part of those who could write were Romans, they found it difficult to adapt their characters to these rough Northern tongues, and therefore chose to write in Latin, which, though not the language of the legislator, could not be very incommodious, as they could never fail of interpreters; and for this reason, not only their laws, but all their ordinary transactions, were written in that language.  But in England, 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 there are few of them who have not left us some collection more or less complete.