Everything about Witenagemot totally explained
» This article is about the ancient English council. For information about the council of wizards in the Harry Potter stories, see paragraph on Wizengamot in Ministry of Magic.
The
Witenagemot (also called the
Witan, more properly the title of its members) was a political institution in
Anglo-Saxon England which operated between approximately the
7th century and
11th century.
The name
witenagemot derives from the
Old English for "meeting of wise men" (
wita, wise man or counsellor, nominative plural
witan, genitive plural
witena;
gemot, assembly). It was the remnant of the ancient tribal general assembly, or
folkmoot, which had soon developed into a convocation of the land's most powerful and important people including senior clergy,
ealdormen and the leading
thegns speaking to the king.
History
The witan had its origins in the
Germanic assemblies summoned to witness royal grants of land. Before the unification of England in the
9th century, separate witenagemots were convened by the Kings of
Essex,
Kent,
Mercia,
Northumbria,
Sussex and
Wessex. Even after Wessex became the dominant power in England, supplanting the other kingdoms, local witans continued to meet until as late as
1067.
Summoned by the king (and later by regional earls), witans would advise on the administration and organization of the kingdom, dealing with issues such as taxation, jurisprudence and both internal and external security. The witenagemot was also needed to approve the succession of each monarch. The new king could be whoever the witan decided would best lead the country, not necessarily the offspring of the previous monarch. Kings and earls could also be deposed by a witenagemot; Sigeberht of Wessex was deposed this way in
755, Ethelwald of Northumbria in
765.
The witenagemot was in some respects a predecessor to
Parliament, but had substantially different powers and some major limitations, such as a lack of a fixed procedure, schedule, or meeting place. The witan could prevent autocracy and carry on government during
interregnums. But while the king must answer to the Parliament, the
witenagemot answered to the king. It only assembled when he summoned it, and its assembling without his approval could be considered treason. The witenagemot was more an advisory council. In some cases, weak kings (such as
Ethelred the Unready) were dependent on the witenagemot, while others used it as simply a group of advisers. No rules as to who could join existed, though mainly it consisted of ealdormen, or local chieftains, the bishops, other high civil and ecclesiastical officials, and sometimes friends and relatives of the king. This latter was, however, rare.
Though no set date was ever in use, witenagemots met at least once a year, and commonly more often. There was no single seat of the national witenagemot. Generally, it followed the king, who typically had no single fixed court either. The witenagemot is known to have met in at least 116 locations, including
Amesbury,
Cheddar,
Gloucester,
London and
Winchester. The meeting places were often on royal estates, but some witenagemots were convened in the open at prominent rocks, hills, meadows and famous trees.
The best-known sitting of the English witanagemot was that which on
January 5 1066 approved the succession to the kingship of
Harold Godwinson (Harold Godwin) following the death of
Edward the Confessor. Fifty years earlier, in 1016, it had approved the splitting of the kingdom between the Saxon
Edmund II and the Danish king
Canute.
This arrangement ended when the
Normans invaded in
1066, replacing the witenagemot with the
curia regis, or King's court. However, in a sign of the witanagemot's enduring legacy, the
curia regis continued to be dubbed a "witan" by chroniclers until as late as the
12th century.
References In literature
The Entmoot in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings uses the same root word as the folkmoot.Further Information
Get more info on 'Witenagemot'.
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