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$Title{History Of Europe During The Middle Ages
Notes To Book II: Part V}
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Title:       History Of Europe During The Middle Ages
Book:        Book II: The Feudal System
Author:      Hallam, Henry

Notes To Book II: Part V

Note XIII

     M. Guizot has declared it to be the most difficult of questions relating
to the state of persons in the period from the fifth to the tenth century,
whether there existed in the countries subdued by the Germans, and especially
by the Franks, a numerous and important class of freemen, not vassals either
of the king or any other proprietor, nor any way dependent upon them, and with
no obligation except towards the state, its laws and magistrates.  (Essais sur
l'Hist. de France, p. 232.) And this question, contrary to almost all his
predecessors, he inclines to decide negatively. It is, indeed, evident, and is
confessed by M. Guizot, that in the ages nearest to the conquest such a class
not only existed, but even comprised a large part of the nation.  Such were
the owners of sortes or of terra Salica, the allodialists of the early period.
It is also agreed, as has been shown in another place, that, towards the tenth
century, the number of these independent landholders was exceedingly
diminished by territorial commendation; that is, the subjection of their lands
to a feudal tenure. The last of these changes, however, cannot have become
general under Charlemagne, on account of the numerous capitularies which
distinguish those who held lands of their own, or allodia, from beneficiary
tenants. The former, therefore, must still have been a large and important
class. What proportion they bore to the whole nation at that or any other era
it seems impossible to pronounce; and equally so to what extent the whole
usage of personal commendation, contradistinguished from territorial, may have
reached.  Still allodial lands, as has been observed, were always very common
in the south of France, to which Flanders might be added.  The strength of the
feudal tenures, as Thierry remarks, was between the Somme and the Loire.
(Recits des T. M. i. 245.) These allodial proprietors were evidently freemen.
In the law of France allodial lands were always noble, like fiefs, till the
reformation of the Coutume de Paris in 1580, when "aleux roturiers" were for
the first time recognized.  I owe this fact, which appears to throw some light
on the subject of this note, to Laferriere, Hist. du Droit Francais, p. 129.
But, perhaps, this was not the case in Flanders, which was an allodial
country: - "La maxime francaise, nulle terre sans seigneur, n'avait point lieu
dans les Pays-Bas. On s'en tenait au principe de la liberte naturelle des
biens, et par suite a la necessite d'en prouver la sujetion ou la servitude;
aussi les biens allodiaux etaient tres nombreux, et rappelaient toujours
l'esprit de liberte que les Belges ont aime et conserve tant a l'egard de
leurs biens que de leurs personnes." (Mem. de l'Acad. de Bruxelles, vol. iii.
p. 16.) It bears on this, that in all the customary law of the Netherlands no
preference was given to sex or primogeniture in succession (p. 21.)

     But there were many other freemen in France, even in the tenth century,
if we do not insist on the absolute and insulated independence which Guizot
requires.  "If we must understand," says M. Guerard (Cartulaire de Chartres,
p. 34), "by freemen those who enjoyed a liberty without restriction, that is,
who, owing no duties or service to any one, could go and settle wherever they
pleased, they would not be found very numerous in our chartulary during the
pure feudal regimen.  But if, as we should, we comprehend under this name
whoever is neither a noble nor a serf, the number of people in this
intermediate condition was very considerable." And of these he specifies
several varieties.  This was in the eleventh century, and partly later, when
the conversion of allodial property had been completed.

     Savigny was the first who proved the Arimanni of Lombardy to have been
freemen, corresponding to the Rachimburgii of the Franks, and distinguished
both from bondmen and from those to whom they owed obedience.  Citizens are
sometimes called Arimanni.  The word occurs, though very rarely, out of Italy.
(Vol. i. p. 176, English translation.) Guizot includes among the Arimanni the
leudes or beneficiary vassals.  See, too, Troja, v. 146, 148. There seems,
indeed, no reason to doubt that vassals, and other commendati, would be
counted as Arimanni.  Neither feudal tenure nor personal commendation could
possibly derogate from a free and honorable status.

