35) say expressly that the heretoghs, or dukes, and the sheriffs were chosen by the freeholders in the folk-mote, a county court, which was assembled once a year, and where all the freeholders swore allegiance to the king.] The preambles to all the laws of Ethelbert, Ina, Alfred, Edward the Elder, Athelstan, Edmond, Edgar, Ethelred, and Edward the Confessor; even those to the laws of Canute though a kind of conqueror, put this matter beyond controversy, and carry proofs every where of a limited and legal government.

But who were the constituent members of this wittenagemot has not been determined with certainty by antiquaries.

It is agreed that the bishops and abbots[*] were an essential part; and it is also evident, from the tenor of those ancient laws, that the wittenagemot enacted statutes which regulated the ecclesiastical as well as civil government, and that those dangerous principles, by which the church is totally severed from the state, were hitherto unknown to the Anglo-Saxons.[**] It also appears that the aldermen or governors of counties, who, after the Danish times, were often called earls,[***] [7] were admitted into this council, and gave their consent to the public statutes.

But besides the prelates and aldermen, there is also mention of the wites, or wisemen, as a component part of the wittenagemot; but who these were is not so clearly ascertained by the laws or the history of that period.

The matter would probably be of difficult discussion, even were it examined impartially; but as our modern parties have chosen to divide on this point, the question has been disputed with the greater obstinacy, and the arguments on both sides have become, on that account, the more captious and deceitful.