except in very exceptional cases, under the authority of the shire mote. ... Even up to the Norman conquest this change was still going on. To the end, indeed, the old constitutional forms were not broken down. The hundred mote was not abandoned, where freemen enough remained to fill it. Even where all the land of a hundred had passed under the protection of a lord there was little outward change. ... There was thus no actual breach of continuity in the nation. The thegnhood pushed its roots down, as it were, amongst the free classes. Nevertheless there was a danger of such a breach of continuity coming about. The freemen entered more and more largely into a condition of' dependence, and there was a great risk lest such a condition of dependence should become a condition of servitude. Here and there, by some extraordinary stroke of luck, a freeman might rise to be a thegn. But the condition of the class to which he belonged was deteriorating every day. {789} The downward progress to serfdom was too easy to take, and by large masses of the population it was already taken. Below the increasing numbers of the serfs was to be found the lower class of slaves, who were actually the property of their masters. The Witenagemot was in reality a select body of thegns, if the bishops, who held their lands in much the same way, be regarded as thegns. In was rather an inchoate House of Lords, than an inchoate Parliament, after our modern ideas. It was natural that a body of men which united a great part of the wealth with almost all the influence in the kingdom should be possessed of high constitutional powers. The Witenagemot elected the king, though as yet they always chose him out of the royal family, which was held to have sprung from the god Woden. There were even cases in which they deposed unworthy kings." _S. R. Gardiner and J. B. Mullinger, Introduction to the Study of English History, part 1, chapter 2, section 16-21._ ENGLAND: A. D. 975. Accession of the West Saxon king Edward, called The Martyr. ENGLAND: A. D. 979. Accession of the West Saxon king Ethelred, called The Unready. ENGLAND: A. D. 979-1016. The Danish conquest.