Editing Witan (section)

==Historiography==
The "Saxon myth" claimed that the old Saxon witan was the representative assembly of English landholders until disbanded by the Norman invaders and that it reemerged as the [[Parliament of England]]. This idea was held across the [[Thirteen Colonies]] in North America in the years prior to the [[American Revolution]] (1776–1783). Among the believers were [[Thomas Jefferson]] and [[Jonathan Mayhew]].{{Sfn|Middlekauff|2005|p=124}} The [[Whig historians]] of the 19th century were concerned with explaining the evolution of the [[Constitution of the United Kingdom|English constitution]], and they found in the witan a proto-parliament or in the words of [[Felix Liebermann]], "one of the lineal ancestors of the British Parliament".<ref>{{harvnb|Liebermann|1913|p=1}} quoted in {{harvnb|Roach|2013|p=1}}.</ref> 

After World War I, historians such as [[Frank Stenton]] and [[Dorothy Whitelock]] shifted their focus to understanding the Anglo-Saxon period on its own terms. In his 1943 ''Anglo-Saxon England'', Stenton chose to use the term "King's Council" in place of ''witan'' and ''witenagemot''. This change in terminology signalled an important change in the way Anglo-Saxon political assemblies were perceived. Instead of proto-parliaments, the assemblies were essentially royal institutions. Other historians followed Stenton's lead.{{Sfn|Roach|2013|p=3}} 

Scholars such as Stenton have noted that the witenagemot was in many ways different from the future institution of the Parliament of England; it had substantially different powers and some major limitations, such as a lack of a fixed procedure, schedule, or meeting place.{{Sfn|Lapidge|2002|p=257}} In his 1995 biography of [[Alfred the Great]], historian David Sturdy argues that the witan did not embody modern notions of a "national institution" or a "democratic" body. He writes, "[[Victorian era|Victorian]] notions of a national 'witan' are crazy dreams without foundation, myths of a 'democratic parliament' that never was."{{sfn|Sturdy|1995|p=124}}

While many modern historians avoid the terms ''witan'' and ''witenagemot'', few would go as far as Geoffrey Hindley, who described ''witenagemot'' as an "essentially Victorian" coinage.{{sfn|Hindley|2006|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.{{sfn|Yorke|2014|p=126}} Maddicott regarded the word ''witan'' with suspicion, even though it is used in sources such as the ''[[Anglo-Saxon Chronicle]]''. In his study of the origins of the English parliament, he generally preferred the more neutral word "assembly":{{sfn|Maddicott|2010|p=4}} 

{{blockquote|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?}}

[[Henrietta Leyser]] commented in 2017 that for decades historians avoided using the word ''witan'' for assemblies in case they were interpreted as proto-parliaments, and she went on: "Recent historiography, however, has reintroduced the term since it is clear that it was generally accepted that certain kinds of business could only be transacted with a substantial number of the king's wise men, in other words, in the company of his 'witan{{'"}}. She does not mention the term ''witenagemot''.{{sfn|Leyser|2017|p=117}}