Things of the Northmen, existing and influential assemblies of the people meeting suo jure at stated times, enacting and administering laws, and so interwoven with the whole social and political idiosyncracy of the people, that the state could have no movement or existence but through such assemblies. The Wittenagemoth, as the name implies, appears to have been merely a council of the wise and important men of the country, selected by the king to meet, consult, and advise with him,—which is as different from a Thing as a cabinet council from a parliament. The Northmen who invaded and colonised the kingdom of Northumberland, had entirely expelled other occupants in the 9th century. The Anglo-Saxons had fled before the pagan and barbarous invaders who seized and settled on the lands, and, from the proximity to Norway and Denmark, received a rapid accession to their numbers by the influx of new settlers, as well as by their own increase of population. Normandy was only conquered by the Northmen, but Northumberland was colonised. Their religion, language, and laws were established. They had their own, and not the Anglo-Saxon laws: a proof that they were a population not Anglo-Saxon in their social institutions. This appears from the laws of Edward the Elder, of Alfred himself, and from the treaties of these kings with Guthrun, the leader or chief of the Northmen who then occupied Northumberland. The kingdom of Northumberland, comprehending the present counties of York, Durham, Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmoreland, and parts of Lancashire; East Anglia also, comprehending the Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk; and the country of the former East Saxons, comprehending Essex, Middlesex, and part of Hertfordshire, and also parts of the northern and southern extremities of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia,—were so entirely occupied by Danes, or people
