Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/110

 96 /. BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST most men who had anything to lose and were not strong enough to live in rebelhon ; but still no right could be done to the complainant without his submission. The device of a judgment by default, which is familiar enough to us,,/ was unknown, and probably would not have been understood. Final judgment, when obtained, could in like manner not be directly enforced. The successful party had to see to gathering the " fruits of judgment," as we say, for himself. In case of continued refusal to do right according to the sentence of the court, he might take the law into his own hands, in fact wage war on his obstinate opponent. The ealdorman's aid, and ultimately the king's, could be invoked in such extreme cases as that of a wealthy man, or one backed by a powerful family, setting the law at open defiance. But this was an extraordinary measure, analogous to nothing in the regular modern process of law. The details of Anglo-Saxon procedure and judicial usuagft had become or were fast becoming obsolete in the thirteenth century, which is as much as to say that they were already outworn when the definite growth of the Common Law began. But the general features of the earlier practice, and still more the ideas that underlay them, have to be borne in mind. ^ They left their stamp on the course of our legal history in 'v*'" manifold ways ; many things in the medieval law cannot be understood without reference to them; and even in modern law their traces are often to be found. While the customary forms of judgment and justice were such as we have said, there was a comparatively large amount of legislation or at least express declaration of law; and, what is even more remarkable, it was delivered in the mother tongue of the people from the first. JEthelberht, the con- verted king of Kent, was anxious to emulate the civilization of Rome in secular things also, and reduced the customs of his kingdom, so far as might be, to writing; but they were called dooms, not leges; they were issued in English, and were translated into Latin only after the lapse of some cen- turies. Other Kentish princes, and afterwards Ine of Wes- sex, followed the example; but the regular series of Anglo- Saxon laws begins towards the end of the ninth century with