A Concise History of the Common Law. Theodore F. T. Plucknett

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.

CHAPTER 2

      THE CONQUEST TO HENRY II: THE BEGINNINGS OF ADMINISTRATION

      SUMMARY

       The Conquest and “Domesday Book”

       Church and State

       Henry I’s Reforms

       Henry II’s Empire

       Constitutions of Clarendon

       The Exchequer

       The Place of Henry II

      The greatest result of the Norman Conquest was the introduction of precise and orderly methods into the government and law of England. The Norse invaders who had settled in Normandy had made it in a century and a half (911-1066) the best-ruled state in Europe, and the gifts for strong administration and for orderly accounting and finance which had been displayed in the duchy were to have fuller opportunities in the conquered kingdom. William the Bastard had been Duke of Normandy since 1035, and by 1047 (when he was twenty) the turbulent barons were beginning to feel his strength. Nearly twenty years of hard work in Normandy preceded the expedition to England, and in that interval William had imposed some sort of discipline upon his baronage, and had finally made peace with the Church (after a long quarrel) through the help of Lanfranc, whom he afterwards made Archbishop of Canterbury. Personally a devout Christian, he yet insisted that the Church should keep the place which he assigned to it, and in fact he secured an effective control over its policy, notably in appointments to the higher dignities. Then, too, he had developed a remarkably good financial organisation, the “Chamber” (camera), and although the duchy revenues were not particularly large, yet there was clearly the machinery ready to collect revenue energetically and to control its disposition.

THE CONQUEST AND “DOMESDAY BOOK”

Such was the position of Duke William when he undertook the desperate adventure of invading England by transporting 5,000 men and 2,500 horses across the Channel, an astonishing performance in those days. The Battle of Hastings (1066) and the death of King Harold quickly settled him upon the throne of his new kingdom. Reforms began at once. The casual “treasure” of the Anglo-Saxon kings was reorganised as an Exchequer on business lines, and was used to keep a firm hold upon the sheriffs and local government generally. As for the Church, he continued the Norman attitude of strengthening the Church internally, enriching it and maintaining its discipline (newly reformed by the great Pope Gregory VII), although at the same time restricting its political power. This strongly contrasted with the preconquest state of things when the bishops sat in all the courts and mingled ecclesiastical and secular business. William, by an ordinance,¹ insisted that the bishops should not transact ecclesiastical business in the hundred courts, but should hold their own Courts Christian for the purpose; and from that day to this the Church has maintained its separate system of courts administering canon law. Church and State which had been inextricably connected in the Anglo-Saxon age henceforth were strictly separate, a policy which happened to coincide with the Church’s own ambitions as well as with William’s. His last years were absorbed in the great survey of the kingdom which is known as Domesday Book. The original two volumes together with the chest constructed for their preservation are still in the Public Record Office in London, where Domesday Book holds an honoured place as the oldest public record. Indeed, during the middle ages it was so respected that it was called simply “the record”, so great was its authority. The land was described county by county, village by village, the owners and their subtenants were listed and their holdings valued, even the farm stock was recorded, with a view to settling clearly the rights of the Crown and the taxable resources of the country. In several cases a few precious lines will summarise the customs of a county or city, and so give us an insight into the local law in force.² Most valuable information can be extracted from it as to the state of freedom or serfdom in different parts of the country, and it is possible that the strict insistence of the Exchequer officials upon the letter of Domesday Book, and their refusal to allow it to be questioned, was the beginning of the notion