Although the dignified clergy, the ealdormen and geréfan, and the þegnas both in counties and boroughs, appear to have constituted the witena gemót properly so called, there is still reason to suppose that the people themselves, or some of them, were very often present. In fact a system gradually framed as I suppose that of our forefathers to have been, and indebted very greatly to accident for its form, must have possessed a very considerable elasticity. The people who were in the neighbourhood, who happened to be collected in arms during a sitting of the witan, or who thought it worth while to attend their meeting, were very probably allowed to do so, and to exercise at least a right of conclamation[586],—a right which must daily become rarer, as the freemen gradually disappeared, and the number of landowners, dependent upon and represented by lords, as rapidly increased. In conclusion a few passages may be cited, which seem to render it probable that the people, when on the spot, did take some part in the business, as I have already mentioned with respect to the Frankish levies in the Campus Madius of Charlemagne. But it must also be borne in mind that such a case ought to be looked upon as accidental, rather than necessary, and that a meeting of the witan did not require the formality of an acceptance by the people on the spot, to render its acts obligatory. It was enough that the thanes of the gemót should pass, and the thanes of the scír accept the law. Indeed it could not be otherwise; for as the heads of all the more important social aggregations of the free, and the lords whose men were represented by them even in courts of justice, were the members of the gemót, their decisions must have been, strictly considered, the real decisions of the _populus_, or franchise-bearing people. ----- Footnote 586: There is evidence of their doing this on a somewhat less solemn occasion, though perhaps it was a shiremoot. Æðelstán, a duke, booked land to Abingdon, by witness of bishop Cynsige, archbishop Wulfhelm, Hroðweard, and other prelates. The boundaries were solemnly led, and then the assembled bishops and abbots excommunicated any one who should dispossess the monastery: and all the people that stood round about cried “So be it! So be it!” “And cwæð ealle ðæt folc ðe ðǽr embstód, Sý hit swá. Amen. Amen.” “Et dixit onmis populus qui ibi aderat, Fiat, Fiat. Amen.” Cod. Dipl. No. 1129. -----