Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/34

 20 /. BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST It is only in the Karolingian age that written law appears among the northern and eastern folks of Germany, the Fri- sians, the Saxons, the Angli and Warni of Thuringia, the Franks of Hamaland. ^ To a much later time must we regret- fully look for the oldest monuments of Scandinavian law.^ Only two of our " heptarchic " kingdoms leave us law, Kent and Wessex, though we have reason to believe that Offa the Mercian (ob, 796) legislated.^ Even Northumbria, Bede's Northumbria, which was a bright spot in a dark world, bequeaths no dooms. The impulse of Roman example soon wore out. When once a race has its Lex, its aspirations seem to be satisfied. About the year 900 Alfred speaks as though Offa (circ. 800), Ine (circ. 700), ^thelbert (circ. 600) had left him little to do. Rarely upon the mainland was there any authoritative revision of the ancient Leges, though transcribers sometimes modified them to suit changed times, and by so doing have perplexed the task of modern historians. Only among the Lombards, who from the first, despite their savagery, seem to show something that is like a genius for law,* was there steadily progressive legislation. Grimwald (668), Liutprand (713-35), Ratchis (746), and Aistulf (755) added to the edict of Rothari. Not by abandoning, but by developing their own ancient rules, the Lombards were training themselves to be the interpreters and in some sort the heirs of the Roman prudentes. As the Frankish realm expanded, there expanded with it a wonderful " system of personal laws." ^ It was a system of racial laws. The Lex Salica, for example, was not the law of a district, it was the law of a race. The Swabian, wherever he might be, lived under his Alamannic law, or, as an expressive phrase tells us, he lived Alamannic law {legem vivere). So Roman law was the law of the Romani. In a famous, if exaggerated sentence. Bishop Agobard of Lyons » Brunner, op. cit. i. 340 ff.; Schroder, op. cit. 240 ff. Edited by v. Richthofen and Sohm in M. G. » K. Maurer, Ueberblick Uber die Geschichte der nordgermanischen Rechtsquellen in v. Holtzendorff, Encyklopadie. » Alfred, Introduction, 49, §9 (Liebermann, Gesetze, p. 46).
 * Brunner, op. cit. i. 370; Schroder, op. cit. 235.
 * Brunner, op. cit. i. 259; Schroder, op. cit. 225; Esmein, op. cit. 57.