73 



WTTENAGEMOTE. 



WOAD. 



971 



which the mind voluntary imagines itself an actor in such super- 

 natural occurrences; the other would explain the utterance of con- 

 fessions of such acts by persons who, until they were subjected to 

 torture, never imagined their existence. The confessions made under 

 torture were, however, frequently revoked during moments of mental 

 and physical resuscitation. 



The influence on society of a belief in witchcraft was of the most 

 pernicious kind. It gave an unchecked flow to all the malignant 

 passions ; some venting them in accusations, others in attempts to 

 practise the nefarious art. In the year 1515 five hundred people are 

 said to have been executed at Geneva on charges of witchcraft ; and 

 Remigius, the inquisitor, boasts that he put nine hundred to death in 

 Lorraine. The tirst person who lifted his voice against these cruelties 

 was Wierus, who wrote in 1568. He and his followers carried on a 

 controversy with Delrio, Bodiuus, Scribonius, and others, in which it 

 is generally admitted that the defenders of witchcraft were the more 

 successful logicians. The supporters of old and received fallacies have 

 their compact and complete system of sophistry, and he who would 

 break through it must, like a Bacon or a Locke possess strength 

 enough to destroy the whole fabric, \\~ierua and his followers ven- 

 tured to raise their voice against the method only of the manifestation 

 of Satan's power of diabolical possession, not ita existence. Against 

 the brutal practice of swimming a witch to see if she will sink or float, 

 which may be traced as an ordeal succeeding that of the red-hot 

 ploughshares, and which inferred that a body in which an evil spirit 

 dwells is lighter than water, they could do no more than adduce the 

 experimental fact, that the herd of swine into which Jesus cast the 

 evil spirits, running into a lake, were drowned. Of all the early oppo- 

 nents of this superstition the English Kegmald Scot, who wrote in 

 1584, was perhaps the most successful in the employment of an ac- 

 quaintance with natural operations, a bold acorn of fallacies highly 

 supported, and a ready sarcasm. lie was followed by Harsnet in 1599, 

 and in 1720 by Francis Uutcbinson, who, however, appealed chiefly 

 to the unlearned, among whom alone the belief lingered at the time 

 when he wrote. 



The learned men of Europe generally were uvlievera in witch- 

 craft down to the end of the 17th century. Selden has an apulogy 

 for the law against witches, which shows a lurking belief, lie says 

 that if one believes that, by turning his hat thrice and crying 

 ' buz,' he could take away a man's life ; " this were a just law made 

 by the state, that whoever should turn his hat and cry ' buz ' with 

 an intention to take away a man's life shall be put to death." The 

 logic of Selden's mind, if untainted by superstition, would surely 

 have shown him that a law waging war with intentions incapable of 

 being fulfilled must be both useless and mischievous. Sir I human 

 Browne and Sir Matthew Hale were believers in witchcraft, and attested 

 their belief by being instrumental in convictions for the crime. It is 

 supposed that there were no executions for witchcraft in England 

 subsequent to the year 1682 ; but the statute of 1 James I., c. 12, so 

 minute in its enactments against witches, was not repealed till the 

 9 Ueo. II , c. 5. In Scotland, o late as the year 1722, when the local 

 jurisdictions were (till hereditary, and had not been put into the hands 

 of professional lawyer*, the sheriff of Sittherlandnhire condemned a 

 witch to death. It ii worthy of remark, a* one of the lost vestiges 

 of this superstition in educated and professional minds, that in a 

 work called ' The Institute* of the Law of Scotland,' published in 

 Edinburgh in 1730, by William Forbes, an author deservedly neglected 

 by practical lawyers, alter a specific definition of the nature of u itch- 

 craft, there is the following passage : ' Nothing seems plainer to me 

 than there may be, and have been witches, and that perhaps such are 

 now actually existing ; which I intend, God willing, to clear in a larger 

 work concerning the criminal law." This promised work never made 

 iU appearance. 



Wl I'ENAQEMOTE, literally an " assembly of wise men," from th 

 Anglo-Saxon " gemotb," an " assembly," and " witan," " to know," 

 which has the name root, " wit" or " wis," as the words wit, witness, 

 wise, and the legal phrase still in use ' to wit." 



Although the chief rulers of the Anglo-Saxon states, nearly down to 

 the time of the Conquest, bore the title of king, and in their charters 

 and letters attached to it many sonorous epithets, yet in fact they 

 were little raised in power above the other chief* of their nation. To 

 election by these chief* the king owed his office ; and if the sceptre 

 descended in hi* race, it was by means of the formal recognition of the 

 new king by the noble* in an assembly convened for the purpose. Of 

 this aoembly the chief ecclesiastics in the kingdom, archbishops, 

 binhopB, and abbots, the judge* (if such there were), and the largest 

 landholder* formed part. Whether the main body of the people bad 

 a voice in this great council is doubtful ; but judging by the analogy of 

 the shire mote*, and of all the political and judicial institutions of our 

 Anglo-Saxon ancestors, it is probable that the freemen who were near 

 the spot had a right to be present. Any important law or regulation 

 was transmitted for approval or consideration to the various folk- 

 moten. While the folkmote* were small, and the occasions for assemb- 

 ling few, little inconvenience was felt, but ultimately it was found 

 expedient for the king to summon an influential person from various 

 part* of the country, perhaps occasionally the leading man of a folk- 

 mote, and thu* form an assembly of counsellors, or witenagemote. 

