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1 - English Law before the Conquest

from Part I - Legal Contexts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2019

By
Stefan Jurasinski
Edited by
Candace Barrington  and
Sebastian Sobecki
Candace Barrington
Affiliation:
Central Connecticut State University
Sebastian Sobecki
Affiliation:
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands
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Summary

Royal legislation issued in English between the baptism of Æthelberht of Kent (c. 600 ad) and the reign of Cnut (r. 1016–35) comprises one of Europe’s more remarkable records of early political and legal thought. In it we see the transformation of England from a collection of disputing kingdoms to a nation united under the rule of Wessex in resistance to Viking incursions – all before one such Viking, Cnut (or ‘Canute the Great’), overcame Æthelred II (‘Ethelred the Unready’) and then made full use of the laws maintained by Æthelred and his ancestors, thereby easing the shock of alien rule. No polity of early Western Europe (save Ireland) left such a lengthy record of its reflections on matters of law in its own language. As we will see, this corpus encompasses a range of prose genres beyond those issuing from the royal court; most were read and copied long after the Norman Conquest.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Law and Literature , pp. 3 - 16
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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References

Further Reading

Hough, Carole, An Ald Reht: Essays on Anglo-Saxon Law, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2014.Google Scholar
Jurasinski, Stefan, Oliver, Lisi and Rabin, Andrew (eds.), English Law before Magna Carta: Felix Liebermann and Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, Leiden: Brill, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lambert, Tom, Law and Order in Anglo-Saxon England, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liebermann, Felix (ed.), Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, 3 vols., Halle: Niemeyer, 1903–16.Google Scholar
McNeill, John T. and Gamer, Helena M. (trans.), Medieval Handbooks of Penance, New York: Columbia University Press, 1938.Google Scholar
Munske, Horst Haider, Der germanische Rechtswortschatz im Bereich der Missetaten, Berlin: De Gruyter, 1973.Google Scholar
Oliver, Lisi, The Body Legal in Barbarian Law, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robertson, Agnes Jane (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Charters, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956.Google Scholar

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