Lord’s Anointed.”  By the very fact of his consecration he was pledged to a religious rule, to justice, mercy, and good government; but his “hallowing” invested him also with a power drawn not from the will of man or the assent of his subjects but from the will of God, and treason against him became the worst of crimes.  Every reign lifted the sovereign higher in the social scale.  The bishop, once ranked equal with him in value of life, sank to the level of the ealdorman.  The ealdorman himself, once the hereditary ruler of a smaller state, became a mere delegate of the national king, with an authority curtailed in every shire by that of the royal shire-reeves, officers charged with levying the royal revenues and destined ultimately to absorb judicial authority.  Among the later nobility of the thegns personal service with such a lord was held not to degrade but to ennoble.  “Horse-thegn,” and “cup-thegn,” and “border,” the constable, butler, and treasurer, found themselves officers of state; and the developement of politics, the wider extension of home and foreign affairs were already transforming these royal officers into a standing council or ministry for the transaction of the ordinary administrative business and the reception of judicial appeals.  Such a ministry, composed of thegns or prelates nominated by the king, and constituting in itself a large part of the Witenagemot when that assembly was gathered for legislative purposes, drew the actual control of affairs more and more into the hands of the sovereign himself.

[Sidenote:  Growth of Feudalism]

But the king’s power was still a personal power.  He had to be everywhere and to see for himself that everything he willed was done.  The royal claims lay still far ahead of the real strength of the Crown.  There was a want of administrative machinery in actual connexion with the government, responsible to it, drawing its force directly from it, and working automatically in its name even in moments when the royal power was itself weak or wavering.  The Crown was strong under a king who was strong, whose personal action was felt everywhere throughout the realm, whose dread lay on every reeve and ealdorman.  But with a weak king the Crown was weak.  Ealdor-men, provincial witenagemots, local jurisdictions, ceased to move at the royal bidding the moment the direct royal pressure was loosened or removed.  Enfeebled as they were, the old provincial jealousies, the old tendency to severance and isolation lingered on and woke afresh when the crown fell to a nerveless ruler or to a child.  And at the moment we have reached the royal power and the national union it embodied had to battle with fresh tendencies towards national disintegration which sprang like itself from the struggle with the northman.