acts
of power into a theory as if they had originally projected them. And
thus grew up the high schemes of prerogative, which, for many centuries,
were in conflict with those of liberty. We are not able, nevertheless,
to define the constitutional authority of the Saxon kings; it was not
legislative, nor was that of William and his successors ever such; it
was not exclusive of redress for private wrong, nor was this ever the
theory of English law, though the method of remedy might not be
sufficiently effective; yet it had certainly grown before the Conquest,
with no help from Roman notions, to something very unlike that of the
German kings in Tacitus.

NOTE XIII. Page 172.

The reduction of the free ceorls into villenage, especially if as
general as is usually assumed, is one of the most remarkable innovations
during the Anglo-Norman period; and one which, as far as our published
records extend, we cannot wholly explain. Observations have been made on
it by Mr. Wright, in the Archaeologia (vol. xxx. p. 225). After adverting
to the oppression of the peasants in Normandy, which produced several
rebellions, he proceeds thus:--"These feelings of hatred and contempt
for the peasantry were brought into our island by the Norman barons in
the latter half of the eleventh century. The Saxon laws and customs
continued; but the Normans acted as the Franks had done towards the
Roman coloni; they enforced with harshness the laws which were in their
own favour, and gradually threw aside, or broke through, those which
were in favour of the miserable serf."

In the Laws of Henry I. we find the weregild of the twyhinder, or
villein, set at 200 shillings in Wessex, "quae caput regni est et legum"
(c. 70). But this expression argues an Anglo-Saxon source; and, in fact,
so much in that treatise seems to be copied, without regard to the
change of times, from old authorities, mixed up with provisions of a
feudal or Norman character, that we hardly know how to distinguish what
belongs to each period. It is far from improbable that villenage, in the
sense the word afterwards bore, that is, an absolutely servile tenure of
lands, not only without legal rights over them, but with an incapacity
of acquiring either immovable or movable property against the lord, may
have made considerable strides before the reign of Henry II.[476] But
unless light should be thrown on its history by the publication of more
records, it seems almost impossible to