After Dunwallon, the next lawgiver was Martia, whom Leland surnameth Proba, and after him John Bale also, who in his Centuries doth justly confess himself to have been holpen by the said Leland, as I myself do likewise for many things contained in this treatise. She was wife unto Gutteline, king of the Britons, and being made protectrix of the realm after her husband’s decease in the nonage of her son, and seeing many things daily to grow up among her people worthy reformation, she devised sundry and those very politic laws for the governance of her kingdom, which her subjects, when she was dead and gone, did name the “Martian Statutes.” Who turned them into Latin as yet I do not read, howbeit (as I said before of the laws of Mulmutius) so the same Alfred caused those of this excellently well-learned lady (whom divers commend also for her great knowledge in the Greek tongue) to be turned into his own language, whereupon it came to pass that they were daily executed among his subjects, afterwards allowed of (among the rest) by the Normans, and finally remain in use in these our days, notwithstanding that we cannot dissever them also very readily from the other.
The seventh alteration of laws was practised by the Saxons; for I overpass the use of the civil ordinances used in Rome, finally brought hither by the Romans, and yet in perfect notice among the civilians of our country, though never generally received by all the several regions of this island. Certes there are great numbers of these latter, which yet remain in sound knowledge, and are to be read, being comprehended for the most part under the names of the Martian and the Saxon law. Beside these also, I read of the Dane law, so that the people of middle England were ruled by the first, the West Saxons by the second, as Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, and part of Hertfordshire were by the third, of all the rest the most unequal and intolerable. And as in these days whatsoever the prince in public assembly commanded upon the necessity of his subjects or his own voluntary authority was counted for law, so none of them had appointed any certain place whereunto his people might repair at fixed times for justice, but caused them to resort commonly to their palaces, where, in proper person, they would often determine their causes, and so make shortest work, or else commit the same to the hearing of other, and so despatch them away. Neither had they any house appointed to assemble in for the making of their ordinances, as we have now at Westminster. Wherefore Edmund gave laws at London and Lincoln, Ethelred at Habam, Alfred at Woodstock and Wannetting, Athelstane in Excester, Crecklade, Feversham, and Thundersley, Canutus at Winchester, etc.: other in other places, whereof this may suffice.[98]
Hitherto also (as I think) sufficiently of such laws as were in use before the Conquest. Now it resteth that I should declare the order of those that have been made and received since the coming of the Normans, referred to the eighth alteration or change of our manner of governance, and thereunto do produce threescore and four several courts. But for as much as I am no lawyer, and therefore have but little skill to proceed in the same accordingly, it shall suffice to set down some general discourses of such as are used in our days, and so much as I have gathered by report and common hearsay.
We have therefore in England sundry laws, and first of all the civil, used in the chancery, admiralty, and divers other courts, in some of which the severe rigour of justice is often so mitigated by conscience that divers things are thereby made easy and tolerable which otherwise would appear to be mere injury and extremity.
We have also a great part of the Canon law daily practised among us, especially in cases of tithes, contracts of matrimony, and such like, as are usually to be seen in the consistories of our bishops and higher courts of the two archbishops, where the exercise of the same is very hotly followed.
The third sort of laws that we have are our own, and those always so variable and subject to alteration and change that oft in one age divers judgments do pass upon one manner of case, whereby the saying of the poet—
“Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in illis,”
may very well be applied unto such as, being urged with these words, “In such a year of the prince this opinion was taken for sound law,” do answer nothing else but that “the judgment of our lawyers is now altered, so that they say far otherwise.”
The regiment that we have therefore after our own ordinances dependeth upon three laws, to wit, Statute Law, Common Law, Customary Law and Prescription, according to the triple manner of our trials and judgments, which is by Parliament, verdict of twelve men at an assize, or wager of battle, of which the last is little used in our days, as no appeal doth hold in the first and last rehearsed. But to return to my purpose.