the common people had voluntarily enforced them_. The common
people had no other legal form of making known their approbation of
particular laws.

The word "concede," too, is an important word. In the English statutes
it is usually translated _grant_--as if with an intention to indicate
that "the laws, customs, and liberties" of the English people were mere
_privileges, granted_ to them by the king; whereas it should be
translated _concede_, to indicate simply an _acknowledgment_, on the
part of the king, that such were the laws, customs, and liberties, which
had been chosen and established by the people themselves, and of right
belonged to them, and which he was bound to respect.

I will now give some authorities to show that the foregoing oath has,
_in substance_, been the coronation oath from the times of William the
Conqueror, (1066,) down to the time of James the First, and probably
until 1688.

It will be noticed, in the quotation from Kelham, that he says this oath
(or the oath of William the Conqueror) is "in sense and substance the
very same with that which the _Saxon_ kings used to take at their
coronations."

Hale says:

"Yet the English were very zealous for them," (that is, for the laws
of Edward the Confessor,) "no less or otherwise than they are at this
time for the Great Charter; insomuch that they were never satisfied
till the said laws were reenforced, and mingled, for the most part,
with the coronation oath of king William I., and some of his
successors."--_1 Hale's History of Common Law_, 157.

Also, "William, on his coronation, had sworn to govern by the laws of
Edward the Confessor, some of which had been reduced into writing,
but the greater part consisted of the immemorial customs of the
realm."--_Ditto_, p. 202, note L.

Kelham says:

"Thus stood the laws of England at the entry of William I., and it
seems plain that the laws, commonly called the laws of Edward the
Confessor, were at that time the standing laws of the kingdom, and
considered the great rule of their rights and liberties; and that the
English were so zealous for them, 'that they were never satisfied
till the said laws were reenforced, and mingled, for the most part,
with the coronation oath.' Accordingly, we find that this great
conqueror, at his coronation on the Christmas day succeeding his
victory, took an oath at the altar of St. Peter, Westminster, _in
sen