But what did happen in England was that the free man, the man who owned his own piece of land as a freehold, gradually became less free. In the system of tribal government which the Gothic tribes brought westward with them, it had been the custom for the free men of the tribe (the ceorls, or churls) to come {93} together at certain times and pass laws and try cases that arose under the laws. They were called together by the king and by the chief men (the eorls, or earls) and they voted on any subject that came before the assembly. And still, in England, the freemen had the right to come up to the assemblies and vote. But, though the kingdoms were not very large, they were larger, no doubt, than the territories held by the tribes in their Eastern homes. It was a long way for the voters to come to the assemblies. They had their business, as towns began to grow, to occupy them. Perhaps their agriculture, their mill, or their cattle needed their attention. At all events, however it happened, they ceased to go to the assemblies, and the result, of course, was that the king and the earls got more and more of the law-making and of the decision of cases into their own hands, and the ordinary freeman, though still in name free, and still with his right to vote, came to have less and less power and had to obey the decisions of the king and his council of earls more and more. They had no arrangement by which they might make their wishes known at the assembly by means of a representative appointed by themselves, as our voters now are able to make their wishes known by appointing their Member of Parliament and sending him to Westminster to speak for them. In theory all the old English voters were members of their parliament, so to call it. They could all go to it and speak and vote. But, owing to the difficulties of going, and the distance, the result was that they did not go at all, and so had no one to represent their views in the government under which they were supposed to be free, and in which they were all supposed to have an equal share in governing. They continued, however, to have the power to vote in their more local assemblies, in the "hundred court," which was something like an enlarged parish council {94} of a few villages, and in the "shire court," or council of the shire, formed by the union of many villages. How these courts were formed, you shall read in the next chapter. It seems to be rather doubtful whether the people availed themselves much of these powers. They probably became more and more content to leave the business of government to the chief men.