but slightly. It is certainly curious how Kent from the beginning and all through the middle ages preserved peculiar local variants, but it must not be assumed too confidently that all this necessarily relates to an original difference in the Jutish invaders. The geographical position of Kent at the gateway of England has in fact given it an exceptional position in the religious, military and commercial, as well as in the legal, history of the country, but this position was won after, rather than before, the Conquest.1
The invasion and settlement of the country by these tribes occupies about two centuries (roughly from 400 to 600). In the end, a number of different kingdoms were established—at least ten of them are known with certainty to have existed at various dates—and for the next two centuries the main themes are the spread of Christianity and the growth of unity in place of these warring kingdoms. It is true that the later years of the Roman occupation had seen the first introduction of Christianity into the island, and that an important and vigorous church had been organised, but the English invaders crushed the British Christians and maintained their own ancient mythology. England therefore had to be converted anew, and the year 597 was a momentous one, for the arrival of St Augustine established contact between the English tribesmen and the Roman Church which was now (under St Gregory I, “the Great”) definitely entering upon its mediaeval task of establishing one supreme spiritual authority in Europe. Gregory “was a Roman of the Romans, nurtured on traditions of Rome’s imperial greatness, cherishing the memories of pacification and justice, of control and protection”.2
THE ADVENT OF CHRISTIANITY
The results of the re-introduction of Christianity were of the highest importance. The existing tribal organisation must have seemed weak and inefficient to the missionaries coming from such well-organised States as existed on the continent, and very soon we see the results of their teaching in the enhanced value placed upon the monarchy, and in the tendency towards larger national units. After long years of warfare the petty tribal units were replaced by a few large kingdoms ruled and administered by kings who watched European methods. Soon, too, they learned the Roman art of taxation, which consisted in dividing the land into units of equal assessment instead of equal area (calling them in English “hides”).3 Again, the advent of the clergy meant the introduction of a new class into English society, and so a new law of status had to be devised for their protection. Consequently laws were made, and, “in the Roman style”,4 were written down. It is possible that legislation was occasionally effected upon other subjects as well. And finally, the Church brought with it moral ideas which were to revolutionise English law. Christianity had inherited from Judaism an outlook upon moral questions which was strictly individualistic. The salvation of each separate soul was dependent upon the actions of the individual. This contrasted strongly with the custom of the English tribes which looked less to the individual than to the family group of which the individual formed a part. Necessarily such a system had little place for an individualistic sense of morals, for the group, although it was subjected to legal liability, can hardly be credited with moral intention in the sense that an individual can. With the spread of Christianity all this slowly changed. First, responsibility for actions gradually shifted from the whole group to the particular individual who did the act; and then the Church (and later the law) will judge that act, if necessary, from the point of view of the intention of the party who committed it.
ENGLAND AND THE DANES
The Anglo-Saxon period is very long, and a great deal of development took place in it.1 Beginning for practical purposes about 597 (the landing of St Augustine) we have a continuous stream of legal sources which are definitely Anglo-Saxon in character down to the Norman Conquest in 1066 and even later.2 There are treatises dating about the year 1118 which are still typically Anglo-Saxon in content and outlook.3 We may therefore place the limits of this period roughly and in round figures between 600 and 1100, a period of five hundred years. The length of this age can be realised by remembering that five hundred years is the interval between Bracton and Blackstone, between Chaucer and Kipling, and between the battles of Agincourt and the Marne. In so long a period we must omit details. The one fact of capital importance besides the growing unification of England, is the coming of the Norsemen and Danes, for it has left definite traces upon our history. The very word “law” is not English but Norse.
Scandinavia was peopled by tribes who were as astute in trade as they were fierce in war. The discoveries of English coins in the islands of the Baltic, together with Arabian coins from Bagdad and Samarcand (which had reached the Baltic through Russia), are witness to the distant foreign commence of the Norse. During the ninth century, for reasons unknown, the Norse became unusually active on the sea, and a series of maritime raids resulted in the colonisation of Iceland, parts of Ireland and Scotland, the Orkneys, Shetlands, Hebrides, and portions of Northern France (thenceforward to be known as Normandy). A Scandinavian tribe of “Rus” gave its name (although not its language) to Russia, while a few even penetrated to the Mediterranean. In England, after fierce fighting, they succeeded in retaining from King Alfred almost the whole eastern half of the kingdom (879), and more than a century after his death a Danish dynasty united under a single ruler—the great King Cnut (1016-1035)—England, Norway and Denmark. Cnut’s laws were long popular in England, and in after years men looked back with respect to his reign, trying to revive his legislation. The Danes left a permanent mark on that part of the country where they had longest ruled. They independently developed a sort of grand jury, of which we shall speak later; they arrived earlier than the rest of the country at the stage where land could be freely bought and sold; they had a marked tendency to form clubs and guilds; their peasantry were less subject to the lords; borough institutions seem to have flourished peculiarly under their rule.1
The death of Cnut and the division of his Empire brings us to the accession of St Edward the Confessor (1043-1066), who throughout the middle ages was the national hero of the English when they resented Norman influence. (Hence it is that a large body of “Laws of Edward the Confessor” was forged as a patriotic weapon against the Norman dynasty.) In fact, the antithesis was false, and the spread of foreign culture in England increased immensely during his reign, which in some respects seems a sort of peaceful Norman conquest. The disputed succession on his death brought William the Conqueror in 1066 and Norman arms finished what Norman civilisation had already begun.
THE CONQUEST TO HENRY II: THE BEGINNINGS OF ADMINISTRATION
SUMMARY
The Conquest and “Domesday Book”
The greatest result of the Norman
