In this respect, indeed, the principle of regal succession (drawing our examples from approximating periods) was not essentially different in the two systems. The Saxon throne, which appears originally to have been purely elective, with restriction only to the family of the original founder, had come to be subject, in a considerable degree, to the will or nomination of the precedent possessor; though subject to confirmation or rejection by the Wittena Gemot, or assembly of the states: which, of course, had become less and less popular in its composition and influence, in proportion to the growing accumulation of power and territorial property in a few overweening families.

Nor was this the only circumstance in which the two systems had begun to approximate previous to the memorable event of the Norman conquest. From the time of Hardicanute, or more properly from the accession of Canute the Dane, and his marriage with Emma, the sister of Richard, Duke of Normandy, the continually growing intercourse with that country had produced a growing approximation to its manners and institutions; and (as far at least as related to the condition of the inferior or smaller proprietors, and their connection with the great territorial inheritors,) a species of feudalism, with its services and dependences, seems to have been rapidly growing up among the Saxons, or mixed race of Saxons and Danes. The predatory violence of the times, and the anarchic disorders growing out of the long protracted struggles between the Saxon inheritors and the Danish intruders, seem to have induced many of the smaller proprietors voluntarily to sacrifice their allodial independence for the hoped security of feudal protection, under the auspices of the great lords of the soil,the chief earls, or eorldemen, whose official rank and authority had gradually become almost as hereditary as their accumulating possessions.

Be this, however, as it will-the two systems of Saxon allodialism and Norman feudality were primitively distinct and opposite, and the struggle between them, which, for centuries, was sharp and incessant, not only is necessary to be kept in view for the proper understanding of the baronial wars, and the disputed successions, during what may be called the middle ages of our history; but the due appreciation of the struggle of those contending principles, is equally necessary to a just acquaintance with the constitutional history of our country, with the nature and origin of that complex form of government under which we live, and with the real nature, sources, and principles of those party distinctions into which it seems to be the destiny, and perhaps the happiness, of the English nation, that we should for ever be divided. The Norman principle, upon the main, is undoubtedly most congenial

to the hereditary aristocracy; the Saxon to the less propertied and unprivileged people. Yet a diligent perusal of our annals will convince us, that the feudal aristocracy themselves were frequently obliged to appeal to the aid of the Saxon system, and the revival of Saxon axioms and Saxon institutions, for the assertion of their own rights and the vindication of their privileges; while, at the same time, they found it necessary to accord to the people a portion of their Saxon freedom, in order to counterbalance the else overwhelming power and prerogative of the throne. How far, indeed, these concessions, compromises, and renovations should go, has long divided, and so long as our mixed constitution shall endure, will continue to divide the opinions both of theoretical and practical politicians; but if the light of history is capable of being any guide either to our speculations or our practice, an intimate acquaintance (as far as it can be acquired) with the transactions and the institutions, the policy and the social condition of our Saxon ancestors, by whom the foundations of our constitution were confessedly laid, must surely be regarded as of indispensable importance.

Hitherto, indeed, the means of general research into those remote periods have been but little accessible. They are locked up in manuscript records, and in the Saxon dialect: that dialect with which, though the genuine root and basis of the English language, English students in general have been little sedulous to become acquainted: and he who would have either extent or accuracy of information upon this important subject, must wade through solicitation and patronage to the cabinets and archives in which they are incarcerated; and toil through the comparison of minute facts and obscure hints, scattered through a great variety of voluminous authorities and even the original documents themselves, when they can be come at, will frequently be found to afford only such brief notices, as will demand the most serious attention of the inductive faculty to render them essentially ministrative to any extent of actual knowledge and just conclusion.

We are happy however to find, that part of this difficulty is likely to be, ere long, removed. We recognise, with pleasure, the design announced towards the conclusion of the last session but one of parliament, "of printing the works of our early historians under the superintendance of Mr. Petrie, Keeper of the Records of the Tower."* And we congratulate

*We should be sorry, however, if too implicit a dependence on the fulfilment of this design, should preclude Mr. Ingram from following up his recent labours, by reprinting (as he informs us he once.

the public, that the most essential of all the labours of our ancestral historians (The Saxon Chronicle) is, at length, rendered accessible even to those who are unacquainted with the Saxon language, by the elaborate edition and translation of the Rev. Mr. Ingram; and that, although the work will necessarily be restricted to a very narrow circulation, a commencement is at last made to the accomplishment of that historical desideratum, which can only be completed by the collection and comparison of that entire series which ought to furnish, through actual and familiar consultation, the materials for a new and popularly accessible digest of the early periods of our history. Not, indeed, that we are very sanguine as to the use that will promptly or sedulously be made of materials for correcting the established errors of English history. Two partial editions, or ample fragments of the Saxon Chronicle have, for a century and half, been in the hands, or might have been, of those who should have made some use of them: Wheloc's Latin version, Chronologia Anglo-Saxcnica, published at Cambridge in 1644, though comprised in less than sixty-two pages; and the improved edition (in the same language) by Bishop Gibson, printed at Oxford in 1692, which, though far from being entire, extends to nearly four times that quantity.* The venerable Bede is accessible both in the original and in translation; and, not to go into prolix enumeration, a mass of valuable matter has been long before the public in Lord Lyttleton's elaborate History of Henry the Second-especially in the introductory chapter, and the invaluable notes to that somewhat prolix, but highly important work; yet the frequently misguided Rapin, and the still more negligent and unfaithful Hume, continue to be the popular oracles for the supposed facts of our early story; and no historian has yet had the diligent integrity to avail himself of the materials which have been gradually accumulating. Sharon Turner, indeed, in his history of the Anglo-Saxons, has done something towards setting that part of the subject in a fairer point of view; but more must be done before this period of our history can be accurately treated for the general information of the public.t

The accessible shape into which the Saxon Chronicle is

intended) Ethelward's Epitome of Saxon History, and other illustrations of the Saxon Chronicle.

