[Footnote 1:  The Judicia civitatis Lundoniae are a gild statute confirmed by King AEthelstan.]

3.  Even in the course of a general survey of the legal lore at our disposal, one cannot help being struck by peculiarities in the distribution of legal subjects.  Matters which seem to us of primary importance and occupy a wide place in our law-books are almost entirely absent in Anglo-Saxon laws or relegated to the background.  While it is impossible to give here anything like a complete or exact survey of the field—­a task rendered almost impossible by the arbitrary manner in which paragraphs are divided, by the difficulty of making Old English enactments fit into modern rubrics, and by the necessity of counting several times certain paragraphs bearing on different subjects—­a brief statistical analysis of the contents of royal codes and laws may be found instructive.

We find roughly 419 paragraphs devoted to criminal law and procedure as against 91 concerned with questions of private law and civil procedure.  Of the criminal law clauses, as many as 238 are taken up with tariffs of fines, while 80 treat of capital and corporal punishment, outlawry and confiscation, and 101 include rules of procedure.  On the private law side 18 clauses apply to rights of property and possession, 13 to succession and family law, 37 to contracts, including marriage when treated as an act of sale; 18 touch on civil procedure.  A subject which attracted special attention was the law of status, and no less than 107 paragraphs contain disposition dictated by the wish to discriminate between the classes of society.  Questions of public law and administration are discussed in 217 clauses, while 197 concern the Church in one way or another, apart from purely ecclesiastical collections.  In the public law division it is chiefly the power, interests and privileges of the king that are dealt with, in roughly 93 paragraphs, while local administration comes in for 39 and purely economic and fiscal matter for 13 clauses.  Police regulations are very much to the fore and occupy no less than 72 clauses of the royal legislation.  As to church matters, the most prolific group is formed by general precepts based on religious and moral considerations, roughly 115, while secular privileges conferred on the Church hold about 62, and questions of organization some 20 clauses.

The statistical contrasts are especially sharp and characteristic when we take into account the chronological sequence in the elaboration of laws.  Practically the entire code of AEthelberht, for instance, is a tariff of fines for crimes, and the same subject continues to occupy a great place in the laws of Hlothhere and Eadric, Ine and Alfred, whereas it appears only occasionally in the treaties with the Danes, the laws of Withraed, Edward the Elder, AEthelstan, Edgar, Edmund and AEthelred.  It reappears in some strength in the code of Canute, but the latter is chiefly a recapitulation of former