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The witan () was the king's council in the Anglo-Saxon government of England from before the 7th century until the 11th century. It comprised important noblemen, including ealdormen, , and . Meetings of the witan were sometimes called the witenagemot.
Its primary function was to advise the king on legislation, judicial cases, land transfers, and other matters of national importance. The witan may have elected new kings from among members of the ruling dynasty. After the Norman Conquest in 1066, these roles were performed by a similar council known as the curia regis.
The witan is considered an ancestor of the Parliament of England. Before the 20th century, historians thought it had been a proto-parliament, an institution that was both democratic and representative. In the 20th century, historical interpretation emphasised the witan's ad hoc and essentially royal nature.
The most common Old English term for a meeting of the witan is gemot, sometimes expanded as micel gemot (). Writers of Latin texts used conventus or magnum sapientium conventus (). Modern scholars use witenagemot () as a technical term, but historian John Maddicott noted its rarity in the 11th century with only nine pre-Norman Conquest examples, mainly in the crisis of 1051–1052. Patrick Wormald was also cautious, describing it as "a word always rare and unattested before 1035".
Before the 9th century, only , such as the Council of Hertford in 672, transcended the boundaries of individual kingdoms. With the unification of England in the 10th century, the witan acquired a national scope for the first time.
When English kings claimed overlordship over their Welsh neighbors, the Welsh kings might also be in attendance.
Anglo-Saxon England lacked a fixed capital, and the royal court was Itinerant court. The witan convened at various locations, including royal palaces, towns, and hunting lodges. Between 900 and 1066, over 50 locations were recorded. 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. While meetings in the Northern England were rare, the witan did convene at Nottingham in 934 and at Lincoln in 1045. The witan could meet at any time, but it often gathered during Christmas, Lent, and Easter when many nobles were present at court.
The witan's influence was not limited to legislation. 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. The declaration of royal wills occurred at witan meetings.
Kings issued charters granting bookland at witan meetings. The witness lists attached to these charters proved that the witan consented to the grants. This practice originated from the late Roman law, which required witnesses for private transactions. 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."
Liebermann's more subtle position seems to be vindicated by testimony from abbot Ælfric of Eynsham, the leading Homily of the late tenth century, who wrote:Quoted in .
In addition to having a role in the election of kings, it is often held that the witenagemots had the power to depose an unpopular king. However, there are only two occasions when this probably happened, in 757 and 774 with the depositions of kings Sigeberht of Wessex and Alhred of Northumbria respectively.
The witan's powers are illustrated by the following event. In the year 1013 King Æthelred II (Æthelred the Unready) fled the country from Sweyn Forkbeard, who then had the witan proclaim him king. Within a few weeks, however, Sweyn died and Æthelred was called back to England by the witan. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the witan would only receive him back under the condition that he promise to rule better than he had. Æthelred did so, and was reinstated as King of England. 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.
At the end of 1065, King Edward the Confessor fell into a coma without clarifying his preference for the succession. 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". When the witan convened the next day they selected Harold to succeed as ruler of England.
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. In his 1943 Anglo-Saxon England, Stenton chose to use the term "King's Council" in place of witan and witenagemot. This change in terminology signalled an important change in the way Anglo-Saxon political assemblies were perceived. Instead of proto-parliaments, the assemblies were essentially royal institutions. Other historians followed Stenton's lead.
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. 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. He writes, "Victorian era notions of a national 'witan' are crazy dreams without foundation, myths of a 'democratic parliament' that never was."
While many modern historians avoid the terms witan and witenagemot, few would go as far as Geoffrey Hindley, who described witenagemot as an "essentially Victorian" coinage. The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England prefers "king's council" but adds that it was known in Old English as the witan. Maddicott regarded the word witan with suspicion, even though it is used in sources such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. In his study of the origins of the English parliament, he generally preferred the more neutral word "assembly":
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. She does not mention the term witenagemot.
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