as I myself do
likewise for many things contained in this treatise. She was wife unto
Gutteline, king of the Britons, and being made protectrix of the realm
after her husband's decease in the nonage of her son, and seeing many
things daily to grow up among her people worthy reformation, she devised
sundry and those very politic laws for the governance of her kingdom,
which her subjects, when she was dead and gone, did name the "Martian
Statutes." Who turned them into Latin as yet I do not read, howbeit (as I
said before of the laws of Mulmutius) so the same Alfred caused those of
this excellently well-learned lady (whom divers commend also for her great
knowledge in the Greek tongue) to be turned into his own language,
whereupon it came to pass that they were daily executed among his
subjects, afterwards allowed of (among the rest) by the Normans, and
finally remain in use in these our days, notwithstanding that we cannot
dissever them also very readily from the other.

The seventh alteration of laws was practised by the Saxons; for I overpass
the use of the civil ordinances used in Rome, finally brought hither by
the Romans, and yet in perfect notice among the civilians of our country,
though never generally received by all the several regions of this island.
Certes there are great numbers of these latter, which yet remain in sound
knowledge, and are to be read, being comprehended for the most part under
the names of the Martian and the Saxon law. Beside these also, I read of
the Dane law, so that the people of middle England were ruled by the
first, the West Saxons by the second, as Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk,
Cambridgeshire, and part of Hertfordshire were by the third, of all the
rest the most unequal and intolerable. And as in these days whatsoever the
prince in public assembly commanded upon the necessity of his subjects or
his own voluntary authority was counted for law, so none of them had
appointed any certain place whereunto his people might repair at fixed
times for justice, but caused them to resort commonly to their palaces,
where, in proper person, they would often determine their causes, and so
make shortest work, or else commit the same to the hearing of other, and
so despatch them away. Neither had they any house appointed to assemble in
for the making of their ordinances, as we have now at Westminster.
Wherefore Edmund gave laws at London and Lincoln, Ethelred at Habam,
Alfred at Woodstock and Wannetting,