Note XIV

     These names, though in a general sense occupying similar positions in the
social scale, denote different persons.  The coloni were Romans, in the sense
of the word then usual; that is, they were the cultivators of land under the
empire, of whom we find abundant notice both in the Theodosian Code and that
of Justinian. ^a An early instance of this use of the word occurs in the
Historiae Augustae Scriptores.  Trebellius Pollio says, after the great
victory of Claudius over the Goths, where an immense number of prisoners was
taken - "Factus miles barbarus ac colonus ex Gotho;" an expression not clear,
and which perplexed Salmasius.  But it may perhaps be rendered, the barbarians
partly entered the legions, partly cultivated the ground, in the rank of
coloni.  It is thus understood by Troja (ii. 705). He conceives that a large
proportion of the coloni, mentioned under the Christian emperors, were
barbarian settlers (iii. 1074).  They came in the place of praedial slaves,
who, though not wholly unknown, grew less common after the establishment of
Christianity.  The Roman colonus was free; he could marry a free woman, and
have legitimate children; he could serve in the army, and was capable of
property; his peculium, unlike that of the absolute slave, could not be
touched by his master.  Nor could his fixed rent or duty be enhanced.  He
could even sue his master for any crime committed with respect to him, or for
undue exaction.  He was attached, on the other hand, to the soil, and might in
certain cases receive corporal punishment.  (Troja, iii. 1072.) He paid a
capitation tax or census to the state, the frequent enhancement of which
contributed to that decline of the agricultural population which preceded the
barbarian conquest.  Guizot, in whose thirty-seventh lecture on the
civilization of France the subject is well treated, derives the origin of this
state of society from that of Gaul before the Roman conquest.  But since we
find it in the whole empire, as is shown by many laws in the Code of
Justinian, we may look on it perhaps rather as a modification of ancient
slavery, unless we suppose all the coloni, ^b in this latter sense of the
word, to have been originally barbarians, who had received lands on condition
of remaining on them.  But this, however frequent, seems a basis not quite
wide enough for so extensive a tenure.  Nor need we believe that the coloni
were always raised from slavery; they might have descended into their own
order, as well as risen to it.  It appears by a passage in Salvian, about the
middle of the fifth century, that many freemen had been compelled to fall into
this condition; which confirms, by analogy, the supposition above mentioned of
M. Naudet, as to a similar degradation of a part of the Franks themselves
after the conquest.  It was an inferior species of commendation or vassalage,
or, more strictly, an analogous result of the state of society.

[Footnote a: See Cod. Theod. l. v. tit. 9, with the copious Paratitlon of
Gothofred. - Cod. Just. xi. tit. 47 et alibi.]

[Footnote b: The colonus of Cato and other classical authors was a free tenant
or farmer, as has been already mentioned.]

     The forms of Marculfus, and all the documents of the following ages,
furnish abundant proofs of the continuance of the coloni in this middle state
between entire freedom and servitude.  And these were doubtless reckoned among
the "tributarii" of the Salic law, whose composition was fixed at forty-five
solidi; for a slave had no composition due to his kindred; he was his master's
chattel, and to be paid for as such.  But the tributary was not necessarily a
colonus.  All who possessed no lands were subjected by the imperial fisc to a
personal capitation.  And it has appeared to us that the Romans in Gaul
continued regularly to pay this under the house of Clovis.  To these Roman
tributaries the barbarian lidi seem nearly to have corresponded.  This was a
class, as has been already said, not quite freeborn; so that "Francus
ingenuus" was no tautology, as some have fancied, yet far from slaves; without
political privileges or rights of administering justice in the country court,
like the Rachimburgii, and so little favored, that, while the Frank accused of
a theft, that is, I presume, taken in the fact, was to be brought before his
peers, the lidus, under the name of "debilior persona," which probably
included the Roman tributary, was to be hanged on the spot.  Throughout the
Salic and Ripuarian codes the ingenuus is opposed both to the lidus and to the
servus; so that the threefold division is incontestable.  It corresponds in a
certain degree to the edelingi, frilingi, and lazzi, or the eorl, ceorl, and
thrall of the northern nations (Grimm, Deutsche Rechts Alterthumer, p. 306 et
alibi); though we do not find a strict proportion in the social state of the
second order in every country.  The "coloni partiarii," frequently mentioned
in the Theodosian Code, were metayers; and M. Guerard says that lands were
chiefly held by such in the age of Charlemagne and his family.  (Cart. de
Chartres, i. 109.) The demesne lands of the manor, however, were never
occupied by coloni, but by serfs or domestic slaves.

