Gone Medieval - The Witan: England's First Parliament?

Episode Date: April 26, 2024

Athelstan, grandson of Alfred the Great, was a great king who united what was once a collection of petty Anglo-Saxon kingdoms into one vast English domains. Having brought together rival polities with a history of fractious relations into a unified whole, Athelstan needed to centralise government if he was going to keep the crown on his head and hold England together. Anglo-Saxon rulers had often consulted their senior nobles and clergy in councils. With Athelstan’s rule came the emergence of a national form of this council, the Witan, an early precursor to Parliament, and one of the first forms of English government.In this episode of Gone Medieval - the final part of our mini-series on the kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England - Matt Lewis talks to Dr. Levi Roach about the Witan, and whether it can be considered to be the first form of English governance. This episode was edited by Ella Blaxill and produced by Rob Weinberg.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code MEDIEVAL - sign up here.You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Athelstan, grandson of Alfred the Great, and arguably the first king of England, was a great ruler. His reign united what were once a collection of petty Anglo-Saxon kingdoms into one vast English domain, laying the foundations of one of medieval Europe's greatest nations. It was a stunning achievement, but perhaps not his most long-lasting. Having brought together rival polities with a history of fractious relations into a unified whole, Atholstan needed to bring unity to what were otherwise separate tribes and distinct groups of people.

He needed to centralise government and be practical if he was going to keep the crown on his head and hold England together. Anglo-Saxon rulers had often consulted. their senior nobles and clergy in councils. With Atholstan's rule over all of England, came the emergence of a national form of this council, the Wittan. An early precursor to Parliament and one of the first forms of English government, the body had some surprising powers. Welcome to Gone Medieval.

I'm Matt Lewis, and in this the final part of our mini-series on the kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England, we wanted to find out more about how, Anglo-Saxon government worked. So in this episode, we're talking about the WITAN and whether it can be considered to be the first form of English governance. The Wittan was symbolic for many reasons. It marked the very beginnings of an English national identity. It was an early example of the centralisation of power and a sure way for a monarch to illustrate their authority as a unique an all-powerful leader.

But in literature and legend, understanding the Wittan can be difficult. So we're going to get to the bottom of this instrumental Anglo-Saxon institution and uncover how and why it was created, which illustrious characters were part of it, what powers did its members actually have,

and what influence did they hold over the monarchy? How much does the Wittan really compare with the modern Parliament in the UK today. And what happened to it? To answer these questions, I'm joined by Dr. Levi Roach. Levi is deputy head of archaeology and history at the University of Exeter and has written books which include kingship and consent in Anglo-Saxon England,

a biography of Ethel Red the Unready, and forgery and memory at the end of the first millennium, as well as a history of the Normans entitled Empire of the Normans. Levi's also been here before talking about Ethelred the Unready, about becoming an Anglo-Saxon king, and most recently about Harold Godwinson. So welcome back to Gone Medieval Levi. It's great to be back. Thank you for having me. I think this is the first time we've ever spoken, so I think you've got the hat trick of Gone Medieval hosts,

which not many people can say. You spoke to Kat a couple of times, to Eleanor once, and now me, so that's a full set for you. Excellent, yes. No, I await my prize, though perhaps it's just simply the joy of chatting to you all. Absolutely. To start us off with, then, on the Anglo-Saxon Wittan, what is the Wittan? So Witton simply is the old English for literally wise men, so in plural. But it's probably most idiomatically translated into modern English as counsellors. So it's counsellors or advisors.

So when we speak of the Witton, we're typically speaking of those around the monarch, but there's always a danger that when we use it in modern English, we immediately think of it as an institution. when it's really at least in origin more of a practice. There's some hints by the very late Anglo-Saxon period that occasionally people use that kind of as a proper noun, our sense of though it on, but typically it means rather more elastically

the people around a monarch advising them, crucially made up of the kingdom's leading magnates, the kind of people, bishops, a alderman, that is obviously the Anglo-Saxon of later earls, those kinds of figures by the later period, sheriffs, the Shire Reeves, people like that, who the king would wish, to get the advice of, but crucially also wish to get on board with anything he's trying to do.

