The Aristocracy in the Seventh and Eighth Centuries

by Annie Whitehead

Last time I looked at the social organisation of the seventh century. Now, I'll be examining in more detail the role of the Aristocracy. At this time, a freeman’s value was expressed in terms of wergeld (literally ‘man-money’), the sum with which a feud could be averted. It was more than a man’s price; it determined the scale of compensation due to him for injury, or for the breach of his peace, or injury to his servant’s. It also defined a man’s status in society.

Characteristic terms used of the nobility in 600-735 were eorl and gesith, the former being found in Kentish documents. As well as the gesiths, there were the thegns - servants of the king not yet rewarded with land, or old enough to have received an inheritance. Possession of land often involved service and it is likely that, in the late seventh- century, connection by blood with a kind, service to a king, and particularly service at a royal court were important factors in determining noble status.

Of the principes and comites (gesiths) mentioned by Bede, many were of the royal kin, and most had some service to perform at the royal court. But they were not only courtiers in the literal sense. The famous story of Imma gives real insight into the nature of the nobility of the age.

Bede depicted in the Nurumberg Chronicle

A young man named Imma is struck down in battle, and sets out to find his friends to take care of him. Instead he is found and captured by men of the enemy army and taken to their lord, who is a gesith of the king. Imma is afraid to say that he is a thegn, so he tells his captor that he is a peasant who came to the battlefield only to bring food to the soldiers.

The gesith has his wounds attended to and as Imma begins to recover, the gesith orders him bound at night. After he has been a prisoner for some time, the gesith begins to notice that by Imma’s “appearance, his bearing and his speech that he was not of common stock as he had said, but of noble family.” The gesith calls Imma to one side and asks him to declare his origins, promising that no harm will come to him as long as he is honest. Imma confesses that he is a thegn, and the gesith says, “I realised by every one of your answers that were not a peasant, and now you ought to die because all my brothers and kinsmen were killed in the battle, but I will not kill you for I do not intend to break my promise.”

The first implication of this story is that a social gulf already separated the skilled fighting man from the peasant; manner of speech and knowledge of courteous ways betrayed the man of superior social status. The gesith himself was a significant figure; he was settled on an estate, in command of a powerful section of the royal army, and a victor in battle. He possessed a strong kindred of fighting men, and held the power of life or death over his captives. He was loyal to his oath, even though loyalty meant failure to take the correct vengeance for his kinsmen.

Other references in Bede’s Hist. Eccl. build up a similar picture of the typical powerful noble as a holder of land. When King Sigebert of Essex was assassinated, Bede considered it as just retribution for his failure to correct moral abuses on the part of his two comites (gesiths) who were his kinsmen. He was slain on the ham, that is to say the substantial estate, of one of his comites. In Northumbria two comites are said to have founded churches on their estates. So a picture emerges from the narrative sources of a great nobleman as a powerful military leader, possible of royal kin, settled on an estate, possessing a hall, and surrounded by retainers.

With the conversion to Christianity, the bond between noble and king, originally so much that between household retainer and lord, was knit more strictly by Christian oaths. Kingship developed too, with the king no longer being regarded merely as in the folk, but over the folk. Royal blood and an honourable genealogy were essential for a successful king. Christianity emphasised the value of the blood royal, and established legitimate kingship was accompanied by an established legitimate nobility, and the ability to exercise lordship over freemen developed into the most obvious mark of nobility.

king, saint, and gospel

The law codes surviving from this period give an insight into the position of the nobility in society, and its relationship with the classes beneath it on the social scale. These codes have enough in common to give a picture of aristocratic society in what HR Loyn called an heroic age. Special privileges granted to the nobles included higher payment for infringement of their house peace, of their own personal surety, of the lives and property of their dependants and above all for their own persons.

Clause 50 of Ine of Wessex’s code (688-94) reads:

“If a gesithborn man intercedes with the king or the king’s ealdorman or with the lord for members of his household, slaves or freemen, he the gesith, has no right to any fines, because he would not previously at home restrain them from ill-doing.” 

One thing that may be noted from this is the implication that one gesith may be under another’s lordship. More importantly, it is clear that the state imposed on every lord some responsibility for his men’s behaviour. We are not told how the West Saxon lord exercised his coercive power, but the lord’s right of jurisdiction, with the right in normal circumstances to take a portion of the misdoer’s fine, is clearly visible.