Note XV

     The poor early felt the necessity of selling themselves for subsistence
in times of famine.  "Subdiderunt se pauperes servitio," says Gregory of
Tours, A.D. 585, "ut quantulumcunque de alimento porrigerent." (Lib. vii. c.
45.) This long continued to be the practice; and probably the remarkable
number of famines which are recorded, especially in the ninth and eleventh
centuries, swelled the sad list of those unhappy poor who were reduced to
barter liberty for bread.  Mr. Wright, in the thirtieth volume of the
Archaeologia (p. 223), has extracted an entry from an Anglo-Saxon manuscript,
where a lady, about the time of the Conquest, manumits some slaves, "whose
heads," as it is simply and forcibly expressed, "she had taken for their meat
in the evil days." Evil indeed were those days in France, when out of
seventy-three years, the reigns of Hugh Capet and his two successors,
forty-eight were years of famine.  Evil were the days for five years from
1015, in the whole western world, when not a country could be named that was
not destitute of bread.  These were famines, as Radulfus Glaber and other
contemporary writers tell us, in which mothers ate their children, and
children their parents; and human flesh was sold, with some pretence of
concealment, in the markets.  It is probable that England suffered less than
France; but so long and frequent a scarcity of necessary food must have
affected, in the latter country, the whole organic frame of society.

     It has been a very general opinion that during the lawlessness of the
ninth and tenth centuries, the aristocratic element of society continually
gaining ground, the cultivators fell into a much worse condition, and either
from freemen became villeins, or, if originally in the order of tributaries,
became less and less capable of enjoying such personal rights as that state
implied; that they fell, in short, almost into servitude. "Dans le
commencement de la troiseme race," says Montesquieu, "presque tout le bas
peuple etait serf." (Lib. xxviii. c. 45.) Sismondi, who never draws a
favorable picture, not only descants repeatedly on this oppression of the
commonalty, but traces it by the capitularies. "Les loix seules nous donnent
quelque indication d'une revolution importante a laquelle la grande masse du
peuple fut exposee a plusieurs reprises dans toute l'etendue des Gaules, -
revolution qui, s'etant operee sans violence, n'a laisse aucune trace dans
l'histoire, et qui doit cependant expliquer seule les alternatives de force et
de faiblesse dans les etats du moyen age.  C'est le passage des cultivateurs
de la condition libre a la condition servile. L'esclavage etant une fois
introduite et protegee par les loix, la consequence de la prosperite, de
l'accroissement des richesses devait etre toujours la disparition de toutes
les petites proprietes, la multiplication des esclaves, et la cessation
absolue de tout travail qui ne serait pas fait par des mains serviles." (Hist.
des Francais, vol. ii. p. 273).  Nor should we have believed, from the general
language of historical antiquaries, that any change for the better took place
till a much later era.  We know indeed from history that, about the year 1000,
the Norman peasantry, excited by oppression, broke out into a general and
well-organized revolt, quelled by the severest punishments.  This is told at
some length by Wace, in the "Roman de Rou." And every inference from the want
of all law except what the lords exercised themselves, from the strength of
their castles, from the fierceness of their characters, from the apparent
inability of the peasants to make any resistance which should not end in
greater sufferings, converges to the same result.

     It is not therefore without some surprise that, in a recent publication,
we meet with a totally opposite hypothesis on this important portion of social
history.  The editor of the Cartulaire de Chartres maintains that the
peasantry, at the beginning of the eleventh century, enjoyed rights of
property and succession which had been denied to their ancestors; that the
movement from the ninth century had been upwards; so that, during that period
of anarchy which we presume to have been exceedingly unfavorable to their
privileges, they had in reality, by force, usage, or concession, gained
possession of them.  They could not indeed leave their lands, but they
occupied them subject to known conditions.

     The passage wherein M. Guerard, in a concise and perspicuous manner, has
given his own theory as to the gradual decline of servitude deserves to be
extracted; but I regret very much that he refers to another work, not by name,
and unknown to me, for the full proof of what has the air of an historical
paradox.  With sufficient proof every paradox loses its name; and I have not
the least right, from any deep researches of my own, to call in question the
testimony which has convinced so learned and diligent an inquirer.

