Chapter III: The Gá or Scír

Next in order of constitution, if not of time, is the union of two, three or more Marks in a federal bond for purposes of a religious, judicial or even political character. The technical name for such a union is in Germany, a Gau or Bant[126]; in England the ancient name Gá has been almost universally superseded by that of Scír or Shire. For the most part the natural divisions of the country are the divisions also of the Gá; and the size of this depends upon such accidental limits as well as upon the character and dispositions of the several collective bodies which we have called Marks.

The Gá is the second and final form of unsevered possession; for every larger aggregate is but the result of a gradual reduction of such districts, under a higher political or administrative unity, different only in degree and not in kind from what prevailed individually in each. The kingdom is only a larger Gá than ordinary; indeed the Gá itself was the original kingdom.

But the unsevered possession or property which we thus find in the Gá is by no means to be considered in the same light as that which has been described in the Mark. The inhabitants are settled as Markmen, not as Gá-men: the cultivated land which lies within the limits of the larger community is all distributed into the smaller ones.

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Footnote 126:

Less usual are Eiba and Para. The Norse Herrad may in some sense be
compared with these divisions.

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As the Mark contained within itself the means of doing right between man and man, _i. e._, its Markmót; as it had its principal officer or judge, and beyond a doubt its priest and place of religious observances, so the County, Scír or Gá had all these on a larger and more imposing scale; and thus it was enabled to do right between Mark and Mark, as well as between man and man, and to decide those differences the arrangement of which transcended the powers of the smaller body. If the elders and leaders of the Mark could settle the mode of conducting the internal affairs of their district, so the elders and leaders of the Gá (the same leading markmen in a corporate capacity) could decide upon the weightier causes that affected the whole community; and thus the Scírgemót or Shiremoot was the completion of a system of which the Mearcmót was the foundation. Similarly, as the several smaller units had arrangements on a corresponding scale for divine service, so the greater and more important religious celebrations in which all the Marks took part, could only be performed under the auspices and by the authority of the Gá. Thus alone could due provision be made for sacrifices which would have been too onerous for a small and poor district, and an equalization of burthens be effected; while the machinery of government and efficient means of protection were secured.

At these great religious rites, accompanied as they ever were by the solemn Ðing, _placitum_ or court, thrice in the year the markmen assembled unbidden: and here they transacted the ordinary and routine business required. On emergencies however, which did not brook delay, the leaders could issue their peremptory summons to a bidden Ðing, and in this were then decided the measures necessary for the maintenance and well-being of the community, and the mutual guarantee of life and honour. To the Gá then probably belonged, as an unsevered possession, the lands necessary for the site and maintenance of a temple, the supply of beasts for sacrifice, and the endowment of a priest or priests: perhaps also for the erection of a stockade or fortress, and some shelter for the assembled freemen in the Ðing. Moreover, if land existed which from any cause had not been included within the limits of some Mark, we may believe that it became the public property of the Gá, _i. e._, of all the Marks in their corporate capacity: this at least may be inferred from the rights exercised at a comparatively later period over waste lands, by the constituted authorities, the Duke, Count or King.

Accident must more or less have determined the seat of the Gá-jurisdiction: perhaps here and there some powerful leading Mark, already in the possession of a holy site, may have drawn the neighbouring settlers into its territory: but as the possession and guardianship of the seat of government could not but lead to the vindication of certain privileges and material advantages to its holders, it is not unreasonable to believe that where the Marks coalesced on equal terms, the temple-lands would be placed without the peculiar territorial possession of each, as they often were in Greece, upon the ἐσχατιὰ or boundary-land. On the summit of a range of hills, whose valleys sufficed for the cultivation of the markmen, on the watershed from which the fertilizing streams descended, at the point where the boundaries of two or three communities touched one another, was the proper place for the common periodical assemblages of the free men: and such sites, marked even to this day by a few venerable oaks, may be observed in various parts of England[127].

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Footnote 127:

There are instances which show that the custom, afterwards kept up, of
“Trysting Trees,” was an ancient one. Probably some great trees marked
the site of the several jurisdictions: I find mentioned the scírác,
the hundredes treów and the mearcbeám.

