It might seem unlikely at first sight that so highly technical a subject as law should furnish a considerable contingent to early vernacular literature; but there are some works of this kind both of ancient date and of no small importance. England and Normandy furnish an important contingent, the 'Laws of William the Conqueror' and the _Coutumiere Normandie_ being the most remarkable: but the most interesting document of this kind is perhaps the famous _Assises de Jerusalem_, arranged by Godfrey of Bouillon and his crusaders as the code of the kingdom of Jerusalem in 1099, and known also as the _Lettres du Sepulcre_, from the place of their custody. The original text was lost or destroyed at the capture of Jerusalem by Saladin in 1187; but a new _Assise_, compiled from the oral tradition of the jurists who had seen and used the old, was written by Philippe de Navarre in 1240, or thereabouts, for the use of the surviving Latin principalities of the East. This was shortly afterwards enlarged and developed by Jean d'Ibelin, a Syrian baron, who took part in the crusade of St. Louis. These codes concerned themselves only with one part of the original _Lettres du Sepulcre_, the laws affecting the privileged classes; but the other part, the _Assises des Bourgeois_, survives in _Le Livre de la Cour des Bourgeois_, which has been thought to be older than the loss of the original. These various works contain the most complete account of feudal jurisprudence in its palmy days that is known, for the still earlier Anglo-Norman laws represent a more mixed state of things. It was especially in Cyprus that the Jerusalem codes were observed. The chief remaining works of the same kind which deserve mention are the _Etablissements de St. Louis_ and the _Livre de Justice et de Plet_, which both date from the time of Louis himself; the _Conseil_, a treatise on law by Pierre de Fontaines, who died in 1289, and the _Coutumes du Beauvoisis_ of Philippe de Beaumanoir, who wrote in 1283. The legal literature of the fourteenth century is abundant, but possesses considerably less interest. [Sidenote: Miscellanies and Didactic Works.]