Much less can we admit that there was any central political authority, recognized, systematic and regulated, by which the several kingdoms were combined into a corporate body. There is indeed a theory, respectable for its antiquity, and reproduced by modern ingenuity, according to which this important fact is assumed, and we are not only taught that the several kingdoms formed a confederation, at whose head, by election or otherwise, one of the princes was placed with imperial power, but that this institution was derived by direct imitation from the custom of the Roman empire: we further learn that the title of this high functionary was Bretwalda, or Emperor of Britain, and that he possessed the imperial decorations of the Roman state[5]. When this discovery was first made I know not, but the most detailed account that I have seen may be given from the, in many respects, excellent and neglected work of Rapin. He tells us[6]:— “The Saxons, Jutes, and Angles, that conquered the best part of Britain, looking upon themselves as one and the same people[7], as they had been in Germany, established a form of government, as like as possible to what they had lived under in their own country. They formed their Wittena-Gemot, or assembly of wise men, to settle the common affairs of the seven kingdoms, and conferred the command of their armies upon one chosen out of the seven kings, to whom, for that reason no doubt, some have given the title of Monarch, on pretence of his having the precedence and some superiority over the rest. But to me that dignity seems rather to have been like that of Stadtholder of the United Provinces of the Low Countries. There was however some difference between the Saxon government in Britain and that in Germany. For instance, in Germany the governor of each province entirely depended on the General Assembly, where the supreme power was lodged; whereas in Britain, each king was sovereign in his own dominions. But notwithstanding this, all the kingdoms together were, in some respects, considered as the same state, and every one submitted to the resolutions of the General Assembly of the Seven Kingdoms, to which he gave his consent by himself or representative.... A free election, and sometimes force, gave the Heptarchy a chief or monarch, whose authority was more or less, according to their strength[8]. For though the person invested with this office had no right to an unlimited authority, there was scarce one of these monarchs but what aspired to an absolute power.” ----- Footnote 5: Palgrave, Anglos. Commonw. i. 562 _seq._ The Roman part of the theory is very well exploded by Lappenberg, who nevertheless gives far too much credence to the rest. Footnote 6: Vol. i. p. 42 of Tindal’s translation. Footnote 7: This seems very doubtful, at least until lapse of years, commerce, and familiar intercourse had broken down the barriers between different races. Footnote 8: