Standard practices are described, but there are often
variations with locality. Also, change did not come abruptly, but
with vacillations, e.g. the change from pagan to Christian belief
and the change to allowance of loans for interest. The scientific
revolution was accepted only slowly. There were often many
attempts made for change before it actually occurred, e.g. gaining
Parliamentary power over the king's privileges, such as taxation.

The Law section describes the law governing the behavior and
conduct of the populace. It includes law of that time which is the
same, similar, or a building block to the law of today. In earlier
times this is both statutory law and the common law of the courts.
The Magna Carta, which is quoted in Chapter 7, is the first
statute of England and is listed first in the "Statutes of the
Realm" and the "Statutes at Large". The law sections of Chapters 7
- 18 mainly quote or paraphrase most of these statutes. Excluded
are statutes which do not help us understand the development of
our law, such as statutes governing Wales after its conquest and
statutes on succession rights to the throne.

The Judicial Procedure section describes the process of applying
the law and trying cases, and jurisdictions. It also contains some
examples of cases.

For easy comparison, amounts of money expressed in pounds or marks
[Danish denomination] have often been converted to the smaller
denominations of shillings and pence. There are twenty shillings
in a pound. A mark in silver is two-thirds of a pound. Shillings
are abbreviated: "s." There are twelve pennies or pence in a
Norman shilling. Pence are abbreviated "d." Six shillings and two
pence is denoted 6s.2d. A scaett was a coin of silver and copper
of lesser denomination than a shilling. There were no coins of the
denomination of shilling during Anglo-Saxon times.

The sources and reference books from which information was
obtained are listed in a bibliography instead of being contained
in tedious footnotes. There is no index to pages because the
electronic text will print out its pages differently on different
computers with different computer settings. Instead, a word search
may be done on the electronic text.

Dedication and Acknowledgements

A Vassar College faculty member once dedicated her book to her students,
but for whom it would have been written much earlier. This book "Our
Legal Heritage" is dedicated to the faculty of Vassar Col