The last business of the Anglo-Saxon national assembly was to receive complaints and petitions in denunciation of abuses. It thus became sometimes a judicial court, adjudicating on the appeals of large landowners; but it seldom appears in this character: it was especially a political assembly, whilst, on the Continent, the national assembly frequently acted as a judicial tribunal.
I have now pointed out the various functions of the Wittenagemot, and you have been able, from the acts of that assembly, to form a tolerably accurate idea of it. As regards its convocation, originally its meetings were frequent, but in order not to fatigue its members too much, it became necessary to reduce the meetings to two, held in spring and autumn, as on the Continent. The right of convoking the Wittenagemot became, ere long, one of the prerogatives of the crown. This abandonment of so important a privilege is very characteristic of an age in which political prudence is unknown, and distrust is manifested only at rare intervals, and then by revolt. It seemed natural that the king, the direct centre of all the interests and necessities of the nation, should convoke the assembly for exigencies with which he was better acquainted than any other person; at his death, the large landowners assembled spontaneously, to deliberate on a change of dynasty or the arrangement of the succession.
The inviolability of the members of the Wittenagemot was recognized from the day on which they set out to attend the assembly, till the day on which they returned home again, provided they were not notorious brigands.
Summing up what I have said, the general assembly of the Anglo-Saxons, as of most of the German nations, was, in Germany, composed of every freeman; after the conquest, it consisted only of the landowners; and, towards the end of the monarchy, it was attended by none but the most wealthy proprietors. Each man came in his own right, and on his own behalf; according to a charter of King Athelstane, he might send a proxy in his place. This irrefragable mark of individual right still exists in England. In the House of Peers, every peer may vote by proxy and in his own name. It is from the Wittenagemot, in this last phase of its existence, and from the rights of suzerainty which Norman feudalism conferred on the king over the great barons, who held their titles directly from him, that the English House of Peers, as it now exists, derives its origin. In the Wittenagemot of the last age of the Anglo-Saxon monarchy, we can discern neither of the two elements which composed the House of Commons at a later period. The towns had hardly any existence, and could not, therefore, send deputies: the counties had never sent any. The Wittenagemot was only an assembly of the powerful men of the state, who came on their own account, and in their own personal right. Most other persons neglected rights which were too difficult for them to exercise, and the real impotence of which they felt; by neglecting to exercise them, they eventually lost them; and when the exigencies of liberty occurred to agitate a more advanced and less contented state of society, a new labour was necessary to restore to the citizens, rights which they had allowed to perish, through the want of necessity and capacity.