It's really interesting that we shouldn't think about the Wittan as an institution. I guess there's a danger of comparing it to what comes later with Parliament in which we're talking very much about an institution, a body. It's interesting that with the Wittam, we're not talking about a formalised institution. We're actually talking about a group of people. Yes, exactly. And it's really more a group of practices. So the closest analogy with Parliament will be maybe in terms of later or middle ages in its early days when people like to emphasize that Parliament is an event, not an institution. That kind of thing. It's not that it isn't important. And I think it starts taking on some institutional attributes. But modern scholars have typically wanted constitutional clarity

in a very modern sense, in a kind of sense where modern states where we have separation of powers, and it's clear what Parliament can do and can't do and what the courts can and can't do. And we're a long, long way away from that, rather we're in a situation where kings want to get certain things done. to get certain things done they need people to support them. To get that support, they need to chat to those people. And crucially, they also need to draw on their own knowledge and their own input in terms of those kinds of things. So it's really a vehicle, I think, above all, for getting things done through debate and discussion, as in later medieval and modern parliaments. There are certainly some important analogies there. But it's also simply how you get things done when you don't have

a complex bureaucratic apparatus, when you don't have a standing army or a police force. People are only going do what you've asked them to do if they're willing to, if they can see the logic, even if they disagree with it, they've been argued down and know that everyone else is doing this and have come to some kind of accommodation with the decision. And something I've always wondered, is there a difference between the names or the words Wittendenatheumot and Witton? So, Wittainer Yamot, in Old English just literally means the meeting of the Witton, so the meeting of the wise men. And again, it's something that in origin simply can refer to any meeting of anybody who might be deemed wise men or counsellors. And we do have Witton used in that same plural sense by other leading

magnates. So it's not only the king, but an A alderman might have people he referred to as his Witton, his advisers. So it can be used for all sorts of gatherings of advisors. But it is also then crucially, because Witton is the standard term for the royal advisors, becomes the standard term for what we might call a royal assembly, or indeed in a later period would indeed call Parliament. And certainly, again, by the late 10th, early 11th centuries, we start seeing hints of institutionalisation here. If you have a chronicle referring to a Wittina Yomot in the context of a monarch, everyone does know what that means. That means a big gathering that's happening, you know, maybe three to five times a year, dealing with important affairs of state or something like that.

So it is moving very slowly in that direction of what we're thinking of as being parliament in terms of that. But the crucial thing is the Witton or the people. The Wittana Yomte is the gathering of those people. And when does the Witten begin to emerge as, a national council. It sounds like it's something that was sort of around nobleman's courts and things like that as well. When do we see it becoming slightly more formalized than a national council? So the real movements towards formalisation start really in the 10th century classically. But the important thing, as you allude to there, is that this is kind of a set of practices they've always done. So from the very earliest Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, kings have met with people to get them on board

and get things done. So it's not a kind of massive innovation. But where we start seeing interesting developments particularly is those years in the early 10th century when the Anglo-Saxon kingdom has been expanding rapidly. And this is something you may have been covering on earlier episodes, but where we've seen Wessex go from one of about four or five big kingdoms to then controlling mercy and about half of what we now call England to then the same dynasty controlling just about all of what we now call England. And so their domains have over the course of about three generations increased in size three to fourfold. And one of the real challenge is that then is how do you rule this? And it's in that light that we typically understand these assemblies

becoming more prominent in our sources. They're already there earlier. Alfred the Great absolutely is calling as we're done and talking to them. But once we get to the reign of Athelstan, so 924 to 939, that's when we start really seeing these bulking notably larger in the sources. And that almost certainly stands in relationship with the fact that Athelstans the first king to then be ruling the north, particularly north of the Humber. And also only really the second to rule all of the Midlands in East Anglia. And so when you've got this much larger domain, establishing a degree of consensus and agreement on political issues obviously becomes much trickier than it was before. And so some of what previously wouldn't necessarily have to have been done at these gatherings

might have been able to be done by messenger ad hoc chats to this person than that person when you're in a quite small face-to-face kingdom suddenly does need, I think, a more formalised framework. And that's why under Athelstone we start seeing evidence of regular really large assemblies that involve not only those from Wessex, though they are the largest group, but also significant numbers of people from the Midlands, from East Anglia and the North. And this is when three kind of to four or five times a year, Applestand's getting everyone together to make sure everyone's moving in the same direction, everyone's agreeing on certain principles. And as these kind of assemblies evolve under Applestown and his successors, we see alongside them evolving a more

formalized apparatus of government. So the evolution of shires, that is modern, counties being developed and universalized. This is something that has existed already in Wessex. The rulers are now trying to decide how to rule these new domains. And so we start seeing shires emerging, eventually Shire Reeves, and we're seeing those. So all that's kind of part of these same processes of formalization. You've won this big kingdom. Great. Now how are you going to rule it? And how are you going to try to bring some kind of unity to it? Because they've been entirely distinct peoples with their own histories, their own traditions of rule. So that's why I think these assemblies are becoming really much more important and often being seen now as being more

classically national in that sense. And of course, the crucial thing here is what the nation is has itself changed. It's no longer a people of the West Saxons, relatively small grouping in the South. It's now a kingdom of the English, purporting at least to rule all of the English, and therefore these assemblies needing to reflect that scale. And I guess for Atholstan, there's a sense there that taking the Witton to a national stage feels natural in that it's a form of Anglo-Saxon way of doing things that's been around for quite a while. All of those individual kingdoms will have been familiar with the principle of the Wittan, so it makes sense to transfer that to the national stage. But it also feels like it brings challenges for Athelstan in particular.

