This example of written laws being given by Ethelbert, it was followed by his successors, Edric and Lothaire. The next legislator amongst the English, was Ina, King of the West Saxons, a prince famous in his time for his wisdom and his piety. His laws, as well as those of the above-mentioned princes, still subsist. But we must always remember that very few of these laws contained any new regulation, but were rather designed to affirm their ancient customs, and to preserve and fix them; and accordingly they are all extremely rude and imperfect. We read of a collection of laws by Offa, King of the Mercians; but they have been long since lost.
The Anglo-Saxon laws, by universal consent of all writers, owe more to the care and sagacity of Alfred than of any of the ancient kings. In the midst of a cruel war, of which he did not see the beginning nor live to see the end, he did more for the establishment of order and justice than any other prince has been known to do in the profoundest peace. Many of the institutions attributed to him undoubtedly were not of his establishment: this shall be shown, when we come to treat more minutely of the institutions. But it is clear that he raised, as it were, from the ashes, and put new life and vigor into the whole body of the law, almost lost and forgotten in the ravages of the Danish war; so that, having revived, and in all likelihood improved, several ancient national regulations, he has passed for their author, with a reputation perhaps more just than if he had invented them. In the prologue which he wrote to his own code, he informs us that he collected there whatever appeared to him most valuable in the laws of Ina and Offa and others of his progenitors, omitting what he thought wrong in itself or not adapted to the time; and he seems to have done this with no small judgment.
The princes who succeeded him, having by his labors enjoyed more repose, turned their minds to the improvement of the law; and there are few of them who have not left us some collection more or less complete.
When the Danes had established their empire, they showed themselves no less solicitous than the English to collect and enforce the laws: seeming desirous to repair all the injuries they had formerly committed against them. The code of Canute the Great is one of the most moderate, equitable, and full, of any of the old collections. There was no material change, if any at all, made in their general system by the Danish conquest. They were of the original country of the Saxons, and could not have differed from them in the groundwork of their policy. It appears by the league between Alfred and Guthrum, that the Danes took their laws from the English, and accepted them as a favor. They were more newly come out of the Northern barbarism, and wanted the regulations necessary to a civil society. But under Canute the English law received considerable improvement. Many of the old English customs, which, as that monarch justly observes, were truly odious, were abrogated; and, indeed, that code is the last we have that belongs to the period before the Conquest. That monument called the Laws of Edward the Confessor is certainly of a much later date; and what is extraordinary, though the historians after the Conquest continually speak of the Laws of King Edward, it does not appear that he ever made a collection, or that any such laws existed at that time. It appears by the preface to the Laws of St. Edward, that these written constitutions were continually falling into disuse. Although these laws had undoubtedly their authority, it was, notwithstanding, by traditionary customs that the people were for the most part governed, which, as they varied somewhat in different provinces, were distinguished accordingly by the names of the West Saxon, the Mercian, and the Danish Law; but this produced no very remarkable inconvenience, as those customs seemed to differ from each other, and from the written laws, rather in the quantity and nature of their pecuniary mulcts than in anything essential.
If we take a review of these ancient constitutions, we shall observe that their sanctions are mostly confined to the following objects.
1st. The preservation of the peace. This is one of the largest titles; and it shows the ancient Saxons to have been a people extremely prone to quarrelling and violence. In some cases the law ventures only to put this disposition under regulations:[84] prescribing that no man shall fight with another until he has first called him to justice in a legal way; and then lays down the terms under which he may proceed to hostilities. The other less premeditated quarrels, in meetings for drinking or business, were considered as more or less heinous, according to the rank of the person in whose house the dispute happened, or, to speak the language of that time, whose peace they had violated.
2d. In proportioning the pecuniary mulcts imposed by them for all, even the highest crimes, according to the dignify of the person injured, and to the quantity of the offence. For this purpose they classed the people with great regularity and exactness, both in the ecclesiastic and the secular lines, adjusting with great care the ecclesiastical to the secular dignities; and they not only estimated each man's life according to his quality, but they set a value upon every limb and member, down even to teeth, hair, and nails; and these are the particulars in which their laws are most accurate and best defined.
3d. In settling the rules and ceremonies of their oaths, their purgations, and the whole order and process of their superstitious justice: for by these methods they seem to have decided all controversies.
4th. In regulating the several fraternities of Frank-pledges, by which all the people were naturally bound to their good behavior to one another and to their superiors; in all which they were excessively strict, in order to supply by the severity of this police the extreme laxity and imperfection of their laws, and the weak and precarious authority of their kings and magistrates.
These, with some regulations for payment of tithes and Church dues, and for the discovery and pursuit of stealers of cattle, comprise almost all the titles deserving notice in the Saxon laws. In those laws there are frequently to be observed particular institutions, well and prudently framed; but there is no appearance of a regular, consistent, and stable jurisprudence. However, it is pleasing to observe something of equity and distinction gradually insinuating itself into these unformed materials, and some transient flashes of light striking across the gloom which prepared for the full day that shone out afterwards. The clergy, who kept up a constant communication with Rome, and were in effect the Saxon legislators, could not avoid gathering some informations from a law which never was perfectly extinguished in that part of the world. Accordingly we find one of its principles had strayed hither so early as the time of Edric and Lothaire.[85] There are two maxims[86] of civil law in their proper terms in the code of Canute the Great, who made and authorized that collection after his pilgrimage to Rome; and at this time, it is remarkable, we find the institutions of other nations imitated. In the same collection there is an express reference to the laws of the Werini. From hence it is plain that the resemblance between the polity of the several Northern nations did not only arise from their common original, but also from their adopting, in some cases, the constitutions of those amongst them who were most remarkable for their wisdom.