provinces, made without the sanction of any public authority. The fame of Valdemar II., as a legislator, rests on a more solid foundation. His views probably extended to the formation of a general code for the whole kingdom; but they were overruled by the invincible attachment of the people of Scania and Zealand to their local customs and usages. Beside these customary or unwritten laws, the retainers of the king's court, or witherlagamenn, had their own peculiar code, established in the time of Canute the Great, by which they were judged in the court of the palace by a jury of their fellows. The royal guilds, or fraternities, were also privileged to be judged by their own by-laws. The cities were already endowed with municipal privileges, one of the principal of which was to be entirely exempt from the jurisdiction of the king's courts. The clergy had also asserted a complete exemption from the secular jurisdiction. The Roman civil law had been introduced into Denmark by the ecclesiastics and others who had studied at Paris and Bologna, and the confusion produced by the multitude of local customs and royal ordinances was thus increased by the introduction of another and a foreign code. To remedy the evils flowing from this confused and contradictory legislation, Valdemar convened at Vordingborg, in 1240, a national assembly of the "Dannehof," or general diet, consisting of the princes, prelates, and other great men of the kingdom. Here was promulgated what is called by the Danish jurists the Jutland Law, but which was intended as a uniform code for the whole kingdom. It was received in Zealand and Scania as supplementary to their own provincial customs, which had long before been reduced to a written text: but it prevailed for several centuries in Jutland, Fionia, and the duchy of Sleswig, and though superseded in the former province by the general code of Christian V., it still continues to form a part of the law now subsisting in the duchy of Sleswig.

The Jutland law recognized the old division of the kingdom into small maritime districts for military defence, and for the equipment of naval expeditions beyond sea. Each of these territorial districts, or rather its principal port, was called Styreshavn, and the officer to whom the command of the local force was confided, Styresmand. Every such district was obliged to furnish a barque containing twelve rowers and the steersman, with a manat-arms and archer. These formed what may be called the maritime militia. The vessels of a larger size were built and equipped by the king himself, or furnished by the opulent bishops and other magnates, or by the maritime associations at Röskilde and other ports, to cruise against the Wend pirates. The landholders of the district, possessing lands of the value of two marcs of silver, were

bound to furnish one man, and those of the value of a marc of gold eight men, for the equipment, each armed with a helmet, and furnished with thirty-six arrows; still the other freemen were compelled to serve personally in rotation. Freemen capable of bearing arms were permitted to be furnished as substitutes.

The origin of the feudal nobility in Denmark is commonly attributed to a perversion of this institution, intended for the defence of the kingdom. The kings were accustomed to grant permission to such of their magnates or courtiers as they wished to favour, to erect these maritime districts into hereditary fiefs, exempted from the primitive obligation of contributing to the equipment of a naval force. The feudal nobles thus created were called Herremænd. This peculiar privilege was gradually extended to the monasteries and prelates, who, with their vassals, were in like manner exempted from the same obligation. The free peasants, who, like the franklins of England, were originally independent landed proprietors, having an equal voice in the public assembly or "lands-thing" of the province with the first nobles in the land, were thus compelled to seek the protection of these powerful lords, and to become the vassals of some neighbouring "herremand," or prelate, or convent. The provincial "lands-thing," in which the kings were from time immemorial elected, and the laws of the kingdom publicly promulgated, were gradually superseded by the general national parliament of the Dannehof, Adel-thing, or Herredage: the latter being exclusively composed of the princes, prelates, and other great men of the kingdom. The free peasantry gradually ceased to participate, whilst the burghers had not yet obtained a share, in political power. The constitution of the state, though irregular, fluctuating, and to a certain degree undefined, like that of all imperfectly civilized communities, was rapidly approaching the form which it ultimately assumed, that of a feudal and sacerdotal oligarchy. The authority of the kings, indeed, in the time of the Valdemars, still continued very considerable, and was augmented by their foreign expeditions and conquests, and by the attempts they made to establish something like a regular hereditary succession to the crown. Thus Valdemar I., during his own lifetime, caused his son Knut VI. to be solemnly crowned and associated in the government. Valdemar II. was designated, during the lifetime of his brother, Knut VI.

as

his successor, and, on the death of the latter, assumed the crown without any formal election. Valdemar II. caused his eldest son, Valdemar III., and on the decease of the latter, his second son, Erik, to be crowned and declared co-regents during his lifetime. The laws newly enacted were promulgated by the king, but the right of the nation to participate in the exercise of legislative

power, was unequivocally acknowleged in the preamble to the Jutland law:

"No man shall (dare to) judge against (or contrary to) the law, which the king gives (issues) and the country receives (admits); but according to that law, the whole land is to be judged and ruled.

"The law which the king gives and the country receives, he (the king) must not (cannot) recall nor alter, but with the consent of the country, unless (the king) acts (will act) openly against God."