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The description which has been given might seem at first more properly to relate to an abstract political unity than to a real and territorial one: no doubt the most important quality of the Gá or Scír was its power of uniting distinct populations for public purposes: in this respect it resembled the shire, while the sheriff’s court was still of some importance; or even yet, where the judges coming on their circuit, under a commission, hold a shiremoot or court in each shire for gaol-delivery. Yet the Shire is a territorial division[128] as well as an abstract and merely legal formulary, although all the land comprised within it is divided into parishes, hamlets, vills and liberties.

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Footnote 128:

The Gau itself had a mark or boundary. Deut. Rechtsalt. p. 496.

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Strictly speaking, the Shire, apart from the units that make it up, possesses little more land than that which the town-hall, the gaol, or the hospital may cover. When for the two latter institutions we substitute the fortress of the king, and a cathedral, which was the people’s and not the bishop’s, we have as nearly as possible the Anglosaxon shire-property, and the identity of the two divisions seems proved. Just as the Gá (_pagus_) contains the Marks (_vicos_), and the territory of them all, taken together, makes up the territory of the Gá, so does the Shire contain hamlets, parishes and liberties, and its territorial expanse is distributed into them. As then the word Mark is used to denote two distinct things,—a territorial division and a corporate body,—so does the word Gá or Scír denote both a machinery for government and a district in which such machinery prevails. The number of Marks included in a single Gá must have varied partly with the variations of the land itself, its valleys, hills and meadows: to this cause may have been added others arising, to some extent, from the original military organization and distribution, from the personal character of a leader, or from the peculiar tenets and customs of a particular Mark. But proximity, and settlement upon the same land, with the accompanying participation in the advantages of wood and water, are ever the most active means of uniting men in religious and social communities; and it is therefore reasonable to believe that the influence most felt in the arrangement of the several Gás was in fact a territorial one, depending upon the natural conformation of the country.

Some of the modern shire-divisions of England in all probability have remained unchanged from the earliest times; so that here and there a now existent Shire may be identical in territory with an ancient Gá. But it may be doubted whether this observation can be very extensively applied: obscure as is the record of our old divisions, what little we know, favours the supposition that the original Gás were not only more numerous than our Shires, but that these were not always identical in their boundaries with those Gás whose locality can be determined.

The policy or pedantry of Norman chroniclers has led them to pass over in silence the names of the ancient divisions, which nevertheless were known to them[129]. Wherever they have occasion to refer to our Shires, they do so by the names they still bear; thus Florence of Worcester and William of Malmesbury name, to the south of the Humber, Kent, Wiltshire, Berkshire, Dorset, Sussex, Southampton, Surrey, Somerset, Devonshire, Cornwall, Gloucester, Worcester, Warwick, Cheshire, Derby, Stafford, Shropshire, Hereford, Oxford, Buckingham, Hertford, Huntingdon, Bedford, Northampton, Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham, Cambridge, Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex, comprising with Middlesex thirty-two of the shires, out of forty into which England is now distributed.

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Footnote 129:

“Et ne longum faciam, sigillatim enumeratis provinciis quas
vastaverunt, hoc sit ad summam complecti, quod, cum numerentur in
Anglia triginta duo pagi, illi iam sedecim invaserant, quorum nomina
propter barbariem linguae scribere refugio.” Will. Malm., Gest. Reg.
lib. ii. § 165.

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Yet even these names and divisions are of great antiquity: Asser, in his life of Ælfred, mentions by name, Berkshire, Essex, Kent, Surrey, Somerset, Sussex, Lincoln, Dorset, Devon, Wiltshire and Southampton, being a third of the whole number: unfortunately, from his work being composed in Latin and his consequent use of _paga_, we cannot tell how many of these divisions were considered by him as Scír.

