56
THE SAXONS IN ENGLAND.
[book i.
or meeting was held: while the mearcbeorh., which
is not at all of rare occurrence, appears to denote
the hill or mound which was the site of the court,
and the place where the free settlers met at stated
periods to do right between man and man ɪ.
It is not at all necessary that these communities
should have been very small ; on the contrary, some
of the Marks were probably of considerable extent,
and capable of bringing a respectable force into
the field upon emergency: others, no doubt, were
less populous, and extensive : but a hundred heads
of houses, which is not at all an extravagant sup-
position, protected by trackless forests, in a district
not well known to the invader, constitute a body
very well able to defend its rights and privileges.
Although the Mark seems originally to have been
defined by the nature of the district, the hills,
streams and forests, still its individual, peculiar
and, as it were, private character depended in some
degree also upon long-subsisting relations of the
Markmen, both among themselves, and with regard
to others. I represent them to myself as great fa-
mily unions, comprising households of various de-
grees of wealth, rank and authority : some, in direct
descent from the common ancestors, or from the
hero of the particular tribe : others, more distantly
connected, through the natural result of increasing
population, which multiplies indeed the members of
ɪ Mearcbeorh, the Mark-hill, seems too special a name to express
some hill or other, which happened to lie in the boundary. A Kentish
charter names the gemotbeorh (Cod. Dipl. No. 364. an. 934), but this is
indefinite, and might apply to the Shiremoot.
CH- ∏∙]
THE MARK.
57
the family, but removes them at every step further
from the original stock : some, admitted into com-
munion by marriage, others by adoption; others
even by emancipation ; but all recognizing a bro-
therhood, a kinsmanship or sibsceaft1 ; all standing
together as one unit in respect of other, similar'
communities ; all governed by the same judges and
led by the same captains ; all sharing in the same
religious rites, and all known to themselves and
to their neighbours by one general name.
The original significance of these names is now
perhaps matter of curious, rather than of useful
enquiry. Could we securely determine it, we should,
beyond doubt, obtain an insight into the antiquities
of the Germanic races, far transcending the actual
extent of our historical knowledge ; this it is hope-
less now to expect : ages of continual struggles, of
violent convulsions, of conquests and revolutions,
lie between us and our forefathers : the traces of
their steps have been effaced by the inexorable
march of a different civilization. This alone is cer-
tain, that the distinction must have lain deeply
rooted in the national religion, and supplied abun-
dant materials for the national epos. Much has
been irrecoverably lost, yet in what remains we
recognize fragments which bear the impress of for-
mer wealth and grandeur. Beowulf, the Traveller’s
Song, and the multifarious poems and traditions
ɪ Refer to Caesar’s expression cognatio, in a note to p. 39. It ia
remarkable that early MS. glossaries render the word fratrueles by
. gelondan, which can only be translated, “ those settled upon the same
land thus identifying the local with the family relations.