ABSTRACT
In 1888 F. W. Maitland, the greatest of all historians of medieval law, gave his inaugural lecture the title 'Why the history of English law is not written'. As the history of medieval law has become more learned and specialised it has become encased in separate national traditions, transcended only in the study of medieval Roman and canon law. Most historians of medieval law concentrate on the later Middle Ages and have rather a low opinion of law before about 1100, which has traditionally been seen as based on oaths, ordeals, and 'Judgements of God' deriving from the primitive ideas and practices of barbarians. Some of the most apparently barbaric or Germanic features of early medieval law, like oaths and ordeals, may have come as much from the 'vulgar law' of the provinces as from barbarian invaders. It is important to notice that the change from one to the other in medieval Europe was slow, patchy, and incomplete.
