The following pages contain an account of the principles upon which the public and political life of our Anglosaxon forefathers was based, and of the institutions in which those principles were most clearly manifested. The subject is a grave and solemn one: it is the history of the childhood of our own age,—the explanation of its manhood.

On every side of us thrones totter, and the deep foundations of society are convulsed. Shot and shell sweep the streets of capitals which have long been pointed out as the chosen abodes of order: cavalry and bayonets cannot control populations whose loyalty has become a proverb here, whose peace has been made a reproach to our own miscalled disquiet. Yet the exalted Lady who wields the sceptre of these realms, sits safe upon her throne, and fearless in the holy circle of her domestic happiness, secure in the affections of a people whose institutions have given to them all the blessings of an equal law.

Those institutions they have inherited from a period so distant as to excite our admiration, and have preserved amidst all vicissitudes with an enlightened will that must command our gratitude. And with the blessing of the Almighty, they will long continue to preserve them; for our customs are founded upon right and justice, and are maintained in a subjection to His will who hath the hearts of nations as well as of kings in His rule and governance.

It cannot be without advantage for us to learn how a State so favoured as our own has set about the great work of constitution, and solved the problem, of uniting the completest obedience to the law with the greatest amount of individual freedom. But in the long and chequered history of our State, there are many distinguishable periods: some more and some less well known to us. Among those with which we are least familiar is the oldest period. It seems therefore the duty of those whose studies have given them a mastery over its details, to place them as clearly as they can before the eyes of their fellow-citizens.

There have never been wanting men who enjoyed a distinct insight into the value of our earliest constitutional history. From the days of Spelman, and Selden and Twisden, even to our own, this country has seen an unbroken succession of laborious thinkers, who, careless of self-sacrifice, have devoted themselves to record the facts which were to be recovered from the darkness of the past, and to connect them with the progress of our political and municipal laws. But peculiar advantages over these men, to whom this country owes a large debt of gratitude, are now enjoyed by ourselves. It is only within eight years that the “Ancient Laws and Ecclesiastical Institutes” of the Anglosaxons have been made fully accessible to us^[1]: within nine years only, upwards of fourteen hundred documents containing the grants of kings and bishops, the settlements of private persons, the conventions of landlords and tenants, the technical forms of judicial proceedings, have been placed in our hands^[2]; and to this last quarter of a century has it been given to attain a mastery never before attained over the language which our Anglosaxon ancestors spoke. To us therefore it more particularly belongs to perform the duty of illustrating that period, whose records are furnished to us so much more abundantly than they were to our predecessors; and it seemed to me that this duty was especially imposed upon him whom circumstances had made most familiar with the charters of the Anglosaxons.

The history of our earliest institutions has come down to us in a fragmentary form: in a similar way has it here been treated,—in chapters, or rather essays, devoted to each particular principle or group of facts. But throughout these fragments a system is distinctly discernible: accordingly the chapters will be found also to follow a systematic plan.

It is my intention, at a future period, to lay before my countrymen the continuation of this History, embracing the laws of descent and purchase, the law of contracts, the forms of judicial process, the family relations, and the social condition of the Saxons as to agriculture, commerce, art, science and literature. I believe these things to be worthy of investigation, from their bearing upon the times in which we live, much more than from any antiquarian value they may be supposed to possess. We have a share in the past, and the past yet works in us; nor can a patriotic citizen better serve his country than by devoting his energies and his time to record that which is great and glorious in her history, for the admiration and instruction of her neighbours.

London, December 2nd, 1848.