Other illustrations of the lord’s position exist: in seventh-century Kent a noble could clear himself of an accusation by his unsupported oath, while a ceorl would only do so with three of his own class (Whitred19;20). A lord could expect to have the faithful service of his men, and when they died, they were expected to render one final gift: their heriot, (literally ‘army gear’) varied with the status, not of the lord, but of the man.

The duties expected of the nobility extended further than that of keeping their own freemen and dependants under control. The nobility featured strongly in what could loosely be termed as local government, particularly administration and judicial proceedings. The clause in Ine’s code already referred to, has a further implication, which is that the nobleman had the duty of interceding for members of his household in the pubic courts. Knowledge of such public courts is vague. Presumably they owed much of their authority to the dignitary who presided over them – king, ealdorman or great lord. There were matters that demanded interpretation by wise men, by elders of the moots. At the highest level of the kingdom such men were drawn together in an assembly to give special sanction to the promulgations of dooms (judgements, pronouncements.)

the king with his council

The king legislated with the advice of his council, in fact some enactments seem to have gone out in the name of the latter alone. Copies were sent to the ealdormen in charge of the various provinces. These ealdormen were royal officials appointed by the king. Sometimes they were related to the royal house, quite often they belonged to the family that had ruled the province before its absorption into a larger kingdom. According to Dorothy Whitelock, they were most often drawn from the king’s thegns. Within his own area of operations, the ealdorman was the king’s representative. He led the forces of this district in war, and presided at its judicial assembly (as we have already seen). Like the king, he had official estates, and rights of claiming hospitality for his officials and messengers. It has been suggested that the ealdorman had two wergelds: one as his right as a member of society and one for his position as a royal official.

We have seen that the nobility were the top rank in a carefully structured hierarchical society, closely connected to the king by blood, or service. To sum up their functions in society and government, here’s a quote from Whitelock’s The Beginnings of English Society: “From early times kings were in the habit of granting to private landowners, the profits of jurisdiction over their own lands or over their own men, and sometimes over wider areas. This is so already at the date of Ine’s laws.”

The nobleman was a respected member of society, owing service to the king in military, judicial, and administrative capacities. In reward for these services he was given grants of land. His duties involved the lower end of the social scale in that he had an obligation to protect the people under him. The nobleman was a central figure in the social organisation and government of Anglo-Saxon England.

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Annie Whitehead is an author and historian, and a member of the Royal Historical Society. Her first two novels are set in tenth-century Mercia, chronicling the lives of Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, who ruled a country in all but name, and Earl Alvar who served King Edgar and his son Æthelred the Unready who were both embroiled in murderous scandals. Her third novel, also set in Mercia, tells the story of seventh-century King Penda and his feud with the Northumbrian kings. Her history of Mercia will be released by Amberley Publishing in Sep 2018.
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The Social Organisation in the Seventh Century

by Annie Whitehead

The seventh century is a long way away, and elusive in terms of surviving written records. Bede is our major source for historical events, but he tells us little about everyday lives. Most of the information on this subject is found in the law codes of the rulers of Kent – these being Æthelberht, Hlothherre and Eadric, and Wihtred – and the laws of Ine, king of Wessex. These law codes give a relatively comprehensive view of the status and importance of the varying social classes.

Before taking a close look at these, however, a basic introduction to the social system is probably useful, in order to understand the references and terminology used in the law codes.

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Abingdon Manuscript) showing Æthelberht's name

In the eyes of the law, the chief mark which distinguished one class of society from another was the price that had to be paid in compensation for the slaying of one of its members, and this was called the wergeld (or wergild) - literally a man price.

Life in a nobleman’s hall was very like that at court, but on a smaller scale. Like the king, lay and ecclesiastical lords had their officials. All great households included one of more domestic chaplain, whose functions were secretarial as well as religious. Stag-hunting, fox-hunting and hawking were favourite pastimes for kings and nobles.

There is little information about the activities of the women of the class, but we may assume that the mistress of the house supervised the running of it, which would entail baking, brewing, spinning and weaving. An Anglo-Saxon lady could hold land in her own right, and defend her right in the courts.

