THE NORMAL KINGS.] ENGLAND fects of of institutions were developed out of the national assemblies, eprac- by no cause so much as by the growth of the practice of
- of summons. Wherever it becomes usual specially to summon
particular members of. an assembly, the first step is taken towards the exclusion of all who are not so specially summoned. In the great assembly at Salisbury, where all the landowners of England became the " men " of the king, we see the first germs of Lords and Commons. The Witan are distinguished from the " land-sitting men." By the Witan, so called long after the Conquest, we are doubtless to understand those great men of the realm who were usually summoned to every assembly. The vast multitude who came to do their homage to the king were summoned only for that particular occasion. The personal right of summons is the essence of the peerage. It is the distinctive mark round which all the other honours and privileges of the peer have grown. The earls and the bishops of England, by never losing their right to the personal summons, have kept that right to personal attendance in the national assembly which was once common to all freemen, but which mis other freemen have lost. The House of Lords represents dCom- by unbroken succession the Witan of the assembly of Dn8> Salisbury ; that is, it represents by unbroken succession the old assemblies of the Teutonic democracy. Never did any institution so utterly change its character. But the change has been the gradual result of circumstances, without any violent break. The " land-sitting men," on the other hand, not summoned personally or regularly, but summoned in a mass when their attendance was specially needed, gradually lost the right of personal attendance, till in the end they gained instead the more practical right of appearing by their representatives. Thus grew the Commons. The steps by which our national assemblies took their final shape do not begin till a later time. But it is important to notice that the first glimpse of something like Lords and Commons a distinction which doubtless already existed in practice, but which is nowhere before put into a formal shape dates from the last years of the Conqueror. te The practice of summons thus gave birth to our final "8 s parliamentary constitution. It gave birth also to avast
- "" number of administrative and judicial institutions, of which
we see traces before the Conquest, but which put on their definite shape under the Norman kings. The practice of summons produced the House of Lords. It produced also the curia reyis, the King s Court, out of which so many institutions grew. The King s Court is properly the national assembly itself ; but the name gradually came to be con fined to a kind of judicial and administrative committee of the assembly. Even before the Xorman Conquest, ve get a faint glimpse of a body of the king s immediute counsellors, bearing the name of the Theningmannagembt. Out of this body, to which was gradually attached the name of curia regis, grew, on the one side the Privy Council, and out of that the modern Cabinet, and on the other side the courts of law. The Cabinet, our most modern political institution, an institution so modern as to be unknown to the written law, is the last growth of the principle of summons. The Cabinet, the body to which in common use we have latterly come to give the name of Government, is simply a body of those privy councillors who are specially summoned. Those who are not summoned stay away. All the king s courts, administrative and judicial, grew in the same way. They were committees of the national assembly, which gradually grew into separate being and separate powers, as the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government parted off more distinctly from one another. Along with the practice of summons grew the importance of those who were most specially and habitually summoned, the great officers of the king s court and household. Soon after the Conquest these officers began to rise into an importance which they had never held before. They may Thegreat be divided into officers of state and officers of the house- ffict> re. hold. The notion that offices in the royal household were honourable is part of the general doctrine of the comitatus and its personal service, the doctrine out of which grew the nobility of the thegns. Some of these offices were simply old offices with new names. The staller became the con stable, the bowcr-thegn became the chamberlain, the steward kept his English name. Some of these posts became hereditary and almost honorary. In some cases, as in that of the chamberlain and the steward, a secondary office of the same name grew up. Of greater importance and interest are those officers into whose hands came the chief powers of government under the king. Nothing is so important under the Norman reigns as the exchequer. But The ez- the exchequer is simply an old institution with a new chequer, name, and the treasurer is simply an old officer with a new name. The king s hoard or treasury must always have had a keeper ; but the hoarder, under the Latin name of treasurer, grew into increased importance in times when the main object of government seemed to be to fill the king s hoard. The hoard or treasury got the playful name of exchequer, 1 and it grew into two departments of state, administrative and judicial. The treasurer himself grew into an officer of such power and dignity that, for a long time past, his office has been put into commission among several holders. And of these the chief has drawn in late years to himself more than the power, though without the dignity, of the old single-headed treasurer. The chancellor again is found by that title under Eadward the Confessor, and his office must have existed under some title as early as there was any settled government at all. But it is under the Norman kings that he gradually grew to great importance and dignity, an importance and dignity which have been more lasting in his case than in the case of any other of the great officials of those days. But the greatest dignitary of the Norman reigns, the justiciar, really seems to have been wholly new. The name is first given to the regents who represented William in his absence from England; and the office may well have grown up through the need which was felt for some such representative when the king visited his dominions beyond sea. The justiciar appears as the first in rank among the great officers of state; but while the chancellorship, remaining a single office, grew, the office of the justiciar was gradually divided among many holders. Among them all those, great and small, who administer justice in the king s name may claim to have a share. The modern judicial system of England begins, in some- The judl thing like its present shape, in the reign of Henry II. But cial sys- its growth is one of the direct results of the Norman Con- tem> quest. The older judicial system is essentially local and popular. The men of the township, of the hundred, of the shire, come together under their local chiefs. The highest judicial body of all, as well as the highest legislative body of all, the assembly of the nation, comes together under the chief of the nation, the king. At least as early as the reign of ^thelred we find examples of royal commissioners, like the missiof the Frankish emperors and kings, who are sent on the king s errand to the local courts. After the Conquest The this system grows, till in the end the local chiefs, the earl and |""g s the bishop, are wholly displaced by the king s judges. Thus ^ g ^ cc grew up the lawyers doctrine that the king is the fountain t he local of justice. But the popular element survived in the various judges, forms of the jury. It is idle to debate about the invention or introduction of trial by jury. The truth is that it never 1 The older names are fiscus and thesaurus. Scaccarium or ex chequer was the established name by the time of Henry II. It comes from the parti-coloured cloth with which the table was covered, which suggested the notion of a chess-board.
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