cepting those compiled in the territory now
called Germany, were largely the product of Roman influence, the
continuity of Roman life was almost completely broken in the island,
and even the Church, the direct heir of Roman tradition, did not carry
on a continuous existence: Canterbury was not a see formed in a Roman
province in the same sense as Tours or Reims. One of the striking
expressions of this Teutonism is presented by the language in which
the Anglo-Saxon laws were written. They are uniformly worded in
English, while continental laws, apart from the Scandinavian, are all
in Latin. The English dialect in which the Anglo-Saxon laws have been
handed down to us is in most cases a common speech derived from West
Saxon--naturally enough as Wessex became the predominant English
state, and the court of its kings the principal literary centre from
which most of the compilers and scribes derived their dialect and
spelling. Traces of Kentish speech may be detected, however, in the
_Textus Roffensis_, the MS. of the Kentish laws, and Northumbrian
dialectical peculiarities are also noticeable on some occasions, while
Danish words occur only as technical terms. At the conquest, Latin
takes the place of English in the compilations made to meet the demand
for Anglo-Saxon law texts as still applied in practice.

[v.02 p.0036]

2. It is easy to group the Anglo-Saxon laws according to the manner of
their publication. They would fall into three divisions: (1) laws and
collections of laws promulgated by public authority; (2) statements of
custom; (3) private compilations of legal rules and enactments. To
the first division belong the laws of the Kentish kings, AEthelberht,
Hlothhere and Eadric, Withraed; those of Ine of Wessex, of Alfred,
Edward the Elder, AEthelstan,[1] Edmund, Edgar, AEthelred and Canute;
the treaty between Alfred and Guthrum and the so-called treaty between
Edward and Guthrum. The second division is formed by the convention
between the English and the Welsh _Dunsaetas_, the law of the
Northumbrian priests, the customs of the North people, the fragments
of local custumals entered in Domesday Book. The third division would
consist of the collections of the so-called _Pseudo-leges Canuti_, the
laws of Edward the Confessor, of Henry I., and the great compilation
of the _Quadripartitus_, then of a number of short notices and
extracts like the fragments on the "wedding of a wife," on oaths,
on ordeals, on the king's