The ordinary freeman is most commonly called a ceorl. Though he apparently lived at a lower economic level than his Kentish counterpart, the ceorl in the other kingdoms of the heptarchy * was nevertheless a man with the full rights of a freeman, and often held land that he had inherited from his ancestors and would leave to his children, and he paid a freeman’s duties to the church.

The slave had no wergeld. He was a chattel, and if anyone killed him, he had merely to pay his value to the owner. Slaves were sometimes included in inventories of stock. As he had no property, the slave could not be punished by fines when convicted of crime, and was therefore liable to flogging for minor offences, or to mutilation and death for serious offences. If his owner ill-treated him, he incurred ecclesiastical penalties, but it was not the concern of the law.

As mentioned already, most of the law codes pertinent here emanate from Kent, and I'll look first at that of Æthelberht, which can be dated from between the adoption of Christianity in 597 and the king’s death in 616.

Law code of  Æthelberht - 12th Century manuscript

It is clear that the lowest rank was filled by slaves. Some of the female slaves were employed as domestic servants, and penalties for raping them were in proportion not to their feelings but to their master’s rank. Higher values were set on the honour of other slave-women, presumably employed not in the household but on the farm. To distinguish slaves from freeborn women, their hair was cropped. If the male slave stole, he was supposed to have means to pay twice the value of the stolen goods as compensation.

More is said about the esne - a strange word. In other texts the word is used to translate the Latin ‘servus’, and no doubt a taint of servility clung to the esne – at best he was only half-free. He may have had a household of his own, rather than a mere lodging in the outbuilding of his master’s farm.

Another oddity is the læt, who is mentioned only in Æthelberht’s laws. It seems natural to connect him with the laetus of the Roman Empire, where he was a member of a subject people settled on the land in a position intermediate between freemen and slaves.

Next in the social scale is the ceorl, or husbandman. The word tells nothing of the ceorl’s racial origin, nor does it carry any connotation of freedom. He was certainly a commoner, and the clearest indication of his social status is his mundbyrd, the fine payable for an offence against one of his dependents: six schillings, as against twelve schillings for a nobleman, or fifty schillings for the king.

Four classes of widow are distinguished by their mundbyrd, and the grades are presumably determined by the standing of their late husbands (or their brothers). The lowest, six schillings, is identical to the mundbyrd of the ceorl, the highest, fifty schillings, with that of the king. The first class widow would be nobly born, perhaps of the royal house, the twenty schilling widow a non-royal noblewoman, and the twelve schilling one the widow either of a lesser gentleman or a freeman.

Æthelberht says very little about the eorl (nobleman). Twelve schillings is the penalty for slaying a man on the premises of a nobleman and for seducing his domestic slave-woman. This is enough to show that the eorl stands twice as high in social estimation at the ceorl.

Dated between 673 and 685, the laws of Hlothherre and Eadric only supplemented those already in force. Nowhere is it stated that these two ruled jointly, although this was not uncommon.

The code adds little information on the social structure. It speaks of the esne and his owner, who must surrender the esne if he kills a man, and the owner must pay compensation proportionate to the rank of the victim.

Graves of Hlothherre (2nd left) & Wihtred (3rd left) - attribution

The freeman’s home is in a village, or tun. If accused of stealing, he must bring at least one witness from his own village. This probably means that some villages were populated by freemen who acknowledged no superior other than the king, especially when remembering Æthelberht’s laws implying a close relationship between king and freeman.

An important provision relating to the slave or to the servile esne, is that the Church protects him by decreeing that his master may not lawfully deprive him of his money or livestock which he has earned by his own toil.

By the time of Wihtred’s reign, manumission was by now treated as a religious act which could take place at the altar. The code issued by Wihtred in 695, provides that although a man freed at the altar shall be ‘folk-free’ that is, free as against all men except his lord, the lord shall be the guardian of his household even if he is settled elsewhere than on the lord’s estate, and when he dies, his property and wergeld will belong to the lord.

In Wihtred’s laws, the nobleman is styled gesithcundman. He owes his standing partly to his birth, but now the emphasis is on his position as a gesith, or companion to the king. Between him and the slave stands the ceorliscman, or commoner. This term includes freemen, husbandmen, læts, and perhaps the folk-free esne.

