(volueris:) Et praesertim leges et consuetudines
et libertates a glorioso Rege Edwardo clero populoque concessas?

(Et respondeat Rex,) Concedo et servare volo, et sacramento
confirmare.

Servabis Ecclesiae Dei, Cleroque, et Populo, pacem ex integro et
concordiam in Deo secundum vires tuas?

(Et respondeat Rex,) Servabo.

Facies fieri in omnibus Judiciis tuis equam et rectam justiciam, et
discrecionem, in misericordia et veritate, secundum vires tuas?

(Et respondeat Rex,) Faciam.

Concedis justas, leges et consuetudines esse tenendas, et promittis
per te eas esse protegendas, et ad honorem Dei corroborandas, quas
vulgus elegit, secundum vires tuas?

(Et respondeat Rex,) Concedo et promitto."]

[Footnote 63: It would appear, from the text, that the Charter of
Liberties and the Charter of the Forest were sometimes called "_laws of
the land_."]

[Footnote 64: As the ancient coronation oath, given in the text, has
come down from the Saxon times, the following remarks of Palgrave will
be pertinent, in connection with the oath, as illustrating the fact
that, in those times, no special authority attached to the laws of the
king:

"The Imperial Witenagemot was not a legislative assembly, in the strict
sense of the term, for the whole Anglo-Saxon empire. Promulgating his
edicts amidst his peers and prelates, the king uses the language of
command; but the theoretical prerogative was modified by usage, and the
practice of the constitution required that the law should be accepted by
the legislatures (courts) of the several kingdoms. * * The 'Basileus'
speaks in the tone of prerogative: Edgar does not merely recommend, he
commands that the law shall be adopted by all the people, whether
English, Danes, or Britons, in every part of his empire. Let this
statute be observed, he continues, by Earl Oslac, and all the host who
dwell under his government, and let it be transmitted by writ to the
ealdormen of the other subordinate states. And yet, in defiance of this
positive injunction, the laws of Edgar were not accepted in Mercia until
the reign of Canute the Dane. It might be said that the course so
adopted may have been an exception to the general rule; but in the
scanty and imperfect annals of Anglo-Saxon legislation, we shall be able
to find so many examples of similar proceedings, _that this mode of
enactment must be considered as dictated by the constitution of the
empire_. Edwar