Art. VII. THE LAWS OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS. 1. Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen. Herausgegeben im Auftrage der Savigny-Stiftung von F. Liebermann. Erster Band: Text und Übersetzung. Halle: Niemeyer, 1903.

2. Quadripartitus: ein englisches Rechtsbuch von 1114 (1892). Consiliatio Cnuti: eine Uebertragung angelsächsischer Gesetze aus dem zwölften Jahrhundert (1893). Ueber Pseudo-Cnuts Constitutiones de Foresta (1894). Ueber die Leges Anglorum Sæculo xiii ineunte Londoniis collectæ (1894). Ueber die Leges Edwardi Confessoris (1896). Ueber das englische Rechtsbuch Leges Henrici (1901) and other treatises. By F. Liebermann. Halle: Niemeyer.

THOUGH Dr Liebermann has still something in store for us in the way of notes, index, glossary, and the like, the time has already come when we may rejoice in the possession of a really good edition of the oldest English laws, an edition which will bear comparison with the very best work that has hitherto been done upon any historical materials of a similar kind. That this task should have been performed by a German scholar at the instance of a German academy, and with the support of a German trust fund, may not be what we in England should have liked best, but must not detract from the warmth of our welcome and our praise. If Englishmen cannot or will not do these things, they can at least rejoice that others can and will.

The German occupation of a considerable tract of English history has been a gradual process. The sphere of influence becomes a protectorate, and the protectorate becomes sovereignty. The shore is surveyed and settled; and now with colour of right far-reaching claims can be made over an auriferous hinterland. How and why all this happened it would be long to tell, but a small part of the story should be remembered.

Few words will be sufficient to recall to our minds the nature and extent of the territory which, so we fear, is slipping from our grasp. Any one who, at the present day, desired to study, even in outline, the first six centuries of English history-those centuries which intervene

between the withdrawal of the legions and the coming of the Normans-would find himself compelled, whether he liked it or not, diligently to peruse a certain small body of laws. We cannot, indeed, say that, were it not for these monuments of ancient jurisprudence, the only tale that he would have to tell would be of battles between 'kites and crows.' Certain great men-an Alfred, for instance, or a Dunstan―might be seen and portrayed, though without a background. There would still be something to be learnt about heathenry and Christianity, about religious doctrines and ecclesiastical organisation, about poetry and prose, about arts and crafts. One of those old-fashioned chapters or appendixes touching 'the manners and customs of the people' might be rewritten with truer insight and apter illustrations. But if from the sum total of what we know about our forefathers we subtracted what has been directly or indirectly taught us by legal documents, the residue, it must be confessed, would be both incoherent and precarious. Not only could we make no attempt to see the nation as an organised and growing whole, but our great men, our Alfred and our Dunstan, would be far more shadowy than they are. Nay, even our battles would have little good fighting in them, and our very 'kites and crows' would be phantasmal. Moreover, if we owe to these laws a certain sum of assured knowledge, we owe to them also-and this is hardly less valuable-a certain sum of assured ignorance When they do not satisfy they at all events stimulate a rational curiosity; and where they do not give us intelligible answers they prompt us to ask intelligent questionsquestions which go deep down into the pith and marrow of our national history, but questions that would never have occurred to us if we had nothing to read but chronicles and the lives of saints.

We have spoken of a small body of laws, and small it certainly is. Without translation and apparatus it might be handsomely printed in a hundred and fifty octavo pages. We fancy that in the days of flamboyant draftsmanship a single Act of Parliament sometimes contained more words than have come to us from all the law-givers that lived in England before the Norman Conquest. We have, it will be remembered, a little priceless matter from our first Christian king from Ethelberht of Kent. To

use round figures, we may say that it comes from the year 600. We have a little from his successors upon the Kentish throne; we have more from the West Saxon Ine (circ. 700), which, however, has passed through the hands of Alfred (circ. 900); and we have a considerable amount from Alfred himself. Then legislation becomes commoner. The tenth century and the first years of the eleventh are illustrated by laws of Edward, Æthelstan, Edmund, Edgar, and Ethelred; and the series ends with the respectably lengthy and luminous code of Cnut the Dane. Besides this, we have a few short statements of legal or customary rules coming to us, not from law-givers, but from presumably learned men-little formularies and so forth, which were transcribed along with the laws and have been slowly disengaged from them by the skill of recent editors.

