gland,
the Roman name and language having entirely vanished in the seventh
century, the missionary monks were obliged to contend with the
difficulty, and to adapt foreign characters to the English language;
else none but a very few could possibly have drawn any advantage from
the things they meant to record. And to this it was owing that many,
even the ecclesiastical constitutions, and not a few of the ordinary
evidences of the land, were written in the language of the country.

This example of written laws being given by Ethelbert, it was followed
by his successors, Edric and Lothaire. The next legislator amongst the
English, was Ina, King of the West Saxons, a prince famous in his time
for his wisdom and his piety. His laws, as well as those of the
above-mentioned princes, still subsist. But we must always remember that
very few of these laws contained any new regulation, but were rather
designed to affirm their ancient customs, and to preserve and fix them;
and accordingly they are all extremely rude and imperfect. We read of a
collection of laws by Offa, King of the Mercians; but they have been
long since lost.

The Anglo-Saxon laws, by universal consent of all writers, owe more to
the care and sagacity of Alfred than of any of the ancient kings. In the
midst of a cruel war, of which he did not see the beginning nor live to
see the end, he did more for the establishment of order and justice than
any other prince has been known to do in the profoundest peace. Many of
the institutions attributed to him undoubtedly were not of his
establishment: this shall be shown, when we come to treat more minutely
of the institutions. But it is clear that he raised, as it were, from
the ashes, and put new life and vigor into the whole body of the law,
almost lost and forgotten in the ravages of the Danish war; so that,
having revived, and in all likelihood improved, several ancient
national regulations, he has passed for their author, with a reputation
perhaps more just than if he had invented them. In the prologue which he
wrote to his own code, he informs us that he collected there whatever
appeared to him most valuable in the laws of Ina and Offa and others of
his progenitors, omitting what he thought wrong in itself or not adapted
to the time; and he seems to have done this with no small judgment.

The princes who succeeded him, having by his labors enjoyed more repose,
turned their minds to the improvement of the law; and th