The Saxon Chronicles, during the period anterior to the reign of Ælfred, seem to know only the old general divisions: thus we have Cantwara land, Kent[130]; Westseaxan, Súðseaxan, Eástseaxan, Middleseaxan, Wessex, Sussex, Essex, Middlesex: Eástengle, Eastanglia: Norðanhymbra land, Súðanhymbra land, Myrcna land, Northumberland, Southumberland, Mercia: Lindisware and Lindisse, Lincolnshire: Súðrige, Surrey; Wiht, the Isle of Wight; Hwiccas, the Hwiccii in Gloucestershire and Worcestershire[131]; Merscware, the people of Romney Marsh: Wilsætan, Dornsætan and Sumorsætan, Wiltshire, Dorsetshire and Somersetshire[132]. But after the time of Ælfred, the different manuscripts of the Chronicles usually adopt the word Scír, in the same places as we do, and with the same meaning. Thus we find, Bearrucscír, Bedanfordscír, Buccingahámscír, Defenascír, Deórabyscír, Eoforwícscír, Gleáwanceasterscír, Grantabrycgscír, Hámtúnscír (Southampton), Hámtúnscír (Northampton), Heortfordscír, Herefordscír, Huntandúnscír, Legeceasterscír, Lindicolnascír, Oxnafordscír, Scrobbesbyrigscír (but also Scrobsetan), Snotingahámscír, Stæffordscír, Wæringwícscír or Wæringscír, Wigraceasterscír, and Wiltunscír: Middelseaxe, Eástseaxe, Súðseaxe, Súðrige and Cent remain: Eástengle is not divided into Norfolk and Suffolk. Thus, out of the thirty-two shires south of the Humber, which Florence and William of Malmesbury mention, the Chronicles note twenty-six, of which twenty-one are distinguished as _shires_ by the word scír.

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Footnote 130:

The division of Kent into Eást Centingas and West Centingas is
retained by the charters till late in the eleventh century.

Footnote 131:

“Cirrenceaster adiit, qui Britannice Cairceri nominatur, quae est in
meridiana parte Huicciorum.” Asser, Vit. Ælfr. an. 879.

Footnote 132:

Where the country is considered as a territorial division, rather than
with reference to the race that possesses it, instead of sætan or
setan, _the settlers_, we have sæte, _the land settled_; thus
Sumorsæte. So Eástseaxe for Eástseaxan or Eástseaxna land; Cent for
Centingas or Cantware; Lindisse for Lindisware.

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In Beda nothing of the kind is to be found: the general scope of his Ecclesiastical History rendered it unnecessary for him to descend to minute details, and besides the names of races and kingdoms, he mentions few divisions of the land. Still he notices the Provincia Huicciorum: the Middelangli or Angli Mediterranei, a portion of the Mercians: the Mercii Australes and Aquilonales: the Regio Sudergeona or Surrey: the Regio Loidis or Elmet near York: the Provincia Meanwarorum, or Hundreds of East and West Meon in Southampton; the Regio Gyrwiorum in which Peterborough lies, and distinct from this, the Australes Gyrwii or South Gyrwians.

The Appendix to the Chronicles of Florence of Worcester supplies us with one or two names of small districts, not commonly found in other authors. One of these is the Mercian district of the Westangles or West Hecan, ruled over by Merewald; in whose country were the Mægsetan, or people of Hereford, who are sometimes reckoned to the Hwiccas, or inhabitants of Worcester and Gloucester[133]. Another, the Middleangles, had its bishopric in Leicester: the Southangles, whose bishop sat at Dorchester in Oxfordshire, consequently comprised the counties down to the Thames. The Northangles or Mercians proper had their bishop in Lichfield. Lastly it has been recorded that Malmesbury in Wiltshire was in Provincia Septonia[134].

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Footnote 133:

“Civitas Wigornia ... et tunc et nunc totius Hwicciae vel Magesetaniae
metropolis extitit famosa.” App. Flor. Wigorn., Episc. Hwicciorum.

Footnote 134:

Vit. Aldh. Whart. Ang. Sacr. ii. 3, and MS. Harl. 356; but the
autograph MS., Ed. Hamilton in Rolls Series, reads rightly _Saxonia_.

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But we are not altogether without the means of carrying this enquiry further. We have a record of the divisions which must have preceded the distribution of this country into shires: they are unfortunately not numerous, and the names are generally very difficult to explain: they have so long become obsolete, that it is now scarcely possible to identify them. Nor need this cause surprise, when we compare the oblivion into which they have fallen with the sturdy resistance offered by the names of the Marks, and their long continuance throughout all the changes which have befallen our race. The Gás, which were only political bodies, became readily swallowed up and lost in shires and kingdoms: the Marks, which had an individual being, and as it were personality of their own, passed easily from one system of aggregations to another, without losing anything of their peculiar character: and at a later period it will be seen that this individuality became perpetuated by the operation of our ecclesiastical institutions.

