its modern sound, has greater value.  A King of the English can do nothing without the consent of his Witan.  They gave him the kingdom; without their consent, he cannot resign it or dismember it or agree to hold it of any man; without their consent, he cannot even marry a foreign wife.  Or he answers that the daughter of William whom he promised to marry is dead, and that the sister whom he promised to give to a Norman is dead also.  Harold does not deny the fact of his oath—­whatever its nature; he justifies its breach because it was taken against is will, and because it was in itself of no strength, as binding him to do impossible things.  He does not deny Edward’s earlier promise to William; but, as a testament is of no force while the testator liveth, he argues that it is cancelled by Edward’s later nomination of himself.  In truth there is hardly any difference between the disputants as to matters of fact.  One side admits at least a plighting of homage on the part of Harold; the other side admits Harold’s nomination and election.  The real difference is as to the legal effect of either.  Herein comes William’s policy.  The question was one of English law and of nothing else, a matter for the Witan of England and for no other judges.  William, by ingeniously mixing all kinds of irrelevant issues, contrived to remove the dispute from the region of municipal into that of international law, a law whose chief representative was the Bishop of Rome.  By winning the Pope to his side, William could give his aggression the air of a religious war; but in so doing, he unwittingly undermined the throne that he was seeking and the thrones of all other princes.

The answers which Harold either made, or which writers of his time thought that he ought to have made, are of the greatest moment in our constitutional history.  The King is the doer of everything; but he can do nothing of moment without the consent of his Witan.  They can say Yea or Nay to every proposal of the King.  An energetic and popular king would get no answer but Yea to whatever he chose to ask.  A king who often got the answer of Nay, Nay, was in great danger of losing his kingdom.  The statesmanship of William knew how to turn this constitutional system, without making any change in the letter, into a despotism like that of Constantinople or Cordova.  But the letter lived, to come to light again on occasion.  The Revolution of 1399 was a falling back on the doctrines of 1066, and the Revolution of 1688 was a falling back on the doctrines of 1399.  The principle at all three periods is that the power of the King is strictly limited by law, but that, within the limits which the law sets to his power, he acts according to his own discretion.  King and Witan stand out as distinct powers, each of which needs the assent of the other to its acts, and which may always refuse that assent.  The political work of the last two hundred years has been to hinder these direct