* The literal version of these annals, by Miss Guerney, of Keswick, though printed in the year 1819, was never published.

+ Some papers that have lately appeared in the Monthly Magazine on the misrepresentations in our General Histories, may perhaps

now brought, will give undoubtedly great facility to such an attempt. But this is not all that is requisite. There are dates and brief notes in that repository most undoubtedly, from which many popular errors may be rectified: for, though not strictly, it may, with some little latitude, be said, " that the Saxon Chronicle contains the original and authentic testimony of contemporary writers to the most important transactions of our forefathers both by sea and land, from their first arrival in this country to the year 1154." We say, with some little latitude for the assertion of the modern translator is somewhat too broad and general. It cannot be presumed or pretended, that Hengist and Horsa, Cerdic, or Ida, brought with them their annalists and historiographers to record their exploits; or that any part of the Saxon Chronicle, as it now stands, is contemporary with the events of the first century, or century and half, of the Saxon era. Previous to the introduction of Christianity by St. Augustine, (one hundred and fifty years after the first arrival of the Jutes and Angles, &c., now commonly confounded under the general name of Saxons,) very little, we suspect, of what by any license of language can be called. historic literature had any existence among our ancestors; and any narration of their exploits must rather have been sought in the songs and traditions of the Skalds, or ancient Minstrels, who accompanied the respective adventurers, than from any thing in the shape of regular archives or annals. "The Saxons," as Gibbon observes, "who excelled in the use of the oar or the battle-axe, were ignorant of the art which could alone perpetuate the fame of their exploits: the provincials (the mixed race of Britons and Romans, to whom the Saxons were opposed,) relaxing into barbarism, neglected to describe the ruin of their country; and the doubtful tradition was almost extinguished, before the missionaries of Rome restored the light of science and Christianity." The most ancient historian of our island, of whom we have any vestige, or any knowledge, is Gildas (and he not a Saxon but a British writer) who flourished in the latter part of the sixth century (more than a hundred years after the arrival of the Saxons); and who "has left us, amidst a cumbrous mass of pompous rhapsody

be regarded as favourable symptoms of a more popular attention to this important subject. And perhaps the time may not be distant when some attempt may be made to do justice to Saxon story, in a shape accommodated to general circulation. We hope, however, if it should be so, that it will not be done in the mere hasty book-making spirit; but with a fair reference to all accessible materials, and with a genuine view to the actual information of the public.

and querulous declamation, some curious descriptions of the character and manners, not only of the Britons and Saxons, but the Picts and Scots." It may reasonably be doubted, whether we had. any Saxon annalists contemporary even with him. Indeed, the almost absolute ignorance of our primitive Saxon ancestors of the use of letters, seems to be at least insinuated, if not actually recorded, in the very name (Bocladen) given by them to the Romans: as if they were the only people with whom those northern settlers had any acquaintance, who were familiar with the use of books.* Not but that the runic alphabet (even though we should not ascribe its invention to the deified Woden), and even the Saxon character, which seems (though with a considerable admixture of the Roman) to have been derived from it, must have been of higher antiquity than the period of which we are speaking; but, in the then existing state of society, of the small number who can be supposed acquainted with the magical art of putting these together for any intelligible purpose, few, if any, it may be concluded, (with exception, perhaps, to the fabling Skalds, who, in their rude songs, were to magnify the exploits, and embellish the genealogies of their chieftains, at their still ruder banquets and intemperate carousals) would be found among the bands of piratical invaders, who sought for plunder on the shores of the Western Ocean. At any rate, we cannot look for any regular series of successive annalists contemporary with the events of Saxon history, prior, as we have already said, to the establishment of Christianity. And as the use of letters appears for some time to have been confined almost exclusively to the clergy, it is not even to the earliest age of Christian conversion that we are to look for chroniclers in the Saxon language.

The first person on record, who is celebrated for his learning [and knowledge of the Saxon] is Tobias, the ninth

*“There are in Brytene igland," says the Chronicle, “ five nations -Englise, and Bryt-Wilise (Welch Britons), and Scyttise (Scythians, or Scots), and Pyhttise (Picts), and Bocloden." This last then is evidently the name by which the Romans (a part of whose colonists still remained in the island) had been primitively distinguished by the Saxon settlers, and still continued to be denominated at the time when the Saxon Chronicle began to assume its present form; and the evidence of their exclusive familiarity with the use of letters at the time when this name was given to them appears to be decisive. The Welch, beyond all doubt, had the start of us in historic literature; though (as Mr. Ingram observes) notwithstanding the authority of Bale, and of the writers whom he follows, we cannot persuade ourselves to rank Joseph of Arimathea, Arviragus, and Bonduca, or even the Emperor Constantine, among the illustrious writers of Great Britain.