The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon : a history of the early inhabitants of Britain, down to the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, illustrated by the ancient remains brought to light by recent research / by Thomas Wright ; with numerous engravings on wood.

  • Wright, Thomas, 1810-1877.
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon : a history of the early inhabitants of Britain, down to the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, illustrated by the ancient remains brought to light by recent research / by Thomas Wright ; with numerous engravings on wood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    538/588 (page 516)
    [chap, xv r. When the different Saxon kingdoms became consolidated into one, the influence of the sole monarch over the metropolis would be of course greatly increased, but we still meet with remarkable proofs of its power and independence. Ethelstan was one ot the most powerful of the Anglo-Saxon monarchs of England; yet under his reign, soon after the year 900, we find ‘ the bishop and reeves, who belong to London/ making in the name of the citizens laws, which were confirmed by the king (because they had reference to the whole kingdom), and are preserved in the Anglo-Saxon code. These laws prove that the body corporate of the city of London exercised an independent jurisdiction in matters which concerned themselves far beyond the limits of their own territory, and the necessity of making this power known throughout the kingdom was the cause that their laws on this subject were entered among the public laws of the land, which circumstance has led to their preservation, while every document relating to the internal government of the city at this early period has perished. These laws relate chiefly to robberies committed by strangers, to which a large commercial city was naturally exposed, and against which it could provide itself with no redress unless it could pursue the offenders to a distance. One of the clauses provides, ‘ if it then should happen that any kin be so strong and so great, within land or without land, whether twelve-hvnde or two-hynde, that they refuse us our right, and stand up in defence of a thief, that we all of us ride thereto with the reeve within whose district (manung) it may be; and also send on both sides 10 the reeves, and desire from them aid of so many men as may seem to us adequate for so great a suit, that there may be the more fear in those culpable men for our assemblage, and that we all ride thereto, and avenge our wrong, and slay the thief, and those who fight and stand with him, unless they be willing to depart from him.’ * The power of making a law like this, implies something like an understood agreement or treaty between a free commercial city and the states which surround it, whereby those states are allowed commercial privileges on condition of giving the citizens the right of pursuing offenders through their territories; and it agrees perfectly with the interpretation given to the earlier law of the kings of Kent. This also explains to us why, at a very early period after the Norman Conquest, the privileges of the city of London are * Judicia civitatis Lundonite, viii. § 2, 3. Thorpe, p. 100.