The national diet, or parliament, was convened annually at Wyborg, and during the recess of this body the government of the kingdom was administered by the king with the advice of his council (Kongens Raad), composed of the great officers of state and other magnates, without whose consent no important matter could be decided. Justice was administered in all secular affairs by the popular tribunal of the "lands-thing" for each province, and the "herreds-thing" for the smaller districts into which the province was divided for that purpose. The cities had their own municipal courts of peculiar jurisdiction, called the " by-thing," and no burgher could be impleaded in any other place. The local tribunals of the herreds-thing had jurisdiction of small offences and civil controversies, with an appeal to the lands-thing, which had original cognizance of more heinous crimes, such as murder, maiming, and all other cases where at least half the " price," or were, for homicide was payable, as a pecuniary satisfaction for the offence. Valdemar had already abolished the ordeal ferri candentis in Scania, and there are no traces in the Jutland code of that mode of procedure, or of trial by battle. The law merely required the complainant to support the accusation by his own oath, and that of his compurgators, or by evident facts manifesting the corpus delicti. This having been done, the trial proceeded before certain jurors called Norvinger, except in the very few cases where the defendant was allowed to wage his law, or purge himself by his own oath, and the testimony of a certain number of compurgators. These jurors were selected from the "thing-mænd," or freemen of the vicinage qualified to attend the herreds-thing, a majority of whom determined the verdict, and in case of equal division of opinions, other jurors were added from the next adjoining district. Beside these popular juries, there were other inquests held in the district, by the king's bailiffs, assisted by sworn interpreters called Sandemande.

Valdemar's son, Erik, was assassinated at the instigation of his brother Abel, (1250), who caused his own succession to be confirmed according to the ancient custom, which had for some time fallen into disuse, by all the freemen assembled in the different provincial lands-thing. This king held a Dannehof at Rendsburg,

where the old law of the kingdom was renewed, requiring a national diet to be convened annually at Wyborg. At the same Dannehof, Abel's eldest son, Valdemar, who was then pursuing his studies at Paris, was designated as his successor, to the exclusion of the king's brother Christopher, who claimed the crown in preference to his brother's children under the "old law," which had been observed in the case of the sons of Svend Estrithson. It was probably with a view to strengthen his interest with the nation, and to secure the crown for himself and his children, rather than from any enlarged views of policy, that Abel gave at this time the first example of summoning the representatives of the principal cities and towns to attend the national parliament. From this period they became indispensable members, at least of that species of national assembly called the Rigsdage or Dannehof, consisting of the three estates of the realm-the clergy, nobility, and commons. The latter were entirely excluded from the Herredage, which was composed of the nobles and prelates alone. Municipal corporations had existed in Denmark from a very early period. There is reason to believe that the royal residence and episcopal see of Röskilde; Ringsted, also for a long period the principal residence and burial-place of the Danish kings; and Vertved, the seat of a famous monastery, were all possessed of extensive municipal privileges about the commencement of the twelfth century. Sleswig is mentioned in the account given to King Alfred by the Norwegian navigator Other of his voyages, as an important commercial town, under the name of Hodeby. After the conversion of the kingdom to Christianity, it became a bishop's see, and the capital of South Jutland. It was first incorporated by Svend Grathe in 1156 with very extensive immunities, entirely exempting the burghers from the jurisdiction of the king's courts, as well as of the neighbouring tribunal of the Lands-thing. This monarch had probably become acquainted, by his frequent intercourse with Germany, with the organization of municipal corporations in the empire. The charter granted by him to Sleswig subsequently became a model for this species of institution. The augmentation of the royal revenues seems to have been the principal motive which induced the Danish monarchs to create these privileged bodies. The admission of their deputies to a seat in the national council, was a germ of political freedom which possibly might have ripened in a more propitious soil into a House of Commons, the safe depository of the public liberties. But if this institution was really designed with the long-sighted view of creating an effectual check to the overgrown power, wealth, and influence of the nobility and clergy, it proved in the result wholly inadequate for such a pur

pose. The true national commons were the free peasants, the cultivators and proprietors of the soil, who were now rapidly sinking under the overwhelming weight of the feudal and sacerdotal oligarchy, whose galling yoke soon became equally oppressive both to king and people. In 1282, the nobles assembled in a diet at Wyborg, wrested from King Erik Glipping a formal act, defining their privileges and the limits of the royal authority, that served as a model of the capitulations (Haand foestning) which the subsequent Danish monarchs were compelled to sign at the time of their coronation. By the capitulation signed by Christopher II. on his election by the diet at Vyborg, it was declared that the bishops and all other members of holy church should freely enjoy their rights and liberties, property and vassals, as formerly enjoyed by them, and should be entirely exempt from taxes and the secular jurisdiction. That no ecclesiastical person should be arrested, exiled, or deprived of his goods, without the Pope's bull, if a bishop, and if an inferior clerk, by the regular sentence of his canonical judge: that the lords (milites et armigeri) should have a feudal jurisdiction over their vassals to the extent of a fine of three or four marks, according to the local custom of each province: that they should not be constrained to bear arms without the kingdom against their will; and if taken prisoners in war the king should ransom them within the year that the king should not make war without the advice and consent of the prelates and best men of the kingdom (meliores regni): that no German foreigner should be capable of receiving a grant of lands, fiefs, or office in the kingdom: that all the royal castles in North Jutland should be demolished, except Ribe, Kold, and Scanderborg. Nor were the rights of the commons entirely neglected in this great charter. It provided that the burghers should enjoy their free trade, and not be subject to any new toll or tax without the consent of the diet: that the merchants should be repaid the sums borrowed of them by the king or his bailiffs: that the free peasants should be subject to no tax or corvée, contrary to the established laws and customs that a parliament (parliamentum) should be held annually at Wyborg: King Valdemar's law should be confirmed, and not be subject to alteration but by the advice of the "discreet men" of the kingdom. No man should be cited, in the first instance, before the king's court, but first before the Herredsthing of his own bailiwick, and then by appeal before the Landsthing of the province in the king's presence, and if the party was dissatisfied with this second judgment, before the Dannehof, Adels-thing, or "general parliament" (parliamentum generale) of the kingdom. No man should be imprisoned or deprived of