It represented the whole English people, as the wise-moots of each kingdom represented the separate peoples of each; and its powers were as supreme in the wider field as theirs in the narrower.
It could elect or depose the King.

To it belonged the higher justice, the imposition of taxes, the making of laws, the conclusion of treaties, the control of wars, the disposal of public lands, the appointment of great officers of state.

But such a meeting necessarily differed greatly in constitution from the Witan of the lesser kingdoms.

The individual freeman, save when the host was gathered together, could hardly take part in its deliberations.

The only relic of its popular character lay at last in the ring of citizens who gathered round the Wise Men at London or Winchester, and shouted their "aye" or "nay" at the election of a king.
Distance and the hardships of travel made the presence of the lesser thegns as rare as that of the freemen; and the national council practically shrank into a gathering of the ealdormen, the bishops, and the officers of the crown.
[Sidenote: Feudalism and the Monarchy] The old English democracy had thus all but passed into an oligarchy of the narrowest kind.