58 English and Continental Backgrounds
first instance for cases of great importance, for example
matters relating to bookland. Of the cases that for
various reasons failed to reach a judgment in the local
courts, those that were allowed to come before the king
were surely not all dealt with by the witan; some prob-
ably came to a smaller group of councillors.1 Despite
high-sounding functions it is to be remembered that the
real power at the centre was the king; the witan's work
was small and distinctly advisory to the end; also that
the whole central power came into little actual contact
with the people. The witan did not have enough to do to
bring about, even in the course of centuries, a self-
conscious development of powers and privileges. It had
4'germs which seemed fruitful enough in the seventh cen-
tury/' but they failed to develop. It
omitted to organise itself as an independent institution, to
determine rules as to who should be summoned and how, or
when and where a meeting should take place, to fix its com-
petence, proceeding, recording, and executive force, and lastly
to limit its sphere over against the rival powers of the king,
court council, and ecclesiastical synod.2
4. The Anglo-Saxon Church. — The Anglo-Saxon
church was in peculiarly close relations with the civil
government, both central and local. It is to account for
and explain these relations that its history is touched upon
here. The kingdoms of the heptarchy were Christianised
in the seventh century by missionaries, largely monastic,
coming either from the continent or from one of the king-
doms that had already received the new religion. It was
the practice of these missionaries to gain first, if possible,
the favour of the king and great men, trusting that the
1 Liebermann (The National Assembly, p. 68) ventures to call such a
group "the king's judicial court, to which the plaintiff could apply who
at home in the local court had not been able to obtain a judgment or its
execution.'1
2 Ibid., p. 89.