Still I do not think that in general the choice of the witan could be a capricious or an unconditional one. There must have been in every shire certain powerful families from whose members alone the selection could be made; the instincts of all aristocracies, as well as the analogy of other great Anglosaxon dignities, render it certain that the ealdormannic families, as a general rule, retained this office among themselves, although the particular one from which the officer should at any given time be taken were left undecided, for the determination of the Witan. It was almost necessary policy to place at the head of the county one of the most highly connected, trustworthy, powerful and wealthy of its nobles,—less necessary, however usual, _now_ than then, when the functions of the Lord Lieutenant and the High Sheriff were united in the same person. It even appears probable, although the difficulty of tracing the Anglosaxon pedigrees prevents our asserting it as a positive fact, that the ducal families were in direct descent from the old regal families, which became mediatized, to use a modern term, upon the rise of their more fortunate compeers. We know this to have been the case with Æðelred, duke and viceroy of Mercia under Ælfred and Eádweard. In the ninth century we find Oswulf, ealdorman of East Kent, calling himself “Dei gratia dux;” and Sigewulf and Sigehelm, who appear in the tenth also among the dukes of Kent, were very probably descendants of Sigeræd, a king of that province. The new Constitution introduced by Cnut reduced the ealdorman to a subordinate position: over several counties was now placed one eorl, or earl, in the northern sense a jarl, with power analogous to that of the Frankish dukes. The word ealdorman itself was used by the Danes to denote a class, gentle indeed, but very inferior to the princely officers who had previously borne that title: it is under Cnut, and the following Danish kings that we gradually lose sight of the old ealdormen; the king rules by his earls and his Húscarlas, and the ealdormen vanish from the counties. From this time the king’s writs are directed to the earl, the bishop and the sheriff of the county, but in no one of them does the title of the ealdorman any longer occur; while those sent to the towns are directed to the bishop and the portgeréfa or præfect of the city. Gradually the old title ceases altogether except in the cities, where it denotes an inferior judicature, much as it does among ourselves at the present day. CHAPTER V. THE GERÉFA.