The laws of Ine of Wessex were issued at some time between 688 and 694. We owe their survival to their being added as a supplement to the laws of Alfred, who expressly mentions his use of them. It is not safe to assume that they are complete, since presumably Alfred would only have preserved those clauses which were relevant to his own laws, but they are of particular interest, since they are the earliest we possess.

If the slave of Ine’s Wessex has a master who makes him work on Sunday, he is to be set free, but if he works of his own accord, he must be whipped or pay a fine. The freeman who works on a Sunday, however, may be reduced to slavery unless he can pay a heavy fine, or plead to his lord’s command. So it would seem that a Wessex freeman may have a lord set over him.

Peterborough Chronicle, contains the oldest surviving copy of Ine's laws

The esne appears only once in Ine’s codes, where penalties are appointed for anyone who actively helps him to abscond.

Ine’s laws provide a definite place for Britons in the social scheme. The wergeld payable for taking a Welshman’s life is arranged in seven grades: -

• Welsh Slave 50 Schillings
• Landless Welshman 60
• Landless Welshmen with ½ a hide 80
• Son of a Welsh rent payer 100
• Welsh rent payer or landed Welshman with 1 hide 120
• Welsh horseman in the king’s service 200
• Landed Welshman with five hides 600

The hide is a unit of assessment for calculating the payments in money or kind due to the king or other landlord. Ine’s laws throw no light on the method by which the assessment was imposed, or the extent of land which lies behind it.

The Welshman with five hides is clearly a man of substance, but other men, probably English, held as much as ten or twenty hides. The wergeld of a five-hide Welshman is 600 schillings, but we are not told whether the same or a higher compensation is exacted for the murder of a five-hide Saxon.

Here again, the nobleman is styled gesithcundman, and is contrasted with the ceorliscman or commoner. Normally, he is a landholder. He forfeits his land by neglecting military service and has to pay a fine of 120 schillings, twice as much as that paid by a landless man of his own class, four times that paid by a commoner.

Little is known of the other kingdoms. The Northumbrian nobleman was also known as a gesith, a companion of the king, as he was in Mercia. In East Anglia and Essex, there is no reason to suppose that the social systems differed greatly. The collection of tribes known as the Middle Angles may have been governed by ealdormen, as there is no record of a traditional of a royal house. (King Penda of Mercia's son became king of the Middle Angles around the year 653, but this was an appointment, not an inheritance)

In general, what we learn from these law codes it that there seems to be a highly class-conscious society. Around the king stand the nobles, who will be rewarded for service with grants of land. They form a territorial aristocracy supported by rents of the tillers of the soil, whom they are bound to protect and keep in order.

At the other end of the scale are the slaves. Some are Britons serving new masters, and the class is recruited from prisoners of war, convicts and hungry freemen who sell themselves for food.
Of the intermediate class, there is the husbandman, free by birth, accustomed to speaking his mind on public affairs in popular assemblies, and acknowledging no superior but the king.

We hear of the Kentish freeman living in a village, and of the West Saxon ceorl who shares arable and meadow with his neighbours. The husbandman who must hire a yoke of oxen before he can plough is obviously a man of slender resources. There was no such thing as economic independence of these men and, against a lord who could fetch them back and fine them heavily is they absconded, their legal freedom was worth very little.

*heptarchy - the seven kingdoms:  East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Mercia, Northumbria, Sussex and Wessex.

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Annie Whitehead is an author and historian, and a member of the Royal Historical Society. Her first two novels are set in tenth-century Mercia, chronicling the lives of Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, who ruled a country in all but name, and Earl Alvar who served King Edgar and his son Æthelred the Unready who were both embroiled in murderous scandals. Her third novel, also set in Mercia, tells the story of seventh-century King Penda and his feud with the Northumbrian kings. Her nonfiction book, Mercia: The Rise and Fall of a Kingdom, will be released by Amberley Publishing, in Sep 2018.
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Lordship in the Tenth-century – What was its Political and Social Function?

by Annie Whitehead

“No man can make himself king, but the people have the choice to select as king whom they please, but after he is consecrated as king, he then has dominion over the people and they cannot shake his yoke from their neck.”

So said Aelfric of Eynsham, (c955-c1010), and he tells us here of the absolute nature of kingship. The king is the lord of all the English, so if we are to discover the function of lordship, we should begin by examining the role of the king.

