While the customary forms of judgment and justice were such as we have said, there was a comparatively large amount of legislation or at least express declaration of law; and, what is even more remarkable, it was delivered in the mother tongue of the people from the first. Æthelberht, the converted king of Kent, was anxious to emulate the civilisation of Rome in secular things also, and reduced the customs of his kingdom, so far as might be, to writing; but they were called _dooms_, not _leges_; they were issued in English, and were translated into Latin only after the lapse of some centuries. Other Kentish princes, and afterwards Ine of Wessex, followed the example; but the regular series of Anglo-Saxon laws begins towards the end of the ninth century with Alfred’s publication of his own dooms, and (it seems) an amended version of Ine’s, in which these are now preserved. Through the century and a half between Alfred’s time and Cnut’s[45] legislation was pretty continuous, and it was always in English. The later restoration of English to the statute roll after the medieval reign of Latin and French was not the new thing it seemed. It may be that the activity of the Wessex princes in legislation was connected with the conquest of the Western parts of England, and the need of having fixed rules for the conduct of affairs in the newly settled districts. No one doubts that a considerable West-Welsh population remained in this region, and it would have been difficult to apply any local West-Saxon custom to them.