Witan
[note 1] Its primary function was to advise the king on legislation, judicial cases, land transfers, and other matters of national importance.
[2] Wulfstan II, Archbishop of York (1002–1023), wrote in his Institutes of Polity that "it is incumbent on bishops, that venerable 'witan' always travel with them, and dwell with them, at least of the priesthood; that they may consult with them ... and who may be their counsellors at every time.
Modern scholars use witenagemot ('assembly of counsellors') as a technical term,[2] but historian John Maddicott noted its rarity in the 11th century with only nine pre-Conquest examples, mainly in the crisis of 1051–1052.
[7] The first recorded act of a witenagemot was the law code of King Æthelberht of Kent c. 600, the earliest document which survives in sustained Old English prose.
London and Winchester were popular meeting places, and other locations included: Abingdon, Amesbury, Andover, Aylesford, Cookham, Dorchester, Faversham, King's Enham, Southampton, Wantage, Oxford, Kirtlington, and Woodstock.
In the West Country, meetings were held at Gloucester, Axminster, Bath, Calne, Cheddar, Chippenham, Cirencester, Edington, Malmesbury, Winchcombe, and Exeter.
The king sought its advice and consent for extraordinary taxation that would burden the nobility, such as the Danegeld.The witan deliberated on matters of war, peace, and treaties.
Historian Levi Roach explains that the "adoption of this method of authentication for early English diplomas is understandable: in the absence of direct bureaucratic continuity with the late Roman Empire, which effectively precluded sealing or notarial subscription, as practised elsewhere, the use of witnesses, mirroring the methods of authentication used for private transactions on the continent, was an elegant solution.
"[19] The witan was noted by contemporary sources as having the singular power to ceosan to cynige, 'to choose the king' from amongst the extended royal family.
[20] But Liebermann was generally less willing than Chadwick to see the witan's significance as buried under the weight of the royal prerogative:[21] The influence of the king, or at least of kingship, on the constitution of the assembly seems, therefore, to have been immense.
His nickname of the 'Unræd' or 'Unready' means ill-advised, indicating that contemporaries regarded those who sat in the witan as part responsible for the failure of his reign.
He died on 5 January 1066, according to the Vita Ædwardi Regis, but not before briefly regaining consciousness and commending his widow and the kingdom to Harold's "protection".
[28] The Whig historians of the 19th century were concerned with explaining the evolution of the English constitution, and they found in the witan a proto-parliament or in the words of Felix Liebermann, "one of the lineal ancestors of the British Parliament".
[29] After World War I, historians such as Frank Stenton and Dorothy Whitelock shifted their focus to understanding the Anglo-Saxon period on its own terms.
[30] Scholars such as Stenton have noted that the witenagemot was in many ways different from the future institution of the Parliament of England; it had substantially different powers and some major limitations, such as a lack of a fixed procedure, schedule, or meeting place.
[31] In his 1995 biography of Alfred the Great, historian David Sturdy argues that the witan did not embody modern notions of a "national institution" or a "democratic" body.
In his study of the origins of the English parliament, he generally preferred the more neutral word "assembly":[35] But the word carries with it, however unjustifiably, a fustian air of decayed scholarship, and, in addition, its use may seem to prejudge the answer to an important question: do we have here an institution, a capitalized 'Witan', as it were, or merely a lower-case ad hoc gathering of the wise men who were the king's councillors?Henrietta Leyser commented in 2017 that for decades historians avoided using the word witan for assemblies in case they were interpreted as proto-parliaments, and she went on: "Recent historiography, however, has reintroduced the term since it is clear that it was generally accepted that certain kinds of business could only be transacted with a substantial number of the king's wise men, in other words, in the company of his 'witan'".