A very important document is printed by Sir Henry Spelman in his Glossary, under the head _Hida_. In its present condition it is comparatively modern, but many of the entries supply us with information obviously derived from the most remote antiquity, and these it becomes proper to take into consideration. The document seems to have been intended as a guide either to the taxation or the military force of the kingdom, and professes to give the number of hides of land contained in the various districts. It runs as follows[135]:

Hydas. Hydas.
Myrcna _continet_ 30000 Lindesfarona 7000
Wokensetna 7000 Súð Gyrwa 600
Westerna 7000 Norð Gyrwa 600
Pecsetna 1200 Eást Wixna 300
Elmedsetna 600 West Wixna 600
Spalda 600 Unecunga 1200
Wigesta 900 Arosetna 600
Herefinna 1200 Fearfinga 300
Sweordora 300 Belmiga 600
Eysla 300 Wiðeringa 600
Hwicca 300 Eást Willa 600
Wihtgara 600 West Willa 600
Noxga gá 5000 Eást Engle 30000
Ohtga gá 2000 Eást Seaxna 7000
Hwynca 7000 Cantwarena 15000
Cilternsetna 4000 Súð Seaxna 7000
Hendrica 3000 West Seaxna 100000[136]

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Footnote 135:

I have not adhered strictly to Spelman’s copy, the details of which
are in several cases incorrect, but have collated others where it
seemed necessary.

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The entries respecting Mercia, Eastanglia and Wessex could hardly belong to any period anterior to that of Ælfred. For Mercia previous to the Danish wars must certainly have contained more than 30,000 hides: while Eastanglia cannot have reached so large a sum till settled by Guðorm’s Danes: nor is it easy to believe that Wessex, apart from Kent and Sussex, should have numbered one hundred thousand in the counties of Surrey, Hampshire, Dorset, Wiltshire, with parts of Berkshire, Somerset and Devon, much before the time of Æðelstán[137]. A remarkable variation is found between the amounts stated in this list and those given by Beda, as respects some of the entries: thus Mercia, here valued at 30,000 hides, is reckoned in the Ecclesiastical History at 12,000 only[138]: Hwiccas are reckoned at 300: they contained 600 hides; Wight, reckoned at 600, contained 1200. On the other hand Kent and Sussex are retained at the ancient valuation.

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Footnote 136:

The total sum thus reckoned is 243,600 hides.

Footnote 137:

About the year 647, Wessex numbered only 9000 hides.

Footnote 138:

The twelve thousand hides counted by Beda (Hist. Eccl. iii. 24) to the
South and North Mercians may however be exclusive of the Westangles
and other parts of the great Mercian kingdom.

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It is nevertheless impossible to doubt that the greater number of the names recorded in this list are genuine, and of the highest antiquity. A few of them can be recognized in the pages of very early writers: thus Gyrwa, Elmet, Lindisfaran, Wihtgare, and Hwiccas, are mentioned by Beda in the eighth century. Some we are still able to identify with modern districts.

Mercia I imagine to be that portion of Burgred’s kingdom, which upon its division by the victorious Danes in 874, they committed as a tributary royalty to Ceólwulf; which subsequently came into the hands of Ælfred, by the treaty of Wedmor in 878, and was by him erected into a duchy under his daughter Æðelflǽd, and her husband. Wokensetna may possibly be the Gá of the Wrocensetan, the people about the Wrekin or hill-country of Somerset, Dorset and Devon. The Pecsetan appear to be the inhabitants of the Peakland, or Derbyshire: the Elmedsetan, those of Elmet, the ancient British Loidis, an independent district in Yorkshire: Lindisfaran are the people of Lindisse, a portion of Lincolnshire: North and South Gyrwa were probably in the Mark between Eastanglia and Mercia: as Peterborough was in North Gyrwa land, this must have comprised a part of Northamptonshire: and Æðelðrýð derived her right to Ely from her first husband, a prince of the South Gyrwians; this district is therefore supposed to have extended over a part of Cambridgeshire and the isle of Ely. Spalda may be the tract stretching to the north-east of these, upon the river Welland, in which still lies Spalding. The Hwiccas occupied Worcestershire and Gloucestershire[139], and perhaps extended into Herefordshire, to the west of the Severn. The Wihtgaras are the inhabitants of the Isle of Wight; and the Cilternsetan were the people who owned the hill and forest land about the Chilterns, verging towards Oxfordshire, and very probably in the Mark between Mercia and Wessex.

