284 Wisco7isin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



BANKS AND CLASSES AMONG THE ANGLO-SAX- 

 ONS. 



BY W. F. ALLEN, A. M., 

 ProfesBor of Latin and History in the University of Wisconsin. 



[Only that portion of this paper Is here printed, which treats of the Eorls.] 



Tne accepted doctrine as to the original classification among 

 the Anglo-Saxons, is that the entire population fell into two 

 distinct classes, eorls and ceorls, terms which have been cor- 

 rupted into the modern earl and churl, but which originally 

 implied nothing more than a certain ill-defined hereditary dis- 

 tinction in rank, hardly so strong as that of noble and freeman. 

 This view, which is held by Lingard, Palgrave, Kemble, Hai- 

 1am and Stubbs, is nowhere better expressed than by Mr. Free- 

 man.' "In the primary meaning of the words, eorl and ceorl — 

 words whose happy jingle causes them to be constantly op- 

 posed to each other — form an exhaustive division of the free 

 members of the state. The distinction in modern language i& 

 most nearly expressed by the words Gentle and Simple. The 

 ceorl is the simple freeman, the mere unit in the army and the 

 assembly, whom no distinction of birth or office marks out 

 from his fellows." This is, as I have said, the prevailing view 

 at present ; and, so lar as the word ceorl is concerned, there is 

 no question as to its correctness; but with regard to eorl, lam 

 inclined to go back to the earlier opinion, held by Thorpe * and 

 Lappenberg, ^ and to take the ground that it never designates 



' Norman Conquest, i. p. 37. 



s Glossary to "Ancient Laws and Institutes of England.''' 



' Vol. ii. p. 313. — Compare also Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, i. p. 76. 

 Wailz remarks, as a matter of course, that the Anglo-Saxons, like the Franks, had no 

 hereditary nobility. To explain this departure from the prevailing institutions of the 

 Germanicnstiong.we must consider, in the first place, that the German nobility was 



