Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/63

 2. JENKS: TEUTONIC LAW 49 between Pepin the Short and Pope " John." ^ Evidently, English law was, even then, in a very rudimentary state. But the Norman Conquest soon changed all this. The Normans were the most brilliant men of their age ; and their star was then at its zenith. As soldiers, as ecclesiastics, as administrators, above all, as jurists, they had no equals, at least north of the Alps. The vigour which they had brought with them from their Scandinavian home had become infused, during the century which followed the treaty of St. Clair sur Epte, with the subtlety and the clerkly skill of the Gaul. The combination produced a superb political animal. The law and the administration of Normandy in the eleventh and twelfth centuries are models for the rest of France.^ Wher- ever the Norman goes, to England, to Sicily, to Jerusalem, he is the foremost man of his time. We cannot leave these facts out of account in explaining the place of England in the history of Law. But the greatest genius will do little unless he is favoured by circumstances ; and circumstances favoured the Normans in England. The more rudimentary the English law, the more plastic to the hand of the reformer. While Philip Augustus and St. Louis found themselves hampered at every turn by the network of feudalism, while even the great Bar- barossa was compelled to temporize with his vassals, and to respect the privileges of the Lombard League, Henry Beau- clerk and Henry of Anjou found it no impossible task to build up a new and uniform system of law for their subjects, and to pave the way for still greater changes in the future. W^ have now to note the effect of the Norman Conquest on the history of Law. In the first place, it converted the law of England into a lex terrce, a true local law. There is to be no longer a law of the Mercians, another of the West Saxons, and another of the Danes, not even a law for the English and a law for ^ Schmid, Oesetze der Angehachsen, at p. 500. interesting excursus on the history of Norman Law by Brunner, Entstehung der Schwurgerichte, cap. vii., and by the same author in HoltzendorfTs Encyklopadie der Bechtswissenschaft, Part I., 5th ed., pp. 303-348.
 * Luchaire, Manuel des Institutions Frangaises, p. 257, n. See the