Kelham says, "Let us consult our own lawyers and historians, and they will tell as that Alfred, Edgar, and Edward the Confessor, were the great compilers and restorers of the English Laws." Kelham's Preliminary Discourse to the Laws of William the Conqueror, p. 12. Appendix to Kelham's Dictionary of the Norman Language.
"He (Alfred) also, like another Theodosius, collected the various customs that he found dispersed in the kingdom, and reduced and digested them into one uniform system, or code of laws, in his som-bec, or liber judicialis (judicial book). This he compiled for the use of the court baron, hundred and county court, the court-leet and sheriff's toarn, tribunals which he established for the trial of all causes, civil and criminal, in the very districts wherein the complaints arose." 4 Blackstone, 411.
Alfred himself says, "Hence I, King Alfred, gathered these together, and commanded many of those to be written down which our forefathers observed those which I liked and those which I did not like, by the advice of my Witan, I threw aside. For I durst not venture to set down in writing over many of my own, since I knew not what among them would please those that should come after us. But those which I met with either of the days of me, my kinsman, or of Offa, King of Mercia, or of Aethelbert, who was the first of the English who received baptism thse which appeared to me the justest I have here collected, and abandoned the others. Then I, Alfred, King of the West Saxons, showed these to all my Witan, and they then said that they were all willing to observe them." Laws of Alfred, translated by R. Price, prefixed to Mackintosh's History of England, vol. l. 45 Lardner's Cab. Cyc.
"King Edward * * projected and begun what his grandson, King Edward the Confessor, afterwards completed, viz., one uniform digest or body of laws to be observed throughout the whole kingdom, being probably no more than a revival of King Alfred's code, with some improvements suggested by necessity and experience, particularly the incorporating some of the British, or, rather, Mercian customs, and also such of the Danish (customs) as were reasonable and approved, into the West Saxon Lage, which was still the ground-work of the whole. And this appears to be the best supported and most plausible conjecture, (for certainty is not to be expected,) of the rise and original of that admirable system of maxims and unwritten customs which is now known by the name of the common law, as extending its authority universally over all the realm, and which is doubtless of Saxon parentage." 4 Blackstone, 412.
"By the Lex Terrae and Lex Regni is understood the laws of Edward the Confessor, confirmed and enlarged as they were by William the Conqueror; and this Constitution or Code of Laws is what even to this day are called 'The Common Law of the Land.'" Introduction to Gilbert's History of the Common Pleas, p. 22, note.
[8] Not the conqueror of the English people, (as the friends of liberty maintain,) but only of Harold the usurper. See Hale's History of the Common, Law, ch. 5.
[9] For all these codes see Wilkins' Laws of the Anglo-Saxons.
"Being regulations adapted to existing institutions, the Anglo-Saxon statutes are concise and technical, alluding to the law which was then living and in vigor, rather than defining it. The same clauses and chapters are often repeated word, for word, in the statutes of subsequent kings, showing that enactments which bear the appearance of novelty are merely declaratory. Consequently the appearance of a law, seemingly for the first time, is by no means to be considered as a proof that the matter which it contains is new; nor can we trace the progress of the Anglo-Saxon institutions with any degree of certainty, by following the dates of the statutes in which we find them first noticed. All arguments founded on the apparent chronology of the subjects included in the laws, are liable to great fallacies. Furthermore, a considerable portion of the Anglo-Saxon law was never recorded in writing. There can be no doubt but that the rules of inheritance were well established and, defined; yet we have not a single law, and hardly a single document from which the course of the descent of land can be inferred. * * Positive proof cannot be obtained of the commencement of any institution, because the first written law relating to it may possibly be merely confirmatory or declaratory; neither can the non-existence of any institution be inferred from the absence of direct evidence. Written laws were modified and controlled by customs of which no trace can be discovered until after the lapse of centuries, although those usages must have been in constant vigor during the long interval of silence." 1 Palgrave's Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth, 58-9.
[10] Rapin says, "The customs now practised in England are, for the most part, the same as the Anglo-Saxons brought with them from Germany." Rapin's Dissertation on the Government of the Anglo-Saxons, vol. 2, Oct Ed., p. 138. See Kelham's Discourse before named.
[11] Hallam says, "The county of Sussex contains sixty-five ('hundreds'); that of Dorset forty-three; while Yorkshire has only twenty-six; and Lancashire but six." 2 Middle Ages, 391.