 Thi* change wa* no doubt gradual, and no precise date can be fixed. 



It is certain that it was in existence in this form under Ethelstan, 

 (A.D. 931) and that all the sheriffs of counties attended it. In 934 

 there were present at one of these assemblies the king, four Welsh 

 princes, two archbishops, seventeen bishops, four abbots, twelve 

 dukes, and fifty-two thanes. The members were not elected, in any 

 sense but either nominated by the king or summoned by the assembly 

 after having been constituted ; and the members seem to have had the 

 right, or assumed the privilege, of introducing a friend or counsellor. 



The powers of the witan were extensive. As a consultative body 

 they had a right to consider every public act which could be authorised 

 by the king : they deliberated upon the making of new laws, which 

 were to be added to the folc-right, and which were then promulgated 

 by their own and the king's authority ; they had the power of making 

 alliances and treaties of peace, and of settling their terms ; in them 

 was vested the right of electiug the king, whom also they had the 

 power of deposing if his government was not conducted for the benefit 

 of the people. They, together with the king, had the power to appoint 

 prelates to the vacant sees ; they had also the power to regulate 

 ecclesiastical matters, appoint fasts and festivals, and decide upon the 

 levy and expenditure of ecclesiastical revenue; and, with the king, to 

 levy taxes for the public service. The king, with consent of the 

 witan, had power to raise laud and sea forces when occasion demanded. 

 The witan possessed the power of recommending, assenting to, aud 

 guaranteeing grants of lauds., and of permitting the conversion of 

 folcland (common land) into bocland (book-land), and vice versa. 

 They had also power of adjudging the lands of offenders and intestates 

 to be forfeit to the king; and they acted as a supreme court of justice, 

 both in civil and criminal causes (Kemble, ' The Saxons in England.') 



A witenagemote in the reign of Ethelwolf (855) granted to the 

 church a tenth, with the assent of the kings, thanes, barons, and 

 people The eighth law of Edward the Confessor names the people ; 

 and the 3.~>th law recites that it passed by the common adviee and 

 assent of all bishops, princes, chiefs (procerum:, earls, and of all the 

 wise men and elilers, and of the people (populorum) of the whole 

 kingdom. Sergt. Kuffhead, in his preface to the Statutes, conjectures, 

 confessing at the same time his ignorance, that the folcmote resembled 

 our House of Commons, the ealra-witenagemote our House of Lords, 

 and the witenagomote our privy council. Undoubtedly some of the 

 functions which in far more recent times the privy council has 

 performed did devolve upon the witan ; for instance, their approval 

 wa* required for certain acts of the king ; and generally their ottice 

 was less to devise measures than to consider and to sanction those 

 which were submitted to them. 



In concurring in royal charters and grants the witenagamote per- 

 formed the double othce of consenting to aud of attesting these gifts 

 or privilege* ; and here their office was analogous to that of the shire- 

 mote, which in those rude days distributed justice rather according to 

 the notoriety of the facts than to any systematic rules of investigating 

 the truth , and qualified itself for this office by requiring that the main 

 transactions touching the rights and property of individuals within its 

 district should pass in its presence. 



In those case* where the administration of justice was impossible in 

 the county courts, owing either to their want of juiisdiction, or to the 

 power of one of the parties, the authority of the witan was appealed 

 to ; and the nation pledged itself to support the executive power of 

 the king by giving to his arrangements the force of a law. Thus the 

 great family of Godwin earl of Kent was outlawed in Iu43, aud 

 restored in 1052 by the authority of the witan; in another case die 

 title of a great landholder to estates of whieh the muniments had been 

 destroyed was acknowledged, and a new deed setting out the bounds 

 wa* granted. 



During the Anglo-Saxon times the possessions of the king, and the 

 ordinary payments made to the crown by every landholder, together 

 with the duties paid by townships, were suUicient for the ordinary 

 want* of the government, especially as the triple duty (trmoda neces- 

 sitas) of repairing road* and bridges (br;/--tt<tte), maintaining the walls 

 of the burghs (burgh-bole), and resisting invasion (the fora), was 

 invariable. The king too was entitled to tolls on gootls .-old in most 

 markets and fairs, and to customs on imported goods ; but in those 

 emergencies when a pecuniary contribution was to be made by the 

 nation, the witan were called on to accede to the tax. 



It is very remarkable how these powers have been transmitted to 

 our present parliament, though gome have been sepaiated and allocated 

 between the House of Peers and the House of Commons. The witena- 

 gemote wa* of course abolished by the Norman invader; but the idea 

 was evidently preserved and ultimately developed even by the N ormans 

 themselves. It assumed a distinct form when Simon de Moutfort, 

 earl of Leicester, issued writs in the king's name to the sheritts of all 

 counties, commanding them to return two knights for the county, and 

 two burgesses for certain named boroughs, to sit in parliament to con- 

 sult on the affairs of the nation. 



(Sir P. Palgrave, Jtiie and Progress of the Enr/lish Commonwealth, 

 1832 ; J. M. Kemble, The Saxunx in Ear/land, 1849.) 



V\ IT NESS, from the Saxon iritnn, " to know." [EVIDENCE.] 



WuAD (lattn lincioria) is a plant which was once cultivated in 

 Britain to a considerable extent for the blue dye extracted from it. It 

 has been greatly superseded by indigo, which gives a stronger and finer 

 blue ; but on some soils it might still be cultivated to advantage. 



