e as of the other, is perished, and
nothing worthy memory left of all their doings. Somewhat yet we have of
Mulmutius, who not only subdued such princes as reigned in this land, but
also brought the realm to good order that long before had been torn with
civil discord. But where his laws are to be found, and which they be from
other men's, no man living in these days is able to determine.

Certes there was never prince in Britain of whom his subjects conceived
better hope in the beginning than of Bladudus, and yet I read of none that
made so ridiculous an end. In like sort there hath not reigned any monarch
in this isle whose ways were more feared at the first than those of
Dunwallon (King Henry the First excepted), and yet in the end he proved
such a prince as after his death there was in manner no subject that did
not lament his funeral. And this only for his policy in governance, severe
administration of justice, and provident framing of his laws and
constitutions for the government of his subjects. His people also,
coveting to continue his name unto posterity, entitled those his
ordinances according to their maker, calling them by the name of the "Laws
of Mulmutius," which endured in execution among the Britons so long as our
_homelings_ had the dominion of this isle. Afterwards, when the _comeling_
Saxons had once obtained the superiority of the kingdom, the majesty of
those laws fell for a time into such decay that although "_Non penitus
cecidit, tamen potuit cecidisse videri_," as Leland saith; and the decrees
themselves had utterly perished indeed at the very first brunt had they
not been preserved in Wales, where they remained amongst the relics of the
Britons, and not only until the coming of the Normans, but even until the
time of Edward the First, who, obtaining the sovereignty of that portion,
endeavoured very earnestly to extinguish those of Mulmutius and to
establish his own.

But as the Saxons at their first arrival did what they could to abolish
the British laws, so in process of time they yielded a little to relent,
and not so much to abhor and mislike of the laws of Mulmutius as to
receive and embrace the same, especially at such time as the said Saxon
princes entered into amity with the British nobility, and after that began
to join in matrimony with the British ladies, as the British barons did
with the Saxon _frowes_, both by an especial statute and decree, whereof
in another treatise I have made m