Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/115

 3. POLLOCK: ANGLO-SAXON LAW 101 but because fraudulent documents could not be invented or employed in a society which knew nothing of credit and did not use writing for any common business of life. Far more significant for the future development of Eng- lish law are the beginnings of the King's Peace. In later times this became a synonym for public order maintained by the king's general authority; nowadays we do not easily conceive how the peace which lawful men ought to keep can be any other than the Queen's or the commonwealth's. But the king's justice, as we have seen, was at first not ordinary but exceptional, and his power was called to aid only when other means had failed. To be in the king's peace was to have a special protection, a local or personal privilege. Every free man was entitled to peace in his own house, the sanctity of the homestead being one of the most ancient and general principles of Teutonic law. The worth set on a man's peace, like that of his life, varied with his rank, and thus the king's peace was higher than any other man's. Fighting in the king's house was a capital offence from an early time. Gradually the privileges of the king's house were extended to the precincts of his court, to the army, to the regular meetings of the shire and hundred, and to the great roads. Also the king might grant special personal protection to his officers and followers ; and these two kinds of privilege spread until they coalesced and covered the whole ground. The more serious public offences were appropriated to the king's jurisdiction; the king's peace was used as a special sanction for the settlement of blood-feuds, and was pro- claimed on various solemn occasions ; it seems to have been specially prominent — may we say as a " frontier regula- tion " ? — where English conquest and settlement were re- cent.^ In the generation before the Conquest it was, to all appearance, extending fast. In this kind of development the first stage is a really exceptional right ; the second is a right which has to be distinctly claimed, but is open to all who will claim it in the proper form ; the third is the " com- mon right " which the courts will take for granted. The Ch.
 * See the customs of Chester, D. B. i. 262 b, extracted in Stubbs, SeL