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themselves for a time in several small states. The remnant of the country which they retained was indeed at first of considerable extent, including not only modern Wales but the great kingdom of Strathclyde, stretching from Dumbarton to Chester, together with Cornwall, Devon, and part of Somerset. But the eastern boundary of this territory yielded more and more to the influence of the invaders; and it was only in the mountains of Wales and Cumbria that the Britons preserved for any length of time their No general ever-decreasing independence. During the long-continued commixture and peculiarly ferocious series of contests between the

of races;

natives and invaders, vast numbers of the flower of the British race perished. Many Britons sought refuge in emigration to the Continent. Not a few of the less warlike doubtless remained as slaves to the conquerors, and a still greater infusion of the Celtic element may have been effected by the intermarriages of the victors with the women of the vanquished.' But the Germanic element has always constituted the main stream of our race, absorbing in its course and assimilating each of the other elements. It is the paternal element in our system natural and political. Since the first immigration, each infusion of new blood has but served to add intensity to the national Teutonic element. The Danes were very closely allied in

1 This hypothesis is strengthened by the fact that the few words in our language which have been retained from the original Celtic (about thirty-two in number, excluding proper names) have all relation to inferior employments, and for the most part apply exclusively to articles of feminine use or to the domestic occupations of women. (See a list of these words, made by the late Mr. Garnett, in Transactions of the Philological Society, vol. i. p. 171.) On the other hand, the tribal or family organization of the Germans, and the peculiar honour given to women among them, point to the strong improbability of any general amalgamation through intermarriage. The Britons also were long averse to such an admixture.-See Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 62.

2 Stubbs, Select Charters, Introductory Sketch, p. 3. See also Archdeacon Squire, Anglo-Saxon Government in Germany and England (1745); Freeman, Norm. Conq. vol. i.; and Stubbs, Const. Hist. vol. i. The arguments in favour of the opposite theory, of the permanence of the British race, are very ably stated by Mr. L. O. Pike in his 'Origin of the English.' Mr. Coote, in his Romans of Britain' (1878), also maintains the permanence of the population of Britain, but then he affirms that the greater part of the island was occupied by a Belgic race, who began to settle here before the invasion of Julius Cæsar, and that these Belgians were Teutonic.

race, language, and institutions to the people whom they invaded; and the Normans, though speaking a different language, and possessing different political and social institutions, were yet descended from a branch of the same ethnic stock.

tions.

But whatever be the proportion in which the various or of institunational elements have coalesced, it is certain that the principles of our constitution are in nowise derived from either Celt or Roman. The civilization of the Romans, for the most part, departed with them. The Roman law Roman Law. disappeared for a time from the judicial system of our country. After the conversion of the English to Christianity, however, it must indirectly have exercised considerable influence on Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence, through the medium of the dignified ecclesiastics who in Witenagemôt and Shiremôt took so large a part in the making of laws and the administration of justice. Directly, also, it was re-introduced from the Continent, in the 12th century, as a consequence of the revived study of jurisprudence which had there taken place. In the year 1149, Vacarius, a distinguished Lombard jurist, who had been invited to England by Archbishop Theobald, established a school of civil law at Oxford, and publicly taught the Roman jurisprudence to a numerous and eager band of students, for whose use he wrote his "Summa," consisting of annotated extracts from the Digest and the Code.3

1 Mr. Coote ('Romans of Britain') has ably urged all that can be said for a more complete survival of the Roman civilization, sheltered in the ark of the cities.'

2 'L'Église défendit pied à pied le terrain de la société romaine; elle en fut, sous le gouvernement politique des barbares, la représentation éclairée et courageuse; elle en recueillit, elle en protégea la gloire passée. C'est à elle principalement qu'est due la conservation de ce droit admirable, qui partage encore aujourd'hui avec le Christianisme la domination morale chez les peuples civilisés.' Thierry, Tableau de l'Empire Romain, p. 359.

3 Gervas. Dorob., (Decem Script. col. 1665), in describing the strife between Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Papal Legate, Henry Bishop of Winchester, says: 'Oriuntur hinc inde discordiae graves, lites et appellationes antea inauditae. Tunc leges et causidici in Angliam primo vocati sunt. Quorum primus erat Magister Vacarius. Hic in Oxonfordia legem docuit.' Robertus de Monte is the authority for the date, 1149, and for his compilation of nine books from the Code and Digest 'qui sufficiunt ad omnes legum lites quae in Schola frequentari solent decidendas.'

Although Vacarius was soon silenced by King Stephen, the impulse which he had given to the study of Roman law was not arrested.1 The so-called Leges Henrici Primi (written probably in the early part of Henry II.'s reign) contain many extracts from the Theodosian Code or the Breviarium; and the legal treatises of both Glanvill and Bracton, the latter especially, are strongly marked by a large infusion of Roman principles and terminology. As a system, however, the Roman law was soon rejected in England; but some of its forms, and many of its principles, were absorbed into and amalgamated with the system which our own courts of justice had been gradually developing for themselves out of the primitive national usages. Our language, and the main outlines of our political and judicial institutions, are all inherited from our Teutonic ancestors; cach has undergone a spontaneous development during the course of centuries, each has assimilated new elements; but the national identity of race, language, and institutions has never ceased to exist."

Germanic The germs of our present constitution and laws must, origin of English therefore, be sought in the primeval institutions of the first institutions. Teutonic immigrants. Of these institutions we have little positive knowledge. According to Bede, the original im

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1 'Vacario nostro indictum silentium, sed Deo faciente, eo magis virtus legis invaluit quo eam amplius nitebatur impietas infirmare.' Joh. Sarisb., Polycraticus, lib. viii. c. 22.

