Villainage in England. Paul Vinogradoff
is not for a lawyer's acuteness and precision that one has to look in Kemble's book: important distinctions very often get blurred in his exposition, and though constantly protesting against abstract theories and suppositions not based on fact, he indulges in them a great deal himself. Still Kemble's work was very remarkable: his extensive, if not very critical study of the charters opened his eyes to the first-rate importance of the law of real property in the course of medieval history: this was a great step in advance of Palgrave, who had recognised law as the background of history, but whose attention had been directed almost exclusively to the formal side—to judicial institutions. And Kemble actually succeeded in bringing forward some of the questions which were to remain for a long time the main points of debate among historians.
K. Maurer.
The development of the school was evidently to proceed in the direction of greater accuracy and improved methods. Great service has been done in this respect by Konrad Maurer[21]. He is perhaps sometimes inclined to magnify his own independence and dissent from Kemble's opinions, but he has undoubtedly contributed to strengthen and clear up some of Kemble's views, and has gone further than his predecessor on important subjects. He accepts in the main Kemble's doctrines as to the Mark, the allotment of land, the opposition of folkland and book-land, and expounds them with greater fulness and better insight into the evidence. On the other hand he goes his own way as to the Gesíðs (Gefolgschaft), and the part played by large estates in the political process. Maurer reduces the importance of the former and lays more stress on the latter than Kemble[22]. Altogether the German scholar's investigations have been of great moment, and this not only for methodical reasons, but also because they lead to a complete emancipation of the school from Eichhorn's influence.
Freeman.
As to the Conquests, Germanist views have been formulated with great authority by Freeman. A comparison of the course of development in Romance countries with the history of England, and a careful study of that evidence of the chronicles which Kemble disregarded, has led the historian of the Norman Conquest to the conclusion, that the Teutonic invaders actually rooted out most of the Romanised Celtic population of English Britain, and reduced it to utter insignificance in those western counties where they did not destroy it. It is the only inference that can be drawn from the temporary disappearance of Christianity, from the all but complete absence of Celtic and Latin words in the English tongue, from the immunity of English legal and social life from Roman influence. The Teutonic bias which was given to the history of the island by the Conquest of Angles and Saxons has not been altered by the Conquest of the Normans. The foreign colouring imparted to the language is no testimony of any radical change in the internal structure of the people: it remained on the surface, and the history of the island remained English, that is, Teutonic. Even feudalism, which appears in its full shape after William the Bastard's invasion, had been prepared in its component parts by the Saxon period. In working out particulars Freeman had to reckon largely with Kemble's work and to strike the balance between the conflicting and onesided theories of Thierry and Palgrave. Questions of legal and social research concern him only so far as they illustrate the problem of the struggle and fusion of national civilisations. His material is chiefly drawn from chronicles, and the history of external facts of war, government, and legislation comes naturally to the fore. But all the numberless details tend towards one end: they illustrate the Teutonic aspect of English culture, and assign it a definite place in the historical system of Europe.
Stubbs.
Stubbs' 'Constitutional History,' embracing as it does the whole of the Middle Ages, is not designed to trace out some one idea for the sake of its being new or to take up questions which had remained unheeded by earlier scholars. Solid learning, critical caution and accuracy are the great requirements of such an undertaking, and every one who has had anything to do with the Bishop of Oxford's publications knows to what extent his work is distinguished by these qualities. If one may speak of a main idea in such a book as the Constitutional History of a people, Stubbs' main idea seems to be, that the English Constitution is the result of administrative concentration in the age of the Normans of local self-govermment formed in the age of the Saxons. This conclusion is foreshadowed in Palgrave's work, but what appears there as a mere hypothesis and in confusion with all kinds of heterogeneous elements, comes out in the later work with the overwhelming force of careful and impartial induction. Stubbs' point of view is a Germanist one. The book begins with an estimate of Teutonic influence in the different countries of Europe, and England is taken in one sense as the most perfect manifestation of the Teutonic historical tendency. The influx of Frenchmen and French ideas under William the Conqueror and after him had important effects in rousing national energy, contributing to national unification, settling the forms of administration and justice, but at bottom there remained the Teutonic character of the nation. The 'Constitutional History' approaches the question of the village community, but its object is strictly limited to the bearing of the problem on general history and to the testimony of direct authority. It starts from the community in land as described by Cæsar and Tacitus, and notices that Saxon times present only a few scattered references to communal ownership. Most of the arable land was held separately, but the woods, meadow, and pasture still remained in the ownership of village groups. The township with its rights and duties as to police, justice, and husbandry was modified but not destroyed by feudalism. The change from personal relations to territorial, and from the freedom of the masses to their dependency, is already very noticeable in the Saxon period. The Norman epoch completed the process by substituting proprietary rights in the place of personal subordination and political subjection. Still even after conquest and legal theory had been over the ground, the compact self-government of the township is easily discernible under the crust of the manorial system, and the condition of medieval villains presents many traces of original freedom.
Gneist.
Gneist's work is somewhat different in colouring and closely connected with a definite political theory. Tocqueville in France has done most to draw attention to the vital importance of local self-government in the development of liberal institutions; and Stubbs' history goes far to demonstrate Tocqueville's general view by a masterly statement as to the origins of English institutions. In Gneist's hands the doctrine of decentralisation assumes a particular shape by the fact that it is constructed on a social foundation; the German thinker has been trying all along to show that the English influence is not one of self-government only, but of aristocratical self-government. The part played by the gentry in local and central affairs is the great point of historical interest in Gneist's eyes. Even in the Saxon period he lays stress chiefly on the early rise of great property, and the great importance of 'Hlafords' in social organisation. He pays no attention to the village community, and chiefly cares for the landlord. But still even Gneist admits the original personal freedom of the great mass of the people, and his analysis of the English condition is based on the assumption, that it represents one variation of Teutonic development: this gives Gneist a place among the Germanists, although his views on particular subjects differ from those of other scholars of the same school.[23]
The Mark system.
Its chief representatives have acquired such a celebrity that it is hardly necessary to insist again, that excellent work has been done by them for the study of the past. But the direction of their work has been rather one-sided; it was undertaken either from the standpoint of political institutions or from that of general culture and external growth; the facts of agriculture, of the evolution of classes, of legal organisation were touched upon only as subsidiary to the main objects of general history. And yet, even from the middle of the century, the attention of Europe begins to turn towards those very facts. The 'masses' come up with their claims behind the 'classes,' the social question emerges in theory and in practice, in reform and revolution; Liberals and Conservatives have to reckon with the fact that the great majority of the people are more excited, and more likely to be moved by the problems of work and wages than by problems of political influence. The everlasting, ever-human struggle for power gets to be considered chiefly in the light of the distribution of wealth; the distribution of society into classes and conditions appears as the connecting link between the economical process and the political process. This great change in the aspect of modern life could not but react powerfully on the aspect of historical literature. G.F. von Maurer and Hanssen stand out as the main initiators of the new movement in our studies. The many volumes