Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/111

 3. POLLOCK: ANGLO-SAXON LAW 97 Alfred's publication of his own dooms, and (it seems) an amended version of Ine's, in which these are now preserved. Through the century and a half between Alfred's time and Cnut's/ legislation was pretty continuous and it was always in English. The later restoration of English to the statute roll after the medieval reign of Latin and French was not the new thing it seemed. It may be that the activity of the Wessex princes in legislation was connected with the conquest of the Western parts of England, and the need of having fixed rules for the conduct of affairs in the newly settled districts. No one doubts that a considerable West-Welsh population remained in this region, and it would have been difficult to apply any local West-Saxon custom to them.' Like all written laws, the Anglo-Saxon dooms have to be interpreted in the light of their circumstances. Unluckily for modern students, the matters of habit and custom which they naturally take for granted are those of which we now have least direct evidence. A large part of them is filled by minute catalgues of the fines and compositions payable for manslaughter, wounding, and other acts of violence. We may well suppose that in matters of sums and number such provisions often express an authoritative compromise between the varying though not widely dissimilar usages of local courts ; at all events we have an undoubted example of a like process in the fixing of standard measures after the Conquest ; and in some of the later Anglo-Saxon laws we get a comparative standard of Danish and English reckon- ing. Otherwise we cannot certainly tell how much is declara- tion of existing custom, or what we should now call consoli- dation, and how much was new. We know from Alfred's preamble to his laws, evidently framed with special care, that he did innovate to some extent, but, like a true father of English statesmen, was anxious to innovate cautiously. On the whole the Anglo-Saxon written laws, though of priceless use to students of the times, need a good deal of circumspec- tion and careful comparison of other authorities for using pilation of the twelfth century largely mixed with invention, do not I even profess to be actual poems of the Confessor, but the customs of l his time collected by order of William the Conqueror. J
 * The so-called laws of Edward the Confessor, an antiquarian conv^~|