Of Bracton the entire form and a third of the contents were directly borrowed from the Corpus Juris.' (Sir H. S. Maine, Anc. Law, p. 82.) Bracton was largely indebted to Azo's Summa on the Code and Institutes of Justinian. (Savigny, Geschichte des Römischen Rechts, iv. 583 seq). Sir Travers Twiss, in the Introductions to the two volumes already issued of his new edition of Bracton, has thrown fresh light on the dates and incidents of the great legist's career.

The very diversity of the elements which are united within the Isle of Britain serves to illustrate the strength and vitality of the one which for thirteen hundred years has maintained its position either unrivalled or in victorious supremacy. If its history is not the perfectly pure development of Germanic principles, it is the nearest existing approach to such a development.'—Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 6.

4 Bede (born A.D. 672, died 735) records very few circumstances relative to the English conquest of Britain from his own sources, but for the most part transcribes the 'Liber querulus de Excidio Britanniae' of Gildas the Wise, a monk of Bangor, who was born in 516, and composed his history about the year 560.

migrants consisted of the three kindred tribes of Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. Of these Tacitus does not even mention the Saxons or Jutes, and only names the Angles as one of a number of North German tribes, without fixing their locality. In the second century Ptolemy identifies the seats of the Saxons and Angles as the district between the Elbe, the Eyder, and the Warnow, now constituting the modern Duchics of Holstein, Lauenburg, and Mecklenburg. Before the age of Bede the name of Saxon had been extended from the designation of a single insignificant tribe to that of a wide confederacy of North German tribes. Retaining their independence of Rome, tenacious of their heathen worship and their primitive barbarism, they habitually plundered the richer nations who had succumbed to the Roman sway.

Scarcely, if at all, affected by contact with Roman influences, the Teutonic tribes who invaded Britain had probably a less distinctly marked political organization than that of their kindred on the banks of the Rhine and the Danube, a picture of whose institutions has been handed down to us in the pages of Cæsar and Tacitus. But after making due allowance for this difference, for the indistinctness of the picture itself, and for the contradictory ways in which it has been interpreted, we may yet gather from this source some general knowledge of the primeval institutions of our Teutonic forefathers.

In the time of Tacitus, Germany appears to have been Ancient divided among a number of independent tribes, who had German polity. ceased to be nomadic and occupied fixed seats in settled communities.

The whole land of the settlement belonged to the community (the Mark, or Vicus), who annually allotted the arable land among the freemen, while the pasture land was both held and used in common.

1 'La constitution de la Marche paraît dans Tacite. Il la désigne évidem- The Mark ment dans son xxvie chapitre par le mot ager, qu'il oppose à arva (arva per system. annos mutant, et superest ager], et quand il dit que les barbares aimaient à entourer leurs habitations et leurs champs de vastes terrains vides [suam

An aggregate of communities (vici) of the same tribe constituted the pagus (the Gau); and an aggregate of pagi made up the civitas, or populus.

In their political life the monarchic, aristocratic, and democratic elements were clearly marked; but the ultimate sovereignty seems to have resided in a free and armed. people. Some of the tribes had kings selected from particular families; others had not. But the King had only a limited power, and was rather the representative of the unity of the tribe than its ruler.

In the Vici and pagi justice was administered by principes, elected by the nation in its popular assembly, and assisted in each district by a hundred companions or

assessors.

They had also Duces, their leaders in war, clected probably from among the principes, but whose authority was based, not like that of the kings, on noble birth, but on personal valour.+ Each district contributed its hundred fighting men to the national host.

The principes were attended by bands of retainers (comites), who protected the person of their lord in war and

quisque domum spatio circumdat, c. 16] pouvant leur servir de défense. Or Î'usage de la Marche est le signe d'une transition entre l'état nomade et l'état agricole, entre le régime de l'entière communauté de la terre et celui où com mence à se montrer la propriété foncière privée. En effet la Marche est un vaste territoire indivis qui s'étend au delà des cultures-un vrai boulevard.' Geffroy, Rome et les Barbares (1874), p. 185. On the Mark system in its social, juridical, and political aspects, see Kemble, Saxons in England; G. L. Von Maurer, Geschichte der Marken-verfassung, Dorf- Hof- Städte-verfassung, and also his Einleitung; Schmid, Gesetze der Angel-Sachsen; Nasse, Agricultural Community of the Middle Ages (by Ouvry); Stubbs, Const. Hist. vol. i. ; and Maine, Village Communities, Lect. i. and iii., who brings out the impor tance of the Mark as possibly the true source of some things which have never been satisfactorily explained in English real-property law.'

1 'De minoribus rebus principes consultant, de majoribus omnes; ita tamen at ea quoque quorum penes plebem arbitrium est, apud principes pertractentur.-Tac. Germ. xi.

The well-known words of Montesquieu, speaking of the English Constitution, 'Ce beau système a été trouvé dans les bois,' have reference to the existence of this triple constitution among the Germans.

2 Nec regibus infinita aut libera potestas.-Tac. Germ. vii.

3 Eliguntur in iisdem consiliis et principes qui jura per pagos vicosque reddunt. Centeni singulis ex plebe comites consilium simul et auctoritas adsunt. Id. c. xii.

• Reges ex nobilitate, duces ex virtute sumunt. Id. c. vii.

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