Because he's trying to impose this overlordship over the whole of England, the fact that he's calling people to him kind of reinforces their subservience to him and it seems to create a bit of resistance, I think. Yeah. So as you say, it is kind of playing a twin rule there. On the one hand, this is the way everyone's done things and all there's constituent kingdom. So nobody's surprised that he should be doing this. That's what they expect. And it's a good way for him to kind of show himself, but also responding to queries and requests from these other regions. So on the one hand, it's a natural continuation. But on the other hand, it is also a real stage for him to show, because although this is a practice that exists for a long time, it hasn't covered

this entire kingdom. These are not people who previously been at the same assemblies. So you are suddenly seeing Scandinavian speaking figures from the Dane law. You suddenly are seeing the Welsh monarchs over whom he claims a loose overlordship. They're not there all the time, but they are there some of the time, crucially. And so this also is becoming a stage for him, on the one hand, to yes, show a degree of conciliation to listen to these people, but at the same time, it is underlining who's calling the shots here ultimately. And one of the things that is striking in that respect is that Athelstan, and this is true for his successors as well, holds almost all of his assemblies south of the Thames. So he may be getting people from the whole kingdom,

to come and chat to him, but they're doing so very much on his turf. And that, I imagine, symbolically, would have been also quite the statement in many respects, because they're having to come quite long distances to areas which are his traditional familial heartlands. And the only real exceptions for this, the only assemblies we know of in other regions in his reign, happen in the Midlands, and that's when he's marching north to fight the Scottish king. And the crucial and the fascinating thing is, in fact, then the assembly he holds when coming back down south,

is the first and only time the ruler of Alba, the later kingdom of Scotland, ever appears as well. So what we actually nicely get is he's on his way north and the Welsh monarchs are with him. In that case, he's almost certainly taking them on campaign to again kind of show off his power, perhaps also protect his Western frontier with Wales. But then when he comes back,

not only does he have the Welsh kings, but he has the rulers of Straff Clyde and of Alba with him too. I feel like I could make a very Midlands complaint about everything happening, say, through the Thames for the last 1,500 years, but I'll probably stay away from that. who would typically sit on a gathering of the Wittan? And could we start to think of it as it develops as anything like a standing body,

or is it really just summoned ad hoc when it's required? I think it always retains a somewhat ad hoc nature. So there's a kind of a periphery to it that will vary, depending upon where these are held, because although they're largely in the South, not universally, and where in the South can vary. So when you're thinking of the lower level people attending who might not get much of a say anyway

or be there mostly for the show, they would vary a lot more, even at the level of Shire Reeves, you might get significant variations of attendance, the figures known as the Thanes, they're the followers of the monarch, but potentially also of the other major magnates there. Those will depend a lot more on where it's being held, what it's talking about. But at the upper echelons, we get a lot more consistency. So leading a alderman, later earls, are a regular feature. Now, not universal. Some of them will not be there some of the time, and that may well be due to illness, other things going on. Occasionally it's probably due to our records themselves because we know these things from the witness list to chargers. We know those lists aren't exhaustive. They're not trying to list everyone there and they're biased towards the upper echelons. But we can track it, the very highest level a alderman, we can be pretty confident. Are there almost all the time? We can see it in the witness lists. And when they're not, they probably genuinely aren't there. And the same is two of things like archbishops.

If an archbishop is present, you note their presence. And they are there the vast majority of time, particularly the archbishops of Canterbury. The thing we do notice from very early on and remains the case all the way up to 1066 is there is a distinct southern bias, unsurprising given where they're meeting. So although I've said that all these magnets are coming down from Mercy of the Midlands and the North, and they are, proportionately we're getting fewer of the upper echelon. So leading A alderman and earls from the Midlands and from the North attended a lower rate than those from the South, even when we have reason to believe they're of similar stature.

