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, aud of settliug 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, and guaranteeing grants of lands, and of permitting the conversion of folcland (common land) into becland (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 Saxous 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 85th law recites that it passed by the common advice and assent of all bishops, princes, chiefs (procerum', earls, and of all the wise men and elders, and of the people (populurum) of the whole kingdom. Sergt. Ruffhead, in his preface to the Statutes, conjectures, confessing at the same time his ignorance, that the fulcmote resembled our House of Commons, the calra-witenagemote our House of Lords, and the witenagemote our privy council. Undoubtedly some of the functions which in far more recent times the privy council has performed did devolve upon the %viten ; for instance, their approval was required for certain acts of the king; and generally their office 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 witenagemote per formed the double office of consenting to aud of attesting these gifts or privileges; 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 fur 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 eases where the administration of justice was impossible in the county courts, owing either to their want of jui isdiction, or to the power of one of the parties, the authority of the witau 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 1043, and restored in 1052 by the authority of the witan; in another case the title of a great landholder to estates of which the muniments had been destroyed was acknowledged, and a new deed Getting out the bounds was 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 sufficient for the ordinary wants of the government, especially as the triple duty (triuoda neces sitaa) of repairing roads and bridges (bry—bote), maintaining the walls of the burghs (burgh-bete), and resisting invasion (the Aro), was invariable. The king too was entitled to tolls on goods sold in moat 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 some have been sepal ated and allocated between the House of Peers and the llouse of Commons. The witena gemote was of course abolished by the Norman invader; but the idea was evidently preserved and ultimately developed even by the :Normans themselves. It assumed a distinct form when Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, issued writs in the king's name to the sheriiiii 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 F. Palgrave, Rise and Progress of the English. Commonwealth, 1832; J. M. Kemble, 2'he Saxons in England, 1849.)