Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/109

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HE kingdom of England, over which our municipal laws have juridiction, includes not, by the common law, either Wales, Scotland, or Ireland, or any other part of the king’s dominions, except the territory of England only. And yet the civil laws and local cutoms of this territory do now obtain, in part or in all, with more or les retrictions, in thee and many other adjacent countries; of which it will be proper firt to take a review, before we conider the kingdom of England itelf, the original and proper ubject of thee laws.

had continued independent of England, unconquered and uncultivated, in the primitive patoral tate which Caear and Tacitus acribe to Britain in general, for many centuries; even from the time of the hotile invaions of the Saxons, when the antient and chritian inhabitants of the iland retired to thoe natural intrenchments, for protection from their pagan viitants. But when thee invaders themelves were converted to chritianity, and ettled into regular and potent governments, this retreat of the antient Britons grew every day narrower; they were overrun by little and little, gradually driven from one fatnes to another, and by repeated loes abridged of their wild independence. Very early in our hitory we find their princes doing homage to the crown of England; till at length in the reign of Edward the firt, who may jutly be tiled the conqueror of Wales, the line of