the wider field as theirs in the narrower.
It could elect or depose the King. To it belonged the higher justice, the
imposition of taxes, the making of laws, the conclusion of treaties, the
control of wars, the disposal of public lands, the appointment of great
officers of state. But such a meeting necessarily differed greatly in
constitution from the Witan of the lesser kingdoms. The individual
freeman, save when the host was gathered together, could hardly take part
in its deliberations. The only relic of its popular character lay at last
in the ring of citizens who gathered round the Wise Men at London or
Winchester, and shouted their "aye" or "nay" at the election of a king.
Distance and the hardships of travel made the presence of the lesser
thegns as rare as that of the freemen; and the national council
practically shrank into a gathering of the ealdormen, the bishops, and
the officers of the crown.

[Sidenote: Feudalism and the Monarchy]

The old English democracy had thus all but passed into an oligarchy of
the narrowest kind. The feudal movement which in other lands was breaking
up every nation into a mass of loosely-knit states with nobles at their
head who owned little save a nominal allegiance to their king threatened
to break up England itself. What hindered its triumph was the power of
the Crown, and it is the story of this struggle between the monarchy and
these tendencies to feudal isolation which fills the period between the
death of Eadred and the conquest of the Norman. It was a struggle which
England shared with the rest of the western world, but its issue here was
a peculiar one. In other countries feudalism won an easy victory over the
central government. In England alone the monarchy was strong enough to
hold feudalism at bay. Powerful as he might be, the English ealdorman
never succeeded in becoming really hereditary or independent of the
Crown. Kings as weak as AEthelred could drive ealdormen into exile and
could replace them by fresh nominees. If the Witenagemot enabled the
great nobles to bring their power to bear directly on the Crown, it
preserved at any rate a feeling of national unity and was forced to back
the Crown against individual revolt. The Church too never became
feudalized. The bishop clung to the Crown, and the bishop remained a
great social and political power. As local in area as the ealdorman, for
the province was his diocese and he sat by his side in the local
Witenagemot, h