ABSTRACT
IN 1066 William Duke of Normandy had conquered an ancient kingdom in which the foundations of the English common law were already firmly laid. Despite the diversity stressed by twelfth-century legal writers in the laws by which the men of Wessex, Mercia, and the Danelaw lived, there were strong influences making for unity. During the last centuries of the old English state, local courts of justice throughout the country had administered a law handed down through the knowledge and practice not only of the suitors who attended the courts but also the ealdormen and reeves appointed by the crown to preside over them. Throughout Anglo-Saxon history kings, whether in Kent, Mercia, or Wessex, had been legislators. They had studied the laws of their predecessors. King Alfred knew the lost laws of King OfFa of Mercia and, even though these kings had their own laws written in their own tongue, they felt that they were legislating, as Bede said of Æthelbert of Kent “in the Roman fashion.” Cnut’s code was made for all his subjects, Danes as well as Englishmen, though he recognised that local customs might vary. Changes in the law were made known to local courts through the ealdormen and their deputies who presided over them. The shire courts, the riding courts, the hundred and wapentake courts provided a remarkably complete coverage for the judicial needs of the people and the administrative needs of the crown. For the day-to-day quarrels of neighbours their lord’s hall moot sufficed. The more serious crimes, at least in theory, were preserved for the King’s judgment or that of great magnates whom he had allowed to hear his pleas. They formed the basis on which a national criminal law would in later centuries be built.
