Читать книгу Magna Carta: A Commentary on the Great Charter of King John. With an Historical Introduction онлайн

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The ties which thus connect King John’s promises of good government with the promises to the same effect made at their coronation by the princes of the old dynasty of Wessex are by no means of an accidental nature. Not only is identity of substance, in part at least, maintained throughout; but the promises were the outcome of an essential feature of the old English constitution—a feature so deeply rooted that it survived the shock of the Norman Conquest. This feature, so fundamental and so productive of great issues, was the elective or quasi-elective nature of the monarchy. During the Anglo-Saxon era, two rival principles, the elective and the hereditary, struggled for the mastery in determining the succession to the Crown. In an unsettled state of society, nations cannot allow the sceptre to pass into the hands of an infant or a weakling. When a king died, leaving a son of tender age, and survived by a brother of acknowledged ability and mature powers, it was only natural that the latter should, in the interests of peace and order, be preferred to the throne. In such cases, the strict principle of primogeniture was not followed. The magnates of the kingdom, the so-called Witan, claimed the right to choose a fitting successor; yet in so doing they usually paid as great regard to the claims of kindred as circumstances permitted. The exact relations between the elective and the hereditary principles were never laid down with absolute precision. Indeed, the want of definition in all constitutional questions was characteristic of the age—a truth not sufficiently apprehended by writers of the school of Kemble and Freeman. The practice usually followed by the Witenagemot was to select as the new ruler some kinsman of the late king standing in close relationship to him, and at the same time competent for the high post. The king-elect thus appointed had, before his title was complete, to undergo a further ceremony: he required to be solemnly anointed by the representative of the spiritual power, and this gave to the Church an important share in deciding who should be king. At an early date—exactly how early is not known, but certainly not later than the days of Edgar—it became the invariable practice for the officiating archbishop to exact an oath of good government from the king-elect before his final coronation. The precise terms of this oath became stereotyped; and, as administered by Dunstan to King Ethelred, they are still extant.^[163]