     "La servitude, comme je l'ai expose dans un autre travail, alla toujours
chez nous en s'adoucissant jusqu'a ce qu'elle fut entierement abolie a la
chute de l'ancien regime: d'abord c'est l'esclavage a-peupres pur, qui
reduisait l'homme presque a l'etat de chose, et qui le mettait dans l'entiere
dependance de son maitre.  Cette periode peut etre prolongee jusqu'apres la
conquete de l'empire d'Occident par les barbares.  Depuis cette epoque jusques
vers la fin du regne de Charles-le-Chauve, l'esclavage proprement dit est
remplace par la servitude, dans laquelle la condition humaine est reconnue,
respectee, protegee, si ce n'est encore d'une maniere suffisante, par les loix
civiles, au moins plus efficacement par celles de l'eglise et par les moeurs
sociales.  Alors le pouvoir de l'homme sur son semblable est contenu
generalement dans certains limites; un frein est mis d'ordinaire a la
violence; la regle et la stabilite l'emportent sur l'arbitraire: bref, la
liberte et la propriete penetrent par quelque endroit dans la cabane du serf.
Enfin, pendant le desordre d'ou sortit triomphant le regime feodal, le serf
soutient contre son maitre la lutte soutenue par le vassal contre son
seigneur, et par les seigneurs contre le roi.  Le succes fut le meme de part
et d'autre; l'usurpation des tenures serviles accompagna celle. des tenures
liberales, et l'appropriation territoriale ayant eu lieu partout, dans le bas
comme dans le haut de la societe, il fut aussi difficile de deposseder un
serf, de son manse qu'un seigneur de son benefice.  Des ce moment la servitude
fut transformee en servage; le serf, ayant retire sa personne et son champ des
mains de son maitre, dut a celui-ci non plus son corps ni son bien, mais
seulement une partie de son travail et de ses revenus.  Des ce moment il a
cesse de servir; il n'est plus en realite qu'un tributaire.

     "Cette grande revolution, qui tira de son etat abject la classe la plus
nombreuse de la population, et qui l'investit de droits civils, lorsque
auparavant elle ne pouvait guere invoquer en sa faveur que les droits de
l'humanite, n'avait pas encore ete signalee dans notre histoire. Les faits qui
la demonstrent ont ete developpe dans un autre travail que je ne puis
reproduire ici; mais les traces seules qu'elle a laissees dans notre
Cartulaire sont assez nombreuses et assez profondes pour la faire
universellement reconnaitre.  Elle etait depuis long-temps consommee, lorsque
le moine redigeait, dans la seconde moitie du XIe. siecle, la premiere partie
du present recueil, et lorsqu'il declarait que les anciens roles (ecrits au
IXe.) conserves dans les archives de l'Abbaye, n'accordent aux paysans ni les
usages ni les droits dont ils jouissant actuellement. Mais ses paroles
meritent d'etre, repetees: - 'Lectori intimare curavi,' dit-il dans sa
Preface, 'quod ea quae primo scripturus sum a praesenti usu admodum discrepare
videntur, nam rolli conscripti ab antiquis et in armario nostro nunc reperti,
habuisse minimi ostendunt illius temporis rusticos has consuetudines in
reditibus quas moderni rustici in hoc tempore dinoscuntur habere, neque habent
vocabula rerum quas tunc sermo habebat vulgaris.' Ainsi non seulement les
choses, mais encore les noms, tout etait change." (Prolegomenes a la
Cartulaire de Chartres. p. 40.)

     The characteristic of the villein, according to Beaumanoir, in the
thirteenth century, that his obligations were fixed in kind and degree, would
thus appear to have been as old as the eleventh.  Many charters of the tenth
and eleventh centuries are adduced by M. Guerard, wherein, as he informs us,
"On s'efforce de se soustaire a la violence, et d'y substituer les conventions
a l'arbitraire; la regle et la mesure tendent a s'introduire partout et
jusques dans les extortions memes" (p. 109).  But his principle of limited
rent was also that of the Roman system with respect to the coloni before the
conquest of Gaul by Clovis.  Nor do we know that it was different afterwards.
No law at least could have effected it; for the Roman law, by which the coloni
were ruled, underwent no change.

