Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 01.djvu/657

ANGLO-SAXON LAW. ed tlirough the industry of iiiodcin spliolnrs. These give us a far from eomplele, but yet a fairly consistent, idea of the principles and pro- <edu"re of Anglo-Saxon law. This was, even at the time of the Conquest, a primitive law, con- cerning itself mostly with the personal relations of free and unfree men, liegemen and lordless men, or outlaws, with crimes of violence — homi- cide, wimniling, and cattle-stealing — and with a simple and slowly developing law of real pvop- crtv. Contract law, as we understand the term, did" not exist. Thei-e was no distinction be- tween willful and accidental homicide or maim- ing, and all crimes were punished by the inflic- tion of heav,v fines, which were graduated, not according to the atrocity of the deed, but aecord- ing to the personal status or dignit.v of the per- son injured. Indeed, the law of persons con- sisted almost entirely of a graded valuation of the individual's life or limb, and the terms "twelve-hundred-shilling man," " two-hundred- shilling man." were the well-understood equiva- lents of terms of rank or personal status. Anglo-Saxon land law was a composite of Teu- tonic customary law and the rules growing out of the personal and property relations of lord and vassal, the former probably predominating. Folc-land (q.v. ) was the name given to land the title of which rested on the common, cus- tomary, and unwritten law. Land derived by grant from the King was known as boc-land ( q.v. ), the title resting on the book, or written instrument, creating it. It is in the latter that the elements of a feudal form of tenure existed; but it is probable that all forms of tenure were move or less dependent; though of feudal tenure, in the strict sense of the term, there are only a few traces before the Conquest. The allodial ownership, referred to in the books, was not the "absolute and unqualified property" in land which Blaekstone and other later writers had in mind when the.v used the term. Sometimes it is employed as the equivalent of boc-land, and more often merelv as signifving an inheritable estate. See Allodiim; Feudali-sm; Tenure.

The Anglo-Saxon judicial system was of the loosest p{)ssible description. The public courts — the hundred court and the countv court — were popular and local in character, and bad no ef- fective process for carrying their judgments into effect. There was no supreme judicial tribunal, no curia reffis, such as developed in the Norman period; and when the king's justice was invoked to remedy an act of injustice committed by the regular tribunals, it was an irregular and extra- legal, or at least extra-judicial, power which he was called upon to exercise. Toward the close of the Saxon period, a multiplicity of private courts sprang up, the predecessors of the courts- baron of a later date. See M.vnor; Court- Baron; CuRi.v Regis; King's Bench. Consult; Pollock and JIaitland, Historii of English Law (Boston, ISOfl), for a brief but comprehensive description of Anglo-Saxon law and its adminis- tration; also Lee, Hialoricnl Juri.ipriidcnre (New "Vork. 1900). and Holmes, The Common Law (Boston. IS.Sl).

ANGLO-SAXONS. The collective name generally given by historians to the variovis Teutonic or German tribes which settled in England, chiefly in the fifth century, and founded the kingdoms which were ultimately comljined into the English monarchy and nation. Various groups of them were known as .Vngles, Saxons, and .Jutes. The traditional statement is, that the first of these invaders made their appear- ance in Britain in 449, having Hengist and Horsa as their leaders. But inder the more searching scrutiny of later writers, these famous leaders have come to be looked upon as ni,vthical heroes of romance, common to most of the Germanic nations; and though the fact of a gi'cat CJermanic invasion in the middle of the fifth centur,v is not doubted, it is believed that this was by no means the earliest period at which Germanic settlements were effected in England. Long pievious to this period, a portion of the coast, extending from Portsmouth to Wells in Norfolk, was known as the Tjitus Saxonicum; but whether in reference to Saxons by whom it was settled, or to roving adventurers of that race by whom it was ravaged, is still a subject of dispute. Of the three tribes mentioned above, the Jutes are stated to have been the first comers. Their earliest home was in what is now Schleswlg, North Germany, and the portions of England of which they ])ossessed themselves were Kent, the Isle of ight, and the opposite coast of Hampshire. The Saxons settled chiefly in the southern parts of England — in Sussex, Essex, Middlesex, the south of Hertford, Surrey, the part of Hampshire not possessed b}' the Jutes; also Berkshire, Wiltshire, Dorset, Somerset, Devon, and the portion of Cornwall hich did not remain in the possession of its former (Celtic inhabitants. The Saxons who invaded England probably belonged chiefly to the portion of that great nation, or confederacy of nations, whose territories lay on the shores of the Baltic and about the lower Elbe, occupying a region corresponding to Holstein, the north of Hanover, and the west of Jlccklenburg. Of the settlements of the third tribe «e have no knowledge, until we find them established along the eastern coast of Britain. Whether, as some recent historians maintain, they were Enger-Saxons, from the lower Weser, or, as most assert. Angles (q.v.) from Schleswig, a corner of which is at the present lime called Angcht, it is certain that they made a succession of descents on the coasts of Suffolk and Norfolk, on the country to the noi'th of the Humber, and the southern part of Scotland between the Tweed and the Forth. From these coasts they made their way inland, and eventually obtained possession of the whole of England, except the portions already mentioned; that is to say, of all the part to the north of the Avon, on the one side, and the Thames on the other, Essex, Middlesex, and part of Hertford excepted. The union of different bands of these conquerors among themselves, M'ith their countrymen who had preceded them, and with the Celtic population which, though conquered, there is no reason to suppose was exterminated, gave rise to the so-called Heptarchy (q.v.), the kingdoms of Northumbria (originally Bernieia and Deira), Kent, Sussex, Wessex, Essex, East Anglia, and Mercia.

The various independent States into which England had till then been divided were united by Egbert, King of Wessex, in S27, into one kingdom. The royal family of Wessex, which was thus raised to the kingly dignity over the whole country, never again lost its supremacy till the Norman Conquest, except during the periods from 878 to 9.18, when the Danes ruled the kingdoms north of the Thames, and from lOK) to 1042, when Danish kings ruled over all of Eng-