ed the
store of Roman conceptions by breaking the national isolation of the
English Church and opening the way for closer intercourse with France
and Italy.

5. It would be useless to attempt to trace in a brief sketch
the history of the legal principles embodied in the documents of
Anglo-Saxon law. But it may be of some value to give an outline of a
few particularly characteristic subjects.

(a) The Anglo-Saxon legal system cannot be understood unless one
realizes the fundamental opposition between folk-right and privilege.
Folk-right is the aggregate of rules, formulated or latent but
susceptible of formulation, which can be appealed to as the expression
of the juridical consciousness of the people at large or of the
communities of which it is composed. It is tribal in its origin, and
differentiated, not according to boundaries between states, but on
national and provincial lines. There may be the folk-right of West and
East Saxons, of East Angles, of Kentish men, Mercians, Northumbrians,
Danes, Welshmen, and these main folk-right divisions remain even when
tribal kingdoms disappear and the people is concentrated in one or
two realms. The chief centres for the formulation and application of
folk-right were in the 10th and 11th centuries the shire-moots, while
the witan of the realm generally placed themselves on the higher
ground of State expediency, although occasionally using folk-right
ideas. The older law of real property, of succession, of contracts,
the customary tariffs of fines, were mainly regulated by folk-right;
the reeves employed by the king and great men were supposed to take
care of local and rural affairs according to folk-right. The law had
to be declared and applied by the people itself in its communities,
while the spokesmen of the people were neither democratic majorities
nor individual experts, but a few leading men--the twelve eldest
thanes or some similar quorum. Folk-right could, however, be broken
or modified by special law or special grant, and the fountain of such
privileges was the royal power. Alterations and exceptions were, as
a matter of fact, suggested by the interested parties themselves,
and chiefly by the Church. Thus a privileged land-tenure was
created--bookland; the rules as to the succession of kinsmen were set
at nought by concession of testamentary power and confirmations of
grants and wills; special exemptions from the jurisdiction of the
hundreds and special privileges as