     M. Guerard seems hardly to have taken a just view of the status of the
Roman tributary or colonus.  "Nous avons dit que les personnes de condition
servile s'etaient appropries leurs benefices.  Ce que vient encore nous
confirmer dans cette opinion, c'est le changement qu'on observe generalement
dans la condition des terres depuis le declin du xe siecle. La terre, apres
avoir ete cultivee dans l'antiquite par l'esclave au profit de son maitre, le
fut ensuite par un espece de fermier non libre qui partageait avec le
proprietaire, ou qui faisait les fruits siens, moyennant certains cens et
services, auxquels il etait oblige envers lui: c'est l'etat qui nous est
represente par le Polyptyque d'Irminon, au temps de Charlemagne, et qui dura
encore un siecle et demi environ apres la mort de ce grand prince.  Puis
commence une troiseme periode, pendant laquelle le proprietaire, n'est plus
que seigneur, tandis que le tenancier est devenu lui-meme proprietaire, et
paie, non plus de fermages, mais seulement des droits seigneuriaux.  Ainsi,
d'abord obligations d'un esclave envers un maitre ensuite obligations d'un
termier non libre envers un proprietaire; enfin, obligations d'un proprietaire
non libre envers un seigneur.  C'est a la derniere periode que nous sommes
parvenus dans notre Cartulaire.  Les populations s'y montrent en jouissance du
droit de propriete, et ne sont soumises, a raison des possessions, qu'a de
simples charges feodales."

     It may be observed upon this, that the colonus was a free man, whether he
divided the produce with his lord, like the metayer of modern times, or paid a
certain rent; and, secondly, that, in what he calls the third period, the
tenant, if he was a villein or homme de poote, could not possibly be called
"lui-meme proprietaire;" nor were his liabilities feudal, but either a
money-rent or personal service in labor; which cannot be denominated feudal
without great impropriety.

     "Il est vrai," he proceeds, "que ces charges sont encore lourdes et
souvent accablantes, et que les biens ne sont pas plus les personnes
entierement francs et libres; ni suffisamment a l'abri de l'arbitraire et de
la violence; mais la liberte, acquise de jour en jour a l'homme, se
communiquait de plus en plus a la terre.  Le paysan etant proprietaire, il ne
lui restait qu'a degrever et affranchir la propriete.  C'est a cet oeuvre
qu'il travaillera desormais avec perseverance et de toutes ses forces jusqu'a
ce qu'il ait enfin obtenu de ne supporter d'autres charges que celles qui
conviennent a l'homme libre, et qui sont uniquement fondess sur l'utilite
commune."

     In this passage the tenant is made much more to resemble the free socager
of England than the villein or homo postatis of Pierre des Fontaines or
Beaumanoir.  This latter class, however, was certainly numerous in their age,
and could hardly have been less so some centuries before.  These were subject
to so many onerous restrictions, independent of their compulsory residence on
the land, and independently also of their want of ability to resist undue
exactions, that they were always eager to purchase their own enfranchisement.
Their marriages were not valid without the lord's consent, till Adrian IV., in
the twelfth century, declared them indissoluble.  A freeman marrying a serf
became one himself, as did their children.  They were liable to occasional as
well as regular demands, that is, to tallages, sometimes in a very arbitrary
manner.  It was probably the less frequency of such demands, among other
reasons, that rendered the condition of ecclesiastical tenants more eligible
than that of others. Manumissions of serfs by the church were very common;
and, indeed, the greater part that have been preserved, as may be expected,
come from ecclesiastical repositories.  It is observed in my text that the
English clergy are said to have been slow in liberating their villeins.  But a
villein in England was real property; and I conceive that a monastery could
not enfranchise him, at least without the consent of some superior authority,
any more than it could alienate its lands.  The church were not generally
accounted harsh masters.

Note XVI

     There would seem naturally little doubt that majorum can mean nothing but
the higher classes of clergy and laity, exclusive of parish priests and
ordinary freemen, were it not that a part of these very majores are afterwards
designated by the name minores.  Who, it may be asked, could be the majores
clerici, except prelates and abbots?  And of these, how could one be so
inferior in degree to another as to be reckoned among minores? It may perhaps
be answered that there was nevertheless a difference of importance, though not
of rank.  Guizot translates majores "les grands," and minores "les moins
considerables." But upon this construction which certainly is what the words
fairly bear, none but a class denominated majores, relatively to the rest of
the nation, were members of the national council.  I think, nevertheless, that
Guizot, on any hypothesis, has too much depreciated the authority of these
general meetings, wherein the capitularies of Charlemagne were enacted.
Grant, against Mably, that they were not a democratic assembly; still were
they not a legislature?  "Lex consensu fit populi et constitutione regis."
This is our own statute language; but does it make parliament of no avail?
"En lui (Charlemagne) reside la volonte et l'impulsion; c'est de lui que toute
emane pour revenir a lui." (Essais sur l'Hist. de France, p. 323.) This is
only to say that he was a truly great man, and that his subjects were
semi-barbarians, comparatively unfit to devise methods of ruling the empire.
No one can doubt that he directed everything.  But a weaker sovereign soon
found these rude nobles an overmatch for him.  It is, moreover, well pointed
out by Sir F. Palgrave, that we find instances of petitions presented by the
lay or spiritual members of these assemblies to Charlemagne, upon which
capitularies or edicts were afterwards founded.  (English Commonwealth, ii.
411.) It is to be inferred, from several texts in the capitularies of
Charlemagne and his family, that a general consent was required to their
legislative constitutions, and that without this a capitulary did not become a
law.  It is not, however, quite so clear in what method this was testified; or
rather two methods appear to be indicated.  One was that above described by
Hincmar, when the determination of the seniores was referred to the minores
for their confirmation: "interdum pariter tractandum, et non ex potestate sed
ex proprio mentis intellectu vel sententia confirmandum.  The point of
divergence between two schools of constitutional antiquaries in France is on
the words ex postestate.  Mably, and others whom I have followed, say "not by
compulsion," or words to that effect.  But Guizot renders the words
differently: "quelquefois on deliberait aussi, et les confirmaient, non par un
consentement formal, mais par leur opinion, et l'adhesion de leur
intelligence." The Latin idiom will, I conceive, bear either construction.
But the context, as well as the analogy of other authorities, inclines me to
the more popular interpretation, which, though the more popular, does not
necessarily carry us beyond the word majores, taking that as descriptive of a
numerous aristocracy.

     If, indeed, we are so much bound by the majorum in this passage of
Hincmar as to take for merely loose phrases the continual mention of the
populus in the capitularies, we could not establish any theory of popular
consent in legislation from the general placita held almost every May by
Charlemagne.  They would be conventions of an aristocracy; numerous indeed,
and probably comprehending by right all the vassals of the crown, but
excluding the freemen or petty allodialists, not only from deliberating upon
public laws, but from consenting to them.  We find, however, several proofs of
another method of obtaining the ratification of this class, that is of the
Frank people.  I do not allude to the important capitulary of Louis (though I
cannot think that M. Guizot has given it sufficient weight), wherein the count
is directed to bring twelve Scabini with him to the imperial placitum, because
we are chiefly at present referring to the reign of Charlemagne; and yet this
provision looks like one of his devising.  The scheme to which I refer is
different and less satisfactory. The capitulary determined upon by a national
placitum was sent round to the counts, who were to read it in their own mallus
to the people, and obtain their confirmation.  Thus in 803, "Anno tertio
clementissimi domini nostri Karoli Augusti, sub ipso anno haec facta capitula
sunt, et consignata Stephano comiti, ut haec manifesta faceret in civitate
Parisiis, mallo publico, et illa legere faceret coram Scabiniis, quod ita et
fecit.  Et omnes in uno consenserunt, quod ipsi voluissent omni tempore
observare usque in posterum.  Etiam omnes Scabinii, Episcopi, Abbates, Comites
manu propria subter signaverunt." (Rec. des Hist. v. 663.) No text can be more
perspicuous than this; but several other proofs might be given, extending to
the subsequent reigns. Sir F. Palgrave is, perhaps, the first who has drawn
attention to this scheme of local sanction by the people; though I must think
that he has somewhat obscured the subject by supposing the malli, wherein the
capitulary was confirmed, to have been those of separate nations constituting
the Frank empire, instead of being determined by the territorial jurisdiction
of each count.  He gives a natural interpretation to the famous words, "Lex
consensu populi fit, constitutione regis." The capitulary was a constitution
of the king, though not without the advice of his great men; the law was its
confirmation by the nation collectively, in the great placitum of the Field of
March, or by separate consent and subscription in each county.

     We are not, however, to be confident that this assent of the people in
their county courts was virtually more than nominal.  A little consideration
will show that it could not easily have been otherwise, except in the
strongest cases of unpopular legislation.  No Scabini or Rachimburgii in one
county knew much of what passed at a distance; and dissatisfaction must have
been universal before it could have found its organ in such assemblies.
Before that time arrived rebellion was a more probable effect.  One
capitulary, of 823, does not even allude to consent: "In suis comitatibus
coram nota fieri possit." But we cannot set this against the language of so
many other capitularies, which imply a formal ratification.