King Edgar

By the tenth-century ideas  about the spiritual role of kingship had developed along Carolingian lines. A well-documented example of this is Edgar’s coronation at Bath in 973. One school of thought is that Edgar delayed his coronation until he had reached the canonical age of thirty, but it is unlikely that he could have reigned successfully for so long (he succeeded his brother Eadwig in 959) without having been consecrated earlier in his reign, particularly in view of what Aelfric has to say about consecration. [1]

It is more probable that this coronation was based on the Frankish notion of ‘imperium’, stressing the king’s duty before God. Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, expanded this idea in his Institutes of Polity. His view was that a Christian king should be a just shepherd to his Christian flock, he was to help the righteous and to afflict the evil-doers, especially thieves and robbers. His true function was to purify his people before God and the world. [2]

The mutual obligation between the king and his subjects is illustrated by an incident in Aethelred the Unready’s reign. With the death of Swein Forkbeard, Aethelred was asked to return from exile in Normandy by the Witan (council), who declared that “no lord was dearer to them than their rightful lord, if only he would govern his kingdom more justly than he had done in the past."[3] The king was king, but his subjects would not allow him to neglect his duty to them.

Yet neither would they neglect to exalt a praise-worthy monarch. Florence of Worcester* summed up the virtues of King Edgar thus:-

“In the winter and spring, he used to make progress through all the provinces of England and enquire diligently whether the laws of the land and his own ordinances were obeyed, so that the poor might not suffer wrong and be oppressed by the powerful…Thus his enemies on every side were filled with awe, and the love of those who owed him allegiance was secured.”

There were, of course, more personal relationships, not only between the king and his subjects, but between the lord and his man. The argument continues among historians as to whether pre-conquest England was feudal; suffice to say that there was an English equivalent to the Frankish oath of vassalage, this being the Hold-Oath. The oath was essentially negative, a promise to do nothing to harm the lord. It included a gesture of bowing to the lord. The lord in his turn had certain obligations to his man.

“By the Lord, before whom this hallowed thing is holy, I will be steadfast and true to X, to love all he loves and shun all that he shuns, and never, by will or by thought or by deed do aught of what is loathsome to him, as long as he upholds me as I am willing to earn and fulfil all that our understanding was, when I bowed to him and took his will.” 

Naturally, the king could not rule without counsel. The witenagemot, or witan, was the royal council, and had the right, rather than the privilege, to advise the king. The king’s thegns owed their status and position to the king and were rewarded for their service (the word thegn originally meant servant.) It was usually the king’s thegns who were appointed as reeves, responsible for administration in the localities as a check on the powerful ealdormen.

The king with his witan

The most usual form of reward was that of a land grant. Many charters confirming these land grants still exist, such as King Edgar’s grant of land at Kineton to his thegn Aelfwold in 969. These grants, known as bookland, were not the same as the fief of feudal Frankia. They were granted by the king in the form of a book (charter) for services rendered. Aelfwold was granted the land at Kineton for all his life and could leave it to whomever he chose. The estate was free from all service except “fixed military service and the restoration of bridges and fortresses.”

Many grants were made to the Church, who in turn leased out land in return for service. A good example of this comes from Oswald of Worcester, who lists the service required of the beneficiaries of the land. They should fulfil the law of riding as riding men should, they should pay dues to the Church, swear to be humbly subject to the bishop and lend horses, build bridges, and send hunting spears.

Initially these endowments were made to the Church from the king, and only he could turn folkland into bookland. It soon became, however, the most common way for a lord to reward his man.

A grant by Aethelred the Unready shows how far he was prepared to support his men. His thegn, Aethelwig, gave Christian burial to men killed fighting in defence of a thief. Rather than censure Aethelwig, as Ealdorman Leofsige advised, Aethelred granted his thegn the forfeited land of the brothers who had been killed. [3]

Not all thegns were king’s thegns; many of them had another lord to whom they owed their allegiance. When these thegns died, the heriot (war gear) was surrendered to their lord and not to the king.

Aethelred the Unready

There was another aspect to lordship, an extension of the personal bond into the field of law. In the reign of Edward the Elder (899-924) a letter was written to the king explaining the history of an estate at Fonthill, Wiltshire. It describes how a thief, Helmstan, was required to give an oath to clear himself of the charges brought against him. He asked his lord Ordlaf to intercede for him, which Ordlaf did, even though his man was guilty. [4] This illustrates how a lord was bound to protect his man, whether innocent or guilty. Though the law codes might have forbidden the lord from doing this, often it was more beneficial for a man to appeal to his lord in this way than to appeal in the hundred courts.