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Footnote 139:

Cirencester was in the south of the Hwiccas. Gloucester, Worcester,
and Pershore were all in this district. It was separated from
Wiltshire in Wessex by the Thames, and the ford at Cricklade was a
pass often disputed by the inhabitants of the border-lands.

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I fear that it will be impossible to identify any more of these names, and it does not appear probable that they supply us with anything like a complete catalogue of the English Gás. Setting aside the fact, that no notice seems to be taken of Northumberland, save the mention of the little principality of Elmet, and that the local divisions of Eastanglia, Kent, Essex, Sussex and Wessex are passed over in the general names of the kingdoms, we look in vain among them for names known to us from other sources, and which can hardly have been other than those of Gás. Thus we have no mention of the Tonsetan, whose district lay apparently upon the banks of the Severn[140]; of the Meanware, or land of the Jutes, in Hampshire; of the Mægsetan, or West Hecan, in Herefordshire; of the Merscware in West Kent; or of the Gedingas, who occupied a tract in the province of Middlesex[141]. Although it is possible that these divisions are included in some of the larger units mentioned in our list, they still furnish an argument that the names of the Gás were much more numerous than they would appear from the list itself, and that this marks only a period of transition.

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Footnote 140:

Cod. Dipl. No. 261.

Footnote 141:

Cod. Dipl. No. 101.

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It is clear that when William of Malmesbury mentions thirty-two shires as making up the whole of England, he intends only England south of the Humber. The list we have been examining contains thirty-four entries; of all the names therein recorded, one only can be shown to lie to the north of that river: from this however it is not unreasonable to suppose that the whole of England is intended to be comprised in the catalogue. Even admitting this, we cannot but conclude that these divisions were more numerous than our shires, seeing that large districts, such as Mercia, Wessex and Eastanglia, are entered only under one general head respectively.

The origin of the Gá in the federal union of two or more Marks is natural, and must be referred to periods far anterior to any historical record: that of the division into Shires, as well as the period at which this arose, are less easily determined. But we have evidence that some division into shires was known in Wessex as early as the end of the seventh or beginning of the eighth century, since Ini provides for the case where a plaintiff cannot obtain justice from his shireman or judge[142]; and the same prince declares that if an ealdorman compounds a felony, he shall forfeit his shire[143]; while he further enacts that no man shall secretly withdraw from his lord into another shire[144]. As it will be shown hereafter that a territorial jurisdiction is inseparably connected with the rank of a duke or ealdorman, I take the appearance of these officers in Mercia, during the same early period, to be evidence of the existence of a similar division there. Its cause appears to me to lie in the consolidation of the royal power. As long as independent associations of freemen were enabled to maintain their natural liberties, to administer their own affairs undisturbed by the power of strangers, and by means of their own private alliances to defend their territories and their rights, the old division into Gás might continue to exist. But the centralization of power in the hands of the king implies a more artificial system. It is more convenient for judicial and administrative purposes, more profitable, and more safe for the ruler, to have districts governed by his own officers, and in which a territorial unity shall supersede the old bonds of kinsmanship: centralization is hardly compatible with family tradition. The members of the Gá met as associated freemen, under the guidance of their own natural leaders, and formed a substantive unit or small state, which might, or might not, stand in relations of amity to similar states. The Shire was a political division, presided over by an appointed officer, forming part only of a general system, and no longer endowed with the high political rights of self-government, in their fullest extent. I can imagine the Gá, but certainly not the Shire, declaring war against a neighbour. As long as the Gá could maintain itself as a little republic, principality, or even kingdom, it might exist unscathed: but as the smaller kings were rooted out, their lands and people incorporated with larger unions, and powerful monarchies rose upon their ruins, it is natural that a system of districts should arise, based entirely upon a territorial division. Such districts, without peculiar, individual character of their own, or principle of internal cohesion, must have appeared less dangerous to usurpation than the ancient gentile aggregations.

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Footnote 142:

Ini, § 8. Thorpe, i. 106.

Footnote 143:

Ini, § 36. Thorpe, i. 124.

Footnote 144:

Ini, § 39. Thorpe, i. 126.

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