The name is absent

136         THE SAXONS IN ENGLAND. [book i.

2Eⁱδele, nobilis, and Rice, potens, denote his qua
Iities, and he bears other titles according to the
accidents of his social position : thus ealdor, ealdor-
man, princeps ; wita, weota, COnsiliarius ; optimas ;
senior ; procer ; melior, etc. In addition to his own
personal privileges, the noble possesses in the full-
est extent every right of the freeman, the highest
order of whose body he forms.

137

CHAPTER VI.

THE KING.

As the noble is to the freeman, so in some respects
is the King to the noble. He is the summit of his
class, and completes the order of the freemen. Even
in the dim twilight of Teutonic history we find
tribes and nations subject to kings: others again
acknowledged no such office, and Tacitus seems to
regard this state as the more natural to our fore-
fathers. I do not think this clear : on the con-
trary, kingship, in a certain sense, seems to me
rooted in the German mind and institutions, and
universal among some particular tribes and con-
federacies. The free people recognize in the King
as much of the national unity as they consider
necessary to their existence as a substantive body,
and as the representative of the whole nation they
consider him to be a mediator between themselves
and the gods¹. The elective principle is the safe-

’ There is a tradition among the Swedes that if the gods expressed
their anger with the people by scarcity, or ill success in war, the most
acceptable offering to them was the King. See Yngling, Sag. c. xviii.
(Laing, i. 230); again, c. xlvii. (vol. i. ρ. 250), “where the scene is
laid in Norway : because, says the Yngl. Sag., the Swiai¹ were wont to
attribute to their kings the fruitfulness or dearth of the seasons. Yet
they did not interfere with the succession in the son of the sacrificed
hing. See Geijer, Hist. i. 404.

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