Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/82

66 of thee three laws, Roger Hoveden and Ranulphus Cetrenis inform us, king Edward the confeor extracted one uniform law or diget of laws, to be oberved throughout the whole kingdom; though Hoveden and the author of an old manucript chronicle aure us likewie, that this work was projected and begun by his grandfather king Edgar. And indeed a general diget of the ame nature has been contantly found expedient, and therefore put in practice by other great nations, which were formed from an aemblage of little provinces, governed by peculiar cutoms. As in Portugal, under king Edward, about the beginning of the fifteenth century. In Spain under Alonzo, who about the year 1250 executed the plan of his father St. Ferdinand, and collected all the provincial cutoms into one uniform law, in the celebrated code entitled las partidas. And in Sweden, about the ame aera, a univeral body of common law was compiled out of the particular cutoms etablihed by the laghman of every province, and intitled the land’s lagh, being analagous to the common law of England.

thee undertakings, of king Edgar and Edward the confeor, eem to have been no more than a new edition, or freh promulgation, of Alfred’s code or dome-book, with uch additions and improvements as the experience of a century and an half had uggeted. For Alfred is generally tiled by the ame hitorians the, as Edward the confeor is the. Thee however are the laws which our hitories o often mention under the name of the laws of Edward the confeor; which our ancetors truggled o hardly to maintain, under the firt princes of the Norman line; and which ubequent princes o frequently promied to keep and to retore, as the mot popular act they could do, when preed by foreign emergencies or dometic dicontents. Thee are the laws, that o