al allegiance: they are the Witan who
have elected him out of his family (in a few instances they depose
him); they concur in giving laws, they take part in making peace. Now
the bishops take place by their side. They appear with the ealdormen
in the judicial meetings of the counties: if the Gerefa neglects his
duty, it is for them to step in; yet they have also their own
spiritual jurisdiction. It is a spiritual and temporal organisation of
small extent, yet of a certain self-sufficing completeness. Many of
the present shires correspond to the old kingdoms, and bear their
names to this day. The bishops' sees often coincide with the seats of
royalty; for the kings wished each to have a bishop to himself in his
little territory, since they had to endow the bishopric. How many
regulations still in force date from these times!

The Anglo-Saxons always had an immediate and near relation to the
kingdom of the Franks.

It was with the daughter of a Frankish prince that the first impulse
towards conversion came into a Saxon royal house. By the Anglo-Saxons
again the conversion of inner Germany was carried out, in opposition
to the same Scoto-Irish element which they withstood in Britain. Carl
the Great thought it expedient to inform the Mercian King Offa of the
progress of Christianity among the Saxons in Germany: he looked on him
as his natural ally. Both kingdoms had moreover a common interest as
against the free British populations on their western marches, who
were allied with each other across the sea: decisive campaigns of Carl
the Great and King Egbert of Wessex coincide in point of time, and may
have supported each other.

Similarly, we may suppose that Egbert, who lived a number of years as
an exile at Carl's court, and could not have remained uninfluenced by
his mode of government and improved military tactics, was then also
incited and enabled, after his return, to subdue the little kingdoms
and unite them with Wessex: by the side of the 'Francia' of the
continent he created in the island a united 'Anglia.' But still there
subsisted a yet greater difference. Sprung from the stock of Cerdic,
Egbert belonged to the popular royalty which we find throughout at the
head of the invading Germans; he is, so far, more like the
Merovingians whom Carl's predecessors overthrew, than like Carl
himself; and he was almost entirely destitute of that strong
groundwork of military institutions on which the Carolingians
supported