In order to facilitate reference to the important facts with which this chapter deals, I have added to it a list of witena gemóts, with here and there a few remarks upon the business transacted in them. They do not nearly exhaust the number that must have been held, but still they form a respectable body of evidence; and we may perhaps be justly surprised, not that so little, but that so much has survived. We need not lament that the present forms and powers of our parliament are not those which existed a thousand years ago, as long as we recognize in them only the matured development of an old and useful principle. We shall not appeal to Anglosaxon custom to justify the various points of the Charter; but we may still be proud to find in their practice the germ of institutions which we have, throughout all vicissitudes, been taught to cherish as the most valuable safeguards of our peace as well as our freedom. Truly there are few nations whose parliamentary history has so ample a foundation as our own. THE WITENA GEMÓTS OF THE SAXONS. ---------- ÆÐELBERT OF KENT, A.D. 596-605.—The promulgation of the laws of Æðelberht took place during the life of Augustine. This fixes their date between 596, when he arrived in England, and 605, when he died. Beda tells us that these laws were enacted by the advice of the witan, “cum consilio sapientium[594].” We may therefore conclude that a gemót was held in Kent for the purpose: and from the contents of the laws themselves, it is obvious that the Roman clergy filled an important place therein. They had probably stepped into the position of the Pagan priesthood, and improved it. ----- Footnote 594: Hist. Eccl. ii. 5. -----