Such was the territory which was to be explored and cultivated by modern science; and such was the territory which, as some of our neighbours saw, was lying derelict and inviting annexation. Exploration, it is true, was no easy task, especially because-unlike the parallel laws of the continental nations, Goths and Lombards, Franks and Saxons-these old 'dooms,' as they call themselves, were written, not in Latin, but in the vernacular, or, in other words, in a language which, for a long time past, has been far less intelligible than Latin to the great mass of fairly educated mankind. Just for this reason, however, these English dooms might claim a prerogative right. Up to a certain point Latin, and even the worst Latin of a dark age, may be generally intelligible; but, as many investigators have of late had occasion to remark, the thoughts of barbarous Teutons were sadly contorted in the process of latinisation. Many a passage, for example, in the code of the Salian Franks, the famous Lex Salica, would by this time be far less obscure than it will ever be had it been transmitted to us, not in Latin, but in Frankish words. In this respect, therefore, our English dooms have a singular, a unique, value. It was a value which could but slowly be turned to account, but it became an effective asset as the old English language was gradually reconstructed; and nowadays, in the eyes of every serious student of early medieval history, the Anglo-Saxon laws appear, not merely as good but as supremely good material.

But to speak at greater length of the extent and fertility of the ground that we have lost or are losing would be needless. The control of the Anglo-Saxon laws, which henceforward we shall have to know as 'Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen,' implies a protectorate, to say the least, over some six centuries of English history. Nor is that all, for, as will be remarked below, the people who taught us the word 'hinterland' have taught us also how a hinterland should be treated. But in order to understand what they have done we must go back a little way.

In the middle of the sixteenth century the AngloSaxon laws began, if we may so say, to awake from a long sleep. That there had been such things had never been quite forgotten, for a well-known chronicle contained large extracts from one of those Latin translations that were made soon after the Norman Conquest. But, diligent as our lawyers had been in their hunt for ancient documents-and the amount of old manuscript that Anthony Fitzherbert had perused and digested may well astonish us—a limit was set to their investigations. As far back as the boundary of legal memory, as far back as Glanvill, they could pursue their researches not only with interest, but with professional profit. What lay on the other side of that line seemed to belong to another world, and had no points of contact with their practical work. As to an original Anglo-Saxon text, they could hardly have understood one word of it. The fact that their own technical language was not even English but debased French tended to widen a gulf which in any case would have been wide enough.

As Dr Liebermann rightly remarks, the Anglo-Saxon renaissance began in another quarter. We might call it a by-product of the Reformation. So soon as the quarrel with Rome became acute, divers sundry old authentick histories and chronicles' were being explored by important people; and a charter in which an English king appeared as a 'Basileus' was passing from hand to hand and exciting comment. A little later, and it seemed possible that, expressed in an unknown tongue and a barely legible script, there lay title-deeds of a national church-titledeeds which told not only of independence, but of purity. And, as a set-off to the dismal tale of pillaged libraries, we may remember that the tools had at length come to

those who would use them-the rescued manuscripts to the hands of those who would be at pains to read them. Pains were required. The casting of a fount of type that would imitate the Old English characters shows us how outlandish to Elizabethan Englishmen was the speech of their forefathers. For the service performed in the cause of history by Matthew Parker, John Joscelyn, and Laurence Nowell we must always be grateful; nor should Bale and Foxe be forgotten, though it was no purely scientific spirit that guided them in their enterprises. It was reserved, however, for Nowell's pupil, that sound lawyer William Lambard, to publish an edition of the Anglo-Saxon laws; and we now have Dr Liebermann's authority for saying that he did his work wonderfully well. That in every five lines or thereabouts of his Latin version he should be guilty of a mistake which his successors can call gross, is only what was to be expected. He was a pioneer in an unknown land.

The first half of the seventeenth century may be regarded as the heroic age of English legal scholarship. Great questions were opening, and on all sides an appeal was being made to ancient law and ancient history It is true that, as regards very old times, little that was of real value came from the imperious dogmatist who dominated the jurisprudence of his time. When he was on unfamiliar ground Sir Edward Coke was, of all mankind, the most credulous. There was no fable, no forgery, that he would not endorse; and a good many medieval legends and medieval lies passed into currency with his name upon their backs. But in Selden and Spelman England produced two explorers of whom she might well be proud. We are glad to say that in Dr Liebermann's sketch of the work that was done by his predecessors Sir Henry Spelman comes by his rights; and we think it worthy of observation that it was what we nowadays call the comparative method which enabled these illustrious Englishmen to put new life into English history. It has been said with some truth that the man who 'introduced the feudal system into England' was not William the Conqueror, but Henry Spelman; and if, as is usual in such cases, similarities were seen before dissimilarities, still to have begun the comparison was a great achievement; for very true it is that England will