By the middle of the tenth-century it was becoming customary for lords, ecclesiastical or lay, to receive grants of jurisdiction from the king. Usually these grants were laid down in the charters as ‘sake and soke’. The term implied jurisdiction and control of a court. It was not granted lightly, and these delegated rights were intended to emphasise rather than undermine royal authority. While the landowner enjoyed immunity from public courts, the court over which he presided was not held for his men, but was attended by men drawn from the neighbourhood.

There was also a much more specific form of private jurisdiction. All lords, be they bishops, earls, thegns or abbots, were held responsible for the behaviour of their men. “Such a responsibility involved an exercise in judgement, which would easily be formalised into the giving of judgement.” (HR Loyn) Fortunately, the monarchy was strong enough to ensure that the worst abuses were avoided.

Along with sake and soke, other judicial rights were specified. ‘Toll’ gave the lord the right to take toll on goods sold within the estate, and ‘team’ gave the right to supervise the presentation of convincing evidence that goods for sale actually belonged to the person selling them. ‘Infangenetheof’ gave the lord the right to hang a thief if he had been caught on the estate with the stolen goods still in his possession. By the end of the period, large numbers of hundred courts were in private hands.

A charter of King Aethelred's to his 'faithful man' 

Lords, of course, had always been involved with the public courts. Earls and bishops presided over the shire courts. It was here that arrangements were made for the collection of taxes. It was in the interests of landowners to be represented, as the king always was by his servant the shire-reeve. It was also important for lords to establish a presence at the hundred court, where much money could be lost and won. They were also commanded to give full support to the hundredsmen, whose job it was to supervise legal trading and to discourage cattle theft. King Edgar specifically ordered ealdormen Oslac, Aelfhere, and Aethelwine to give such support. “And they are to send them in all directions, that this measure may be known to both the poor and the rich.” [5]

Military duties were linked with the social function of lordship. From the time of King Ine (688-725) forfeiture of land and a heavy fine of 120 schillings was the penalty for a lord neglecting military service. After 899, as well as national obligations to fyrd service, and building bridges and fortifications, men were now to group themselves into tithings and hundreds to protect themselves. Ealdormen and thegns not only formed the select body of the king’s household retainers, but were, as landlords, responsible for the organisation, the summons and the assembling of the fighting forces. They were also involved in the financial and personal organisation which was essential to ensure that competent levies turned out to perform military duties on behalf of their estate. Lords, then, led their men and were responsible for them in times of peace and war and were at both times high up on the social scale, just beneath the king.

Although it was not necessarily a feudal society, a constant theme runs throughout tenth-century English society, that of mutual obligation. At the highest level, the king could demand loyalty and service from his subjects, but in return must rule them justly and protect them. The thegns, earls, and other landowners owed service to the king in judicial, military and personal capacities, for which they were rewarded. They in turn could expect loyalty and service from their men, but they were responsible for them and must protect them. Running though society in this way, the organised system which developed from the simple notion of personal loyalty was an integral part of all areas of central and local administration.


[1] DJV Fisher – The Anglo-Saxon Age Ch 12
[2] HR Loyn – The Governance of Anglo-Saxon England Ch4
[3] EHD – i 117
[4] EHD- i 102
[5] IV Edgar ‘Wihtbordesstan’ Code EHD i 41

* The authorship of the work of Florence is considered to owe more to a fellow monk, John of Worcester

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Annie Whitehead is an historian and novelist who writes about the Anglo-Saxon era. The author of two award-winning novels set in Anglo-Saxon Mercia, she was also a contributor to 1066 Turned Upside Down, a re-imagining of the events leading up to the Battle of Hastings. She is a member of the Royal Historical Society and an editor of the EHFA blog. Currently she is working on a contribution to a non-fiction book to be published by Pen & Sword Books in the summer of 2017. Her novel Alvar the Kingmaker is set in the tenth-century during the reigns of Eadwig, Edgar and Aethelred the Unready and contains many scenes where the above-mentioned laws and charters were put into effect.

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