It's notable that, for example, Archbishops of York attend less frequently than Canterbury. So there's a definite bit of a skew there, but at the same time there's a sense of elderman, I think we can be confident, all of them are invited, and most of them are coming most of the time. Archbishops, ditto, bishops, the majority as well, but not necessarily exhaustive. So it sounds like the composition could change around those fringes, as you said, depending on where it's meeting, but perhaps also what it's discussing. Yes, and there it's hard to pin these things down entirely because often we have a witness list but don't necessarily know what it's discussing. So typically the witnesses come from the charters that are being issued, land transactions. But those aren't normally going to be the main business. I mean, every now and then, if it's a massive grant, maybe. But those are more the ancillary business, the lower level items on the agenda, one suspect, whereas the bigger things will be decisions about war, peace, decisions about lawmaking, for example. And we have royal ordinances issued, but they don't have witness lists. And they, or almost never dated at least by year.

They typically tell us where they're issued, but not always. So it's very, very rare. We have in Ethelred's reign one example of what seems to be a law code issued from an actual assembly attested by a witness list. But typically we get just as far as records. We've got witness lists from various assemblies, but no law codes typically. And then law codes from other ones,

but not always with the charters that they may have produced surviving. So we're kind of having to triangulate. But one does suspect that the business is dictating it certainly somewhat, and we notice this certainly in transactions as well that transactions for certain regions are held in certain regions. There's a bias towards more people from the region where the transaction is happening,

but also for where the land is or like being granted is based to be included in the witness list. And that's probably suggesting also a little bit more that that's maybe why they've shown up or they've ensured that. So it's a bit of guesswork there in terms of the business, but I think there's enough to be fairly confident that that will have some influence.

And then the other factor is the act just crucial. where it is, and particularly lower-level aristocrats, your Thanes and things like that, it's just that much easier. And they're unlikely to be the ones really calling the shots. So the appeal, if you're going to be not really a decision-maker, mostly maybe just approving it or there for the fun to attend, is much greater if it's nearby you than if it's a long distance away. Whereas if you are a leading an alderman, if you are a bishop or somebody like that who reckons you can have a real say in what's going to be decided, then I think there's a lot more poll. And what kind of authority or power did the Wittan have or not? I mean, is it there to support

the monarch in what he's going to do anyway? Is it there to advise? Or can it help drive policy at all? I think it absolutely can help drive policy. And this is where, again, I think sort of modern constitutional understandings of these distinctions don't always help us. And that's, as I say, where I like to think about as monarch's trying to get things done, because it's not as if he can have a Witton, they decide something. And then everyone who hasn't attended, it has to apply this and somebody's going to be looking over their shoulders. I mean, there might be a bit of social pressure to then stick with certain crucial decisions above all about war or otherwise. But fundamentally, it's a vehicle for monarchs to get people to agree to be doing what they want

to be doing or to respond to what their problems are and to show himself dispensing justice or things like that. So in that sense, it doesn't have obviously defined parameters in terms of that, in terms of defined powers constitutionally, because there aren't other bodies that's competing with there. It's much more a case of kings and or those. around them wanting to get things done, and this is the audience in which you can get more people on board than simply yourself. But crucial things that we do know they are very actively involved with, or decisions about war and things like that. So going to war, raising an army. An army itself, because of its composition, is often a kind of de facto wit on as well, because it's got

most of the leading magnates. There can be a bit of an overlap there. Other areas where there's hints, at least of some understanding, at least of what we might now call competencies, is royal ordinances where we have any evidence for how they're being promulgated, always mention advice, often talk about some kind of assembly and process with that. And doubtless there may be someone as an element of this rubber stamping what the king wants to say. But again, if he wants the people to apply these ordinances, actually, he's had to have taken on board some of what they want to be in there. I think, I don't know that monarchs might sometimes have tried to push things through there, but it actually would have been counterproductive for the most part. It was a vehicle

for them rather than a constraint on them. But crucially, lawmaking is something that is mentioned a lot. High-level decisions about justice more widely. It's kind of a highest court of appeal, if you will, the final place you can bring a case or a problem. The other thing is, crucially, the suing of charters. These all royal charges in this period have detailed witnessless, and they're all actually really quite long. And this seems to be a somewhat uniquely English tradition that chargers have to be issued at assemblies, that that is the correct forum for them to be issued. So monarchs may well have decided to make these transactions in the intervening months, but at least crucially in terms of when they're enacted and legally enacted, this happens at assemblies.

And this is partly due to the traditions of tenure and what's known as bookland tenure. There's big debates about that we probably can shell for today. But it does seem to be that there's a well-established idea that a monarch cannot just himself decide on the status of land, but that does have to be, to some extent, a collective decision with his advisors. I guess one of the most famous and perhaps most significant powers of a Wittan is a role in the election of the monarch. So there is this idea that they come together and when a monarch dies, you know, there isn't primogeniture automatic succession kind of thing, that the Wittan will gather an elect a monarch. How significant in Anglo-Saxon political life was that role for the Wittan? Election certainly is a quite important feature of what the Witton does.

