The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I. Frederic William Maitland

man may generally conduct his own cause in person, if so minded. In Athens, at the time of Pericles, and even of Demosthenes, there was a great deal of law, but no class of persons answering to our judges or counsellors. The Attic orator was not a lawyer in the modern sense. Again, the Icelandic sagas exhibit a state of society provided with law quite definite as far as it goes, and even minutely technical on some points, and yet without any professed lawyers. The law is administered by general assemblies of freemen, though the court which is to try a particular cause is selected by elaborate rules. There are old men who have the reputation of being learned in the law; sometimes the opinion of such a man is accepted as conclusive; but they hold no defined office or official qualification. In England, as we shall see hereafter, there was no definite legal profession till more than a century after the Norman Conquest. In short, the presence of law is marked by the administration of justice in some regular course of time, place, and manner, and on the footing of some recognized general principles. These conditions appear to be sufficient, as they are necessary. But if we suppose an Eastern despot to sit in the gate and deal with every case according to the impression of the moment, recognizing no rule at all, we may say that he is doing some sort of justice, but we cannot say that he is doing judgment according to law. Probably no prince or ruler in historical times ever really took upon himself to do right according to his mere will and pleasure. There are always points of accepted faith which even the strongest of despots dares not offend, points of custom which he dares not disregard.

      At the same time the conscious separation of law from morals and religion has been a gradual process, and it has largely gone hand in hand with the marking off of special conditions of men to attend to religious and to legal affairs, and the development, through their special studies, of jurisprudence and theology as distinct sciences. If there be any primitive theory of the nature of law, it seems to be that laws are the utterance of some divine or heroic person who reveals, or declares as revealed to him, that which is absolutely right. The desire to refer institutions to a deified or canonized legislator is shown in England, as late as the fourteenth century, by the attribution to King Alfred of everything supposed to be specially national and excellent. In the extant Brahmanical recensions of early Hindu law this desire is satisfied with deliberate and excessive minuteness. Wherever and whenever such notions prevail, the distinction between legal and moral duty can at best be imperfectly realized. During the age of which we are to speak in this book a grand attempt was being made to reduce morality to legal forms. In the system of the medieval Church the whole of “external” moral duty is included in the law of God and of Holy Church. Morality becomes a thing of arguments and judgments, of positive rules and exceptions, and even of legislative declaration by the authority supreme on earth in matters of faith and morals. Many things on which Protestants are accustomed to spend their astonishment and indignation are merely the necessary consequences of this theory. We shall often have to observe that the wide and flexible jurisdiction of the spiritual power was of great service in the middle ages, both in supplementing the justice of secular courts, and in stimulating them by its formidable competition to improve their doctrine and practice; but a discussion of the Church’s penitential system will not be expected of us.

      We have spoken but briefly of the law which prevailed in England before the coming of the Normans, and therefore we ought perhaps to say here that in our opinion it was in the main pure Germanic law. Question has been made at various times as to how much of ancient British custom survived the conquest of Britain by successive invaders, and became incorporated in English law. We are unable to assign any definite share to this Celtic element. The supposed proofs of its existence have, so far as we are aware, no surer foundation than coincidence. Now the mere coincidence of particulars in early bodies of law proves nothing beyond the resemblance of all institutions in certain stages. There are, again, many points of real organic connexion between Celtic and English law even if there has been no borrowing from the Welshman on the Englishman’s part. If there be a true affinity, it may well go back to a common stock of Aryan tradition antecedent to the distinction of race and tongue between German and Celt. And if in a given case we find that an institution or custom which is both Welsh and English is at the same time Scandinavian, Greek, Roman, Slavonic or Hindu, we may be reasonably assured that there is nothing more specific in the matter. Or, if there be a true case of survival, it may go back to an origin as little Celtic or even Aryan as it is Germanic. Some local usages, it is quite possible, may be relics of a prehistoric society and of an antiquity now immeasurable, saved by their obscurity through the days of Celt, Saxon and Norman alike. There is no better protection against the stronger hand; bracken and lichens are untouched by the storm that uproots oak and beech. But this is of no avail to the Celtic enthusiast, or rather of worse than none. Those who claim a Celtic origin for English laws ought to do one of two things: prove by distinct historical evidence that particular Celtic institutions were adopted by the English invaders, or point out similar features in Welsh and English law which cannot be matched either in the laws of continental Germany or in those of other Aryan nations. Neither of these things, to the best of our knowledge, has ever been effectually done. Indeed the test last named would be hardly a safe one. The earliest documents of Welsh law known to exist are in their present form so much later than the bulk of our Anglo-Saxon documents that, if a case of specific borrowing could be made out on the face of them, we should need further assurance that the borrowing was not the other way. The favourite method of partisans in this kind is, as has been said, to enumerate coincidences. And by that method our English medieval law could with little ado be proved to be Greek, Slavonic, Semitic, or, for aught one knows, Chinese. We cannot say that no element derived from the Celtic inhabitants of Britain exists in it, for there is no means of proving so general a negative. But there seems to be no proof nor evidence of the existence of that element in any such appreciable measure as would oblige us to take account of it in such a work as the present. Again, there is the possibility that Celtic details, assimilated in Gaul by French law during its growth, passed into England at the Norman Conquest. But it is not for us to discuss this possibility. On the other hand, no one can doubt that the English law stated and defined in the series of dooms which stretches from Æthelbirht to Cnut finds nearer kinsfolk in the law that prevailed in Saxony and Norway and on the Lombard plain than those that it finds among the Welsh or Irish.

      Coming to the solid ground of known history, we find that our laws have been formed in the main from a stock of Teutonic customs, with some additions of matter, and considerable additions or modifications of form received directly or indirectly from the Roman system. Both the Germanic and the Romanic elements have been constituted or reinforced at different times and from different sources, and we have thus a large range of possibilities to which, in the absence of direct proof, we must attend carefully in every case before committing ourselves to a decision.

      Taking first the Germanic material of our laws, we begin with the customs and institutions brought in by the English conquest of Britain, or rather by the series of conquests which led to the formation of the English kingdom. This is the prime stock; but it by no means accounts for the whole of the Germanic elements. A distinct Scandinavian strain came in with the Danish invasions and was secured by the short period of Danish sovereignty. A third of England, a populous and wealthy third, became known as the Danelaw. To some extent, but probably to no great extent, the Norman law and practice of William the Conqueror may have included similar matter. The main importance of the Norman contribution, however, was in other kinds. Much Anglo-Norman law is Germanic without being either Anglo-Saxon or Norse. Indeed of recent years it has become the fashion upon the Continent to speak of Anglo-Norman law as a daughter of Frankish law. The Frankish monarchy, the nearest approach to a civilized power that existed in western Europe since the barbarian invasions, was in many things a pattern for its neighbours and for the states and principalities that rose out of its ruins. That we received from the Normans a contribution of Frankish ideas and customs is indubitable. It was, indeed, hardly foreign to us, being of kindred stock, and still not widely removed from the common root of Germanic tradition. We must not omit, however, to count it as a distinct variation. Neither must we forget that English princes had already been following in some measure the same models that the Dukes of the Normans copied. From the time of Charles the Great onward, the rulers of both Mercia and Wessex were in intimate relations with the Frankish kings.

      Now each of these Germanic strains, the purely Anglo-Saxon, the Scandinavian, the Frankish, has had its champions. To decide between them is often a difficult,