was paramount. The great king could always wield the Witan as he pleased. His office was, as has been said, elective, but under certain restrictions. It seems to have been regarded as necessary that he should be an Ætheling (or born in legitimate wedlock), and in England. With this limit, and with a certain preference allowed to the eldest son, and to the one whom the dying king nominated, the choice of the Witan was free; and, practically, the prince of the royal house best fitted for the immediate circumstances of the kingdom was chosen. Thus the king’s brother was sometimes chosen instead of his son, who, in his turn, might succeed his uncle to the exclusion of his uncle’s children. This preference for the best man over the nearest relative continued after the Conquest, and renders erroneous the appellation of usurper when applied to the early Norman kings. The arrangements of finance, as far as they can be understood, were very simple. Upon every citizen, whether agricultural or urban, there was laid a _trinoda necessitas_, that is to say, the duty of serving in war, the repair of bridges and public roads, and the maintenance of fortifications. It is plain, therefore, that the wants of the crown were chiefly personal, that what we consider the chief expenses of government, justice, maintenance of public works, and military expenditure, were supported by the people themselves, without the interposition of government. The expenses of the crown would be discharged very largely from the public property or folcland reserved to the nation, and from such taxes as were rendered necessary from time to time to support the grandeur and hospitality of the king as national representative. [Sidenote: Police.] The system of police was based on the idea of mutual responsibility. Frankpledge or _frithbohr_, by which is meant the division of the country into sections of ten men mutually responsible for one another, cannot be proved to have existed before the Conquest. On the other hand, its principle no doubt existed. Every man, by the law of Cnut, was bound to be in a Hundred and a _tithing_. This latter term cannot be accurately defined, but it was a subdivision of the Hundred. By the laws of Æthelstan and Eadgar every landless man was compelled to have a lord to answer for him in the courts, and every man a surety to answer for him if he were absent when legally required.