And I should say in terms of this, this isn't a kind of example of English accent. But it's something that's very common in the early Middle Ages, full stop, because we're dealing across Europe with a period where there aren't yet firm rules of succession. And so crucially, to become monarch, you need to have the support of the kingdom's leading back days. And again, that goes back to fact that fundamentally they won't do what you're requesting them to do anyway if you don't have that. And so this is the forum where that's created. And so when a monarch dies, it is then the Witton's job, as it were to decide who will be the next monarch. Quite frequently, it's clear who that will be. And above all, in the Angles, it's Saxon period, this is actually typically younger brothers of the previous monarch. There's actually a preference for fraternal succession over father-son succession. So where there's a younger brother or half-brother available, it's almost always them and almost always then in order of age, in any siblings or half-siblings. And we can often see this almost being lined up because those people, if they're testing their elder brothers' chargers, are typically doing so above any other affilings, as they're called, that is, I. The prince's throne-worthy individuals.

So quite often it's fairly clear who this should be. And so when, for example, Aethelstan dies in 939, Edmund has clearly been lined up for some time. There doesn't seem to be any dispute over this. But because there aren't firm rules, there is a bit of wiggle room. And above all, when the throne goes between generations, quite frequently there are succession disputes, indeed more often than not. So Aftelstan himself had to fight against a half-brother to get the crown in 9-2-4.

so Athelstan is not the only candidate, clearly. And we see this later, again, with Ayadwe and Edgar, or with Ethelred and Edward the morator. So typically when it's a half-brother, you might say it's more rubber stamping. Everyone knows this was going to be the case. And probably most people want that person, actually. They've been introduced to politics. They've already been at these events.

You don't want a useless monarch. Nobody actually wants that. But when it's skipping a generation, actually, someone much younger, there's suddenly a lot of question, actually. It's not always clear. There's not always a consensus. And then not infrequently, we do get the wit on playing a rule, but it's not always even then simply the whiton decides. The fact there's disputes suggest that there's often divisions within this group. So again, in that sense, maybe not like a modern parliament where you can kind of shut them off and whoever gets the votes wins. There isn't always the loser's consent that we presume in a modern political system. But it still crucially is that gathering. And each people, if you're trying to create a candidature, what you do is you call together all your backers and they'll hold an event that you will. at least call and claim is a national assembly, a meeting of this Wittan to endorse your candidacy. And that, crucy does become before consecration, before coronation. And although coronation exists now as a ritual and is of growing importance, it isn't, you know, in a modern sense, constitutive.

So monarchs do issue charters before they've been crowned. There's often no real hurry. That's something that starts really with the Norman conquest and the conquerors need to legitimize himself. up to that point, you're monarch when you have the consent of the kingdom's leading magnates, and you'll be crowned at some point in the indefinite future, often six to nine months hence. But that's a kind of icing on the cake. And it's striking that we still, as part of a coronation ceremony, we saw it with Charles III's coronation ceremony last year.

There is still that elective element at the start. There is still this nod to the idea that those gathered within Westminster Abbey to witness it have some form of power to elect the monarch there. We still see the very first part of the coronation ceremony is this idea that they have to be presented into the four corners of the abbey and approved by the audience. It's sort of a strange hangover, I guess, from that system.

Yes, as you say, it is a kind of a bit of a relic of that. And I think it is also nicely representative, though, of a very medieval understanding of these things, which was, from a kind of early medieval standpoint, election and hereditary succession and inheritance are not necessarily diametrically opposed principles. That in a context where again there isn't complete legal clarity, ideally, at a kind of ideological level, these are meant to go together. Both are mentioned in the coronation literature. What you actually want is a monarch who succeeds by right of blood and by the consent

of the people. That's the kind of perfect one, harmony. That's the way it's really meant to be is, and then they get divine grace with the coronation, and then you've got all three elements. you've got ruling by God's grace, by the consent of the people, and by hereditary succession. And what kind of government do you think this idea of election and the existence of the Wittan makes for it? It feels like it ought to create something quite collegiate and collaborative, where the leader is required to bring the elite along with them for the most part. I guess where we see this enduring longest is probably the Holy Roman Empire, where it quite often seems to have the opposite effect.

