'The last decades have brought new understandings of continental political institutions. It is one of the many virtues of Levi Roach's splendid book that he has read so widely in this revisionist literature on Carolingian and Ottonian political institutions and practices … Given that Roach has addressed so many topics, different readers will inevitably be attracted to different elements in the book. The discussion of the performative elements of assemblies is particularly fine because so thoroughly versed in the Ottonian scholarship.' Geoffrey Koziol, Early Medieval Europe
1. Introduction: assembling consent in ninth- and tenth-century England; 2. Assembly attendance; 3. Meeting places and times of assemblies; 4. Royal charters and assemblies; 5. Legislation and consent: law making and assembly politics; 6. The witan and the settlement of disputes; 7. The 'further business' of the witan; 8. Symbols in context: ritual and demonstration at assemblies; 9. Ritual and reality: the problem of the sources; 10. The role of the witan: celebration and persuasion; Appendix: meetings of the witan, 871–978.