Changes in this wide and very interesting subject,—the mutations of our speech, I will not at present enlarge. I shall only remark, that, in certain states of human society, there is a tendency to enrich the nomenclature and simplify the structure of language, sometimes arising from what, in common, though rather disagreeable, phrase, is termed the "national mind," and sometimes from external causes; and that both were beginning to be in operation in England before the Norman Conquest. But the comparative circumstances of Denmark and of England will assist in enabling us to understand how great an alteration might have taken place in our national [character] (of which language is so forcible a witness), supposing the great event about which we are discoursing had never come to pass. With respect to government and laws and institutions, the departure from the antient commonwealth was perhaps greater even than in language. The Gothic Nemda was the subject of an archæological essay. Hard servitude had fallen upon the descendants of the Bondes, the tillers of the soil, who in the age of Harold Harfager raised their bold helmetted heads around the sovereign in the Landzthing. were unknown in name and in deed. In short, with the exception of some portions of the criminal law, and rules regulating the rights of Jarls SAXON LAW PRACTICALLY PRESERVED. 599 property, the whole platform (to use the word in its Elizabethan sense) of the Commonwealth, since the fifteenth century, has been as completely changed as if the Christian of Oldenburgh had gained the throne sword in hand. I doubt if they can shew any court, any institution, any essential portion of the state, which derived its regular succession from an earlier time. constitution survives the 24. But in England, even so late as the re- Our old cent period which I have named, after all our Conquest." conquests and civil wars, after our reformation, after our revolution, there still existed, as it were, whole strata continuing only slightly altered. In our political constitution, much we can trace; for example, how the real territorial authority of Siward, Earl of Northumberland, gradually waned away into the title which the Percy claimed. The courts of the burgh, the hundred, and the shire had not changed, even in name. The whole customary tenure of land, over all the length and breadth of the island, was, and indeed is, purely and sincerely English. If any one of my readers should chance to renew his holding under the Bishop of Worcester, it will be gebooked to him for three lives, exactly as if good Wulstane was to receive the fine. Of aldermen it is unnecessary to speak: everybody knows their venerable antiquity; and, indeed, throughout the whole of our munici pal institutions, the vitality of the old English customs and constitution was truly wonderful. Bring an ejectment for lands in the parish of Clapham or Chelsea, and Judge Holt would at once have non-suited you for not laying the venue in the Anglo-Saxon town. If the lord [cir. 1845.] of the manor had, or indeed has to vindicate his Surviving usages. franchise, he presses into his service, or more truly perhaps into the service of his attorney, sac and soc, infangthief and outfangthief, and whatsoever else he can find in King Ethelred's charter. And if the Hlafod who now holds the possession of [the Saxon owner], were to exert his rights, the inhabitants of Manchester Square would be compelled to appear at the court of the Lite as in the earliest age. I have attempted the comparison contained in the preceding paragraphs, in order to shew how small is the necessity of ascribing the great mutations which unquestionably took place in the laws and government of the country, to national subjugation and hostile influence: a much shorter road of shewing the error of those Other proofs. who ascribe such a radical, such an overwhelm ing change to the Conquest, would have been simply to appeal to the evidence. In the code bearing the title which I doubt not will be perfectly intelligible to the reader, of "Les leis et les custumes que li Reis William granted al pople de Engleterre apres la cunquest de la terre; iceles meimes que li Reis Edward sun WILLIAM REIGNED CONSTITUTIONALLY. 601 regrants Edward's cusin tint devant lui ;" and in the custumal ascribed to Henry Beauclerc, but probably even of later date, we have an assured testimony that as far as direct and positive legisla-William tion is concerned, William effected the smallest laws. possible innovation: and in [regard to] the assertion, that, in the very frame of his laws, he made a distinction between the Normans and English, [we may appeal to the fact, that they were received by the] nation, not only without reluctance, but with zealous joy; and thus the very means by which William was enabled to accomplish the Conquest, prevented him from ruling otherwise than as an English king. of English and Norman 5. It is most certain that, after the accession of the Plantagenets, we find a very great similarity between the laws of Normandy and the laws of England. Both belonged to one active Similarity and powerful sovereign: one system of admin- law. istration prevailed. It was after one and the same course of business that the money was counted out upon the chequered table, on either side of the sea. The bailiffs in the Norman baillages passed their accounts just as the sheriffs to whom the bailliwicks of the shires were granted in England; and the brieves by which the king administered the law, whether in the kingdom or the duchy, are most evidently germane to each other. In all these circumstances, I can find the most evident and cogent proof that a great revolution was effected, not 602 ENGLISH LAW NOT DERIVED FROM NORMAN. by William, but by Henry Plantagenet. Where he found his precedents, where his councillors, we know not, and in which country the new system originated, which, in a manner, they held in common, we know not. Documentary evidence would go a great way in deciding the Norman la question. At present none satisfactory has been the original discovered by the researches of the antiquary. certainly not Glanville, the English justiciar, affords the earliest precedents of the writs "de morte antecessoris," and "de nova disseisina." Howard, the Norman jurist, publishes our Littleton and Bracton and Hela, as the most authentic monuments which he can find of the antient laws of the French; and the traditions of Normandy even attributed the formation of that which in the reign of Philippe Auguste was their national code, the "Grand Coutumier," to the equity and wisdom of Edward the Confessor. Nothing in all this amounts to proof that Henry II., King of England, legislated for the Duchy of Normandy; but at least it shews, that, from other causes than the immediate conquest, to which it is usually ascribed, the uniformity may have arisen. § 6. Probably most of my readers have been expecting, in the course of the preceding pages, to hear much upon some subjects which hold so conspicuous a station in our usual, I may almost say our conventional ideas of medieval history; |