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Witenagemot
The Witenaġemot (Old English ''witena ġemōt'' modern English "meeting of wise men"), also known as the Witan (more properly the title of its members) was a political institution in Anglo-Saxon England which operated from before the 7th century until the 11th century. The witenagemots did not represent the political will of all England: before the unification of England in the 10th century, separate witenagemots were convened by the Kings of Essex, Kent, Mercia, Northumbria, Sussex and Wessex. The Witenagemot was an assembly of the ruling class whose primary function was to advise the king and whose membership was composed of the most important noblemen in England, both ecclesiastic and secular. The institution is thought to represent an aristocratic development of the ancient Germanic general assemblies, or folkmoots. In England, by the 7th century, these ancient folkmoots had developed into convocations of the land's most powerful and important people, including ealdormen, thegns, and senior clergy, to discuss matters of both national and local importance.
==Terminology==
The terms 'Witan' and 'Witenagemot' are increasingly avoided by modern historians, although few would go as far as Geoffrey Hindley, who described 'witenagemot' as an "essentially Victorian" coinage.〔Hindley, p. 220〕 ''The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England'' prefers 'King's Council', but adds that it was known in Old English as the 'witan'.〔Barbara Yorke in Lapidge et al eds, pp. 125-125〕 John Maddicott regarded the word witan with suspicion, even though it is used in sources such as the ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'':
:But the word carries with it, however unjustifiably, a fustian air of decayed scholarship, and, in addition, its use may seem to prejudge the answer to an important question: do we have here an institution, a capitalized 'Witan', as it were, or merely a lower-case ad hoc gathering of the wise men who were the king's councillors?
For these reasons, in his study of the origins of the English parliament, he generally preferred the more neutral word 'assembly'.〔Maddicott, p. 4〕 He described 'witena gemot' as a rare eleventh century usage, with only nine pre-Conquest examples, mainly in the crisis of 1051-52.〔Maddicott, p. 50〕 Patrick Wormald was also sceptical, describing 'witena-gemot' as "a word always rare and unattested before 1035".〔Wormald, ''The Making of English Law'', p. 94〕
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