Note 5 — A DISCOURSE concerning the LAWS and GOVERNMENT of ENGLAND.

King Edward’s laws were compiled from those of former princes, and abolished any little peculiarities which distinguished the West-Saxon, Mercian and Danish laws, subjecting the whole kingdom to a common law. His code, accordingly, was termed lex Angliæ, or lex terræ. No correct copy of it has descended to us. Those regulations, which pass under his name in the editions of the Saxon-laws by Lambard and Wilkins, have evidently some interpolations. Traces of them are to be seen in Hoveden and Knyghton; and remains of them are likeways to be found in the laws of William I. From the time of this Prince to that of King John, they continued, with the addition of some Norman laws and customs, the law of the land. Præcipimus, says William, ut omnes habeant et teneant leges Edwardi regis in omnibus rebus, adauctis his quas constituimus ad utilitatem Anglorum. Leg. Guliel. ap. Wilkins, p. 229. By the influence of the Barons under the last Prince, they were drawn up in the form of Magna Charta. For the great charter was not what some partial writers have represented it, a concession of privileges extorted by violence, but a declaration of the principal grounds of the antient and fundamental laws of England, and a correction of the defects of the common law. See Lord Coke 2 Inst. and Lord Lyttelton’s hist. of Henry II. vol. I. p. 42. 526.