Note 40 — Chapter III

"Alfred may, in one sense, be called the founder of these laws, (the Saxon,) for until his time they were an unwritten code, but he expressly says, 'that I, Alfred, collected the good laws of our forefathers into one code, and also I wrote them down'—which is a decisive fact in the history of our laws well worth noting."—Introduction to Gilbert's History of the Common Pleas, p. 2, note.

Kelham says, "Let us consult our own lawyers and historians, and they will tell us * * that Alfred, Edgar, and Edward the Confessor, were the great compilers and restorers of the English Laws."—Kelham's Preliminary Discourse to the Laws of William the Conqueror, p. 12. Appendix to Kelham's Dictionary of the Norman Language.

"He (Alfred) also, like another Theodosius, collected the various customs that he found dispersed in the kingdom, and reduced and digested them into one uniform system, or code of laws, in his som-bec, or liber judicialis (judicial book). This he compiled for the use of the court baron, hundred and county court, the court-leet and sheriff's tourn, tribunals which he established for the trial of all causes, civil and criminal, in the very districts wherein the complaints arose."—4 Blackstone, 411.

Alfred himself says, "Hence I, King Alfred, gathered these together, and commanded many of those to be written down which our forefathers observed—those which I liked—and those which I did not like, by the advice of my Witan, I threw aside. For I durst not venture to set down in writing over many of my own, since I knew not what among them would please those that should come after us. But those which I met with either of the days of me, my kinsman, or of Offa, King of Mercia, or of Æthelbert, who was the first of the English who received baptism—those which appeared to me the justest—I have here collected, and abandoned the others. Then I, Alfred, King of the West Saxons, showed these to all my Witan, and they then said that they were all willing to observe them."—Laws of Alfred, translated by R. Price, prefixed to Mackintosh's History of England, vol. 1. 45 Lardner's Cab. Cyc.

"King Edward * * projected and begun what his grandson, King Edward the Confessor, afterwards completed, viz., one uniform digest or body of laws to be observed throughout the whole kingdom, being probably no more than a revival of King Alfred's code, with some improvements suggested by necessity and experience, particularly the incorporating some of the British, or, rather, Mercian customs, and also such of the Danish (customs) as were reasonable and approved, into the West Saxon Lage, which was still the ground-work of the whole. And this appears to be the best supported and most plausible conjecture, (for certainty is not to be expected,) of the rise and original of that admirable system of maxims and unwritten customs which is now known by the name of the common law, as extending its authority universally over all the realm, and which is doubtless of Saxon parentage."—4 Blackstone, 412.

"By the Lex Terræ and Lex Regni is understood the laws of Edward the Confessor, confirmed and enlarged as they were by William the Conqueror; and this Constitution or Code of Laws is what even to this day are called 'The Common Law of the Land.'"—Introduction to Gilbert's History of the Common Pleas, p. 22, note.