Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2009
Prudent historians, when they consider the ordered power of the late Anglo-Saxon state, are apt to indulge a professional instinct, to hedge their bets. Such phrases as ‘specious uniformity’ and ‘rudimentary precocity’ have found favour. It has long seemed likely, and it has by now become certain, that such caution is superfluous.
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