that the first leaders of the English settlements in Britain, when they came over, bore only the lowlier title of _Heretoga_ or _Ealdorman_; it was only when they had fought battles and found themselves at the head of a powerful and victorious settlement on the conquered soil that they were thought worthy of the higher title of Kings. And we may further believe that, with all their exploits they would not have been thought worthy of it, if they had not been held to come of the blood of the Gods, of the divine stock of Woden. We thus see that kingship in the strict sense of the word, as distinguished from the government of Dukes or Ealdormen, had its beginning among the English in Britain, not in the very first moment of the Conquest, but in the years which immediately followed it, within the lifetime of the first generation of conquerors. The same distinction which we find among the Angles and Saxons we find also among the kindred nations of Scandinavia. When the Danes and Northmen began those invasions which led to such important settlements in Northern and Eastern England, we always find two marked classes of leaders, the Kings and the _Jarls_, the same word as _Eorl_. Of these the _Jarls_ answer to the English _Ealdormen_(40). The distinction is again clearly marked, when we read that the Old-Saxons, the Saxons of the mainland, were ruled, not by Kings, but by what our Latin writer is pleased to call _Satraps_—that is, of course, _Dukes_ or _Ealdormen_(41). But it is most strongly marked of all in several accounts where we read of nations which had been united under Kings falling back again upon the earlier dominion of these smaller local chiefs. Thus the Lombards in Italy, who had been led by Kings to their great conquest, are said for a while to have given up kingly government, and to have again set up a rule of independent Dukes. So the West-Saxons in our own island are said at one time to have cast away kingly government, and to have in the like sort fallen back on the rule of independent _Ealdormen_(42). In all these cases, we should be glad to know more clearly than we do what was the exact distinction between the _King_ and the _Duke_ or _Ealdorman_. But it is plain that the King was the representative of a closer national unity, while the Ealdorman represented the tendency on the part of each tribe or district to claim independence for itself. The government of the Ealdorman may not have been less effective than that of the King. If we remember the distinction drawn by Tacitus as to the respective qualifications for the two offices, we may even believe that the rule of the Ealdorman may have been the more effective. But we may be sure that the Ealdorman was felt to be, in some way or other, less distant from the mass of his people than the King was; the place of King could be held only by one of the stock of Woden; the place of Ealdorman, it would seem, was open to any man who showed that he possessed the gifts