There is so much division and uncertainty in the Holy Roman Empire so often. was this a good form of government or not? I think inevitably it cuts both ways. Its flexibility was a strength even more flexible than our modern parliament in England, but that's also classically often seen to be an advantage of not having a written constitution, is that it can evolve as it needs to. It can be agile, it's all of those things. And it is kind of fundamentally ruled by the consent of the leading magnates,

crucially those being the ones. There's a kind of almost element of oligarchy working with monarchy here. And I think when the going is good, and particularly when Wessex is expanding, although there certainly are disagreements, it's not too hard to get people pulling together because nothing succeeds like success, everyone wants a bit of that. The problem comes when things start going wrong,

and this kind of rule inevitably then also contend towards factionalism, so that's kind of your classic, perhaps, Holy Roman Empire example, but medieval polities more generally, these kinds of fora work well when there is a clear goal or when you are succeeding politically or when occasionally there's a big external threat and you just simply have to cooperate. But the middle ground,

of where things aren't going great, can breed a lot of division. And fundamentally, because, again, we're dealing with no standing armies, limited still governmental apparatus, perhaps more involved in England than much of the rest of Europe, but still fairly limited ultimately. You have to get people on board to rule them. But if the people can't agree with one another, that can be fundamentally problematic. And it's, I think, something that probably most of us have experienced in our working lives, in other kinds of organizations where we have to work closely with people,

that most people most of the time when they have to are willing to be reasonable, but not all people all of the time. And that's when the problems start. Yeah. You mentioned a little bit as well that we know the Wittan discusses lots of important issues, but that determining who is there is quite often this case of triangulating charter evidence and things like that. Do we have good sources that show us the Wittan at work, or are we missing all of those because so much of what it did is verbal and not recorded, I guess? Yeah, we don't have a lot, not nearly as much as we'd like. So we have a few descriptions of these events and narrative sources, but we don't have a lot of narrative history for England before the conquest.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is very sparse. It'll just tell you that a gathering was held. And it ignores most of these, because it assumes that you know they're going on. So it's just not a matter of interest. So, for example, a really important event council, but clearly also Witton is held by Ethelred in Pentecost 9-3, which we can see is a huge change of direction in his reign, not mentioned in a single word in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. And that's not unusual. Lots of big events aren't by the Chronicle. So, you know, it'll mention coronations, things like that, which will also be meetings of the way time. But day-to-day stuff kind of falls under its radar.

We have a few hagiographical accounts of these things, and it's always ones that talk about the actual issuing of chargers and things like that, but none that give us the whole gamut of business. Probably our best sources are what are traditionally called the law codes, what I prefer to kind of call royal ordinances or the ordinances, because that's what they're actually called in the old English as decrees or ordinances. But these are these kind of legal style stipulations that emerge. of these deliberations are produced in the vernacular at these events. But interestingly, we have in those often hints of things where monarchs are talking about changing their minds on things. So Athelstan decides that he's going to move the age of which convicted thieves can be killed from 12 up to 15 in his magnanimity. But that's clearly something that he's brought in. He's wanted to be a hardliner. It's not worked actually or people flagged their problems and he's adjusted.

But interestingly enough, we have a lot of satellite texts around these royal ordinances, which show how they're being received in localities. So sometimes bits of these being incorporated into local compilations and also we have some local responses. And our biggest density of evidence actually here comes from Athelstan's reign, which is, again, suggestive of something, a kind of step change then. But we have it then from then on running through most of the later Anglo-Saxon period. And what this does allow us some insight into then is how monarchs are convening people together

and making decisions, but also then sending them out. And there are instructions that these should then be read out by the people attending in their more local assemblies. the crucial thing is there's actually a web of these gatherings, that, you know, the meetings of the Wittons stand at the center, royal assemblies, but then there are gatherings at the Shire level, and then at the hundred level beneath that. And so there are clear instructions in these saying, please have these declined. And then we have these responses intended for the court, some of them explicitly written to the king that travel alongside those ordinances that are clearly local groups saying, hey, love your detail on this, what about that, could we adjust this and so on? And some of these also then having addenda that mentioned. other assemblies. And some of our ones also mentioned assemblies. For example, in Athelstan's reign, we have two that emanate from big assemblies at Greatly and at Exeter. But they also reference decisions made in an assembly at Thunderfield that may have issued ordinances that don't survive or may not have. It may just have been done orally. But those Thunderfield decisions are also

then mentioned in some of these local texts. So they do provide us a nice little picture of actually really responsive government, of communications going back and forth, of things being flagged up for deliberation and sometimes being then responded to. And so I'd say those are probably our best evidence of like the real working business, because those are actually texts that are being sent out, evidence of text being sent back through. But what we have is a fraction of what they would ones are being. It's interesting, even as government is becoming more centralized and the kingdom is becoming more united, there still seems to be this web of effective devolution that goes down through the layers so that these decisions are being issued, but there is a mechanism to come back

and ask for local considerations to affect more national policies, maybe. Yes, you know, fundamentally, I think medieval even into early modern government, self-government at the King's Command. Now, the crucial thing is, by the later English Act, the King's Command is starting to bulk larger, and it would be a feature of English government thereafter. But still fundamentally, if you're living in rural Devon, on a daily basis, kings don't have a lot to do with you, and when they do, it's going to be when they're responding to things you want to, or bringing in new laws that conform with what you want to be doing anyway. In these kind of codes, a lot of it's combating, for example,

things like that, which is a perennial problem for medieval law, but it's something that most people will be on board with. And it's quite clear that a lot of this is responsive, that, you know, Athelstans really worry about it himself. But one of the reasons, almost certainly is people are saying to him, hey, this is a big problem. So when and why did the Wittan end in England? So I think the short version is it never does completely. So the Normans come in with William the Conqueror, Williams ruling sometimes from Normandy, but when he's in England, when he's trying to get things done, he still has to meet with people. They may now be more often than not Normans, but the structures of government continue.

and meetings of assemblies, kings' councils, as this one is starting to be called, Curia and things like that, continue to happen and continue to be important and shouldn't be underestimated in the early long period. But there's no doubt that the Norman Conquest does have, I think, some impact here and does, I think, reduce the importance of these events somewhat. And I think the reasons are probably threefold. I mean, one is that Williams coming from outside England, although he's acquainted with similar institutions in Normandy, so Norman Ducal Succession is decided by assemblies.

They have assemblies there. He obviously isn't knowledgeable, though, those kinds of things, and that's specifically English tradition. And there's other evidence of a kind of a break-off here. So issuing of royal ordinances stops. Indeed, it's actually already stopped. It hasn't happened under Edward the Confessor either. And of course, crucially, Edward the confessor,

is a half-Norman who's grown up in Norman Day. He may be Anglo-Saxon England's last hurrah, but he's also very much the first Norman monarch of England, too. And so I think some of this is already probably incipient there. The evidence that all of his charges are being issued at assemblies isn't as tidy as I'd like, frankly. He's not assuming law codes anymore that weed recognizes existing in that vernacular tradition. So I think they're already edging that way, but the conquer then kicks this into overdrive, because he's then coming and he's imposing a new elite. Imposing a new elite

that's more beholden to him, Anglo-Saxon monarchs previously have not made all of their leading magnates that at least they all have their own support bases, somewhat independent of the monarch, and indeed under Edward the Confessor, quite independent of him, the conquerors men are very much his men who owe their promotion to him. And he's ensured that the rich have got richer, but that the super rich actually are less rich. It's kind of weird balancing act of the top 10% get a lot more, but the top 1% actually have notably less than they ever did before, because he's distributing it more widely and quite cunningly. So all of that, I think, does break with some of those consensual traditions. And the ideas that emerge out of the unique events of the conquest, of the conqueror having given

these lands of claiming up to a nominal right, at least, to give out all lands in England and things like that, I think does undermine some of those fundamental principles. It doesn't ever get rid of them because he still does have important magnets. He still can't ignore them all the time, and so on. So principles of consensual rule absolutely do continue on, but there is a notable interruption, and probably it takes, you know, I'd argue up until about the reign of Henry the third, till we see a real return to this, which in a sense is in response to, for finally robust action against royal overreach. That one can probably chart, it's not a tiny increase,

but in a movement towards greater royal powers and elements of royal autocracy, starting to kind of emerge from the conquer onwards, that become more notable under the Plantagenet rulers, the early Plantagenets. And then actually they fundamentally end up overreaching under John, above all else, perhaps infamously, which then leads to kind of a restoration, but in a much more legalized guise, but are still the kinds of fundamental principles, actually, that long underpinned English government.

So that would be my simplified version is I think it never completely dies, actually. I do think there's a continuous history, as people like John Maddoch up now argued, between the early medieval Witton and the later medieval parliament. But at the same time, I don't think we want to call it a proto-parliament. It's a long and winding path. It's not an inevitable one. And it certainly takes a few steps back in the years and indeed, kind of century and a half following the Norman conquest.

And allowing for that journey and that distinction between the Wittan and Parliament, can we think of Parliament as in some ways a legacy of the Wittan or the formalisation of the Wittan? I think we can because ultimately it emerges out of the need and what ends up being an existential need under later years of John and then early years of Henry III to formalise and secure consent of those being ruled. And so it's in a sense trying to acknowledge and find the appropriate forum and then find in a much more legalized era a way of framing this and what its rights should be and how these kinds of should be defined. But yes, I do think fundamentally the principles right up to now the modern day of Parliament are that we have a government that is responsive to our wishes and that if we do not like what it's doing, that we have a kind of form of response. I think the one crucial difference, perhaps, although there would have been an idealized sense that magnet should represent the locality in the Anglo-Saxon period, there is no pretense that this is in any way democratic. So it is, I think, in a qualified sense, representative government, but it isn't democratic representative government. And it's not attempting to be that any more than the late medieval parliaments are trying to be either. So in that sense, it shares a lot with late medieval parliaments, but only a bit with the parliaments that we know and love or hate. I always find it interesting that Parliament has kind of over the centuries since it began in Henry the 3rd's reign, almost reacquired that Wittan style power to have a say in the monarch to be the vehicle through which the monarch is approved and elected. It's the vehicle for legal legitimacy for a monarch by the 15th century. And even today, in a constitutional monarchy, it's parliament that essentially has that say. And it's almost like that's, I don't want to say it's a conscious effort to return to what the Wittan used to do, but it feels quite similar to me. Yeah, I think there is a lot of similarity. I think the crucial difference, of course, is that Parliament is sovereign, and that being enshrined in law. Now, what that means, I think an early medieval observer, which simply wouldn't have understood if you'd said that, and they wouldn't have said, no, the sovereign, sovereign, don't be daft, it would just be a bizarre question. And so one of the things they've not worked out in the Anglo-Saxon period, that there's hints of some of the tensions that we see again later under John famously. They've not yet worked out what you do when kings are at odds with their magnets. But fundamentally, actually, the political system only works when monarchs are capable. of getting on board most magnates. And so in the long term, there's significant incentives,

both for monarchs and for magnates, to kind of find a working middle ground because they kind of need this to get things done. And so I think that's the crucial difference is it's not the case that if a prime minister or anybody else were to, you know, instruct something to be done in Devon, it wouldn't actually happen. In Exeter's Day, that it wouldn't actually happen if Ben Bradshaw didn't approve it or it wasn't happy to represent it. It would happen anyway, that things he's voted against the parliament still get implemented. But actually there is a sense with the Wittan of it be much more if you're the local a alderman. You can sometimes not do stuff. I mean, really serious stuff will get you perhaps into serious trouble, but low-level stuff. It's very easy to drag

your feet and just not do something that people are asking you to do in a medieval context. And so I think that's the kind of crucial difference there is the Witton is actually trying and say, well, if I want this to be done, I need to make sure that the medieval equivalents of the Ben Bradshaw or so will actually do it in Exeter. Otherwise, it just won't happen in Exeter. I was going to ask you for a last question whether you think the Wittan was a good thing. And I was going to say, is it a shame that we sort of seem to have lost it in 1066? So you clearly pointed out now that we didn't really lose it in 1066, that it's always lingered around there.

But do you think in this Anglo-Saxon 10th century incarnation, was the Wittan a good way of doing things? I think the short answer has to be yes, but I'm not sure there would have been any other way of doing things. So in terms of that, I'm not sure there was an obvious alternative. And I think we do want to be guarded about kind of looking back with too much rose-tinted glasses. The Victorians love to see this as a proto-democratic institution, the birth of great British Parliament. It's kind of there in an incipient form already.

You know, there we are already leading the world and Britannia ruling the waves. And it's not those kinds of things at all. It's a highly elite institution that's largely responding to the needs and interests of elite individuals is designed in part to do so. but it does underpin a principle of consensual government that most of us would agree is a good thing. I mean, I think in that context is also the only way to do things effectively, but is something that is better than the alternatives. And certainly when there were monarchs in the Anglo-Saxon period, as later under John, for example, who very much tried not to rule consensually, there were real consequences.

They were not very nice periods to be in, and there was real backlash. Fascinating. Well, thank you so much for joining us again today, Levi. I feel like I know the wit and better than I did before, which was my aim out of today. So thank you very, very much. Thank you for having me on. You can find Levi's previous episodes of Gone Medieval in our back catalogue, along with lots of other brilliant episodes. And you can also grab Levi's books, kingship and consent in Anglo-Saxon England,

Ethel read the unready, forgery and memory at the end of the first millennium, an empire of the Normans, wherever you get your books from. There are new episodes of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday. Friday, so please join us next time for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us wherever you get your podcasts from and to tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. If you get a moment, please do drop us a review or rate us anywhere that you listen to your podcasts. It really does help us to reach new listeners. Anyway, I'd better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis, and we've just gone medieval with history hits.