"Being regulations adapted to existing institutions, the Anglo-Saxon statutes are concise and technical, alluding to the law which was then living and in vigor, rather than defining it. The same clauses and chapters are often repeated word for word, in the statutes of subsequent kings, showing that enactments which bear the appearance of novelty are merely declaratory. Consequently the appearance of a law, seemingly for the first time, is by no means to be considered as a proof that the matter which it contains is new; nor can we trace the progress of the Anglo-Saxon institutions with any degree of certainty, by following the dates of the statutes in which we find them first noticed. All arguments founded on the apparent chronology of the subjects included in the laws, are liable to great fallacies. Furthermore, a considerable portion of the Anglo-Saxon law was never recorded in writing. There can be no doubt but that the rules of inheritance were well established and defined; yet we have not a single law, and hardly a single document from which the course of the descent of land can be inferred. * * Positive proof cannot be obtained of the commencement of any institution, because the first written law relating to it may possibly be merely confirmatory or declaratory; neither can the non-existence of any institution be inferred from the absence of direct evidence. Written laws were modified and controlled by customs of which no trace can be discovered, until after the lapse of centuries, although those usages must have been in constant vigor during the long interval of silence."--_1 Palgrave's Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth_, 58-9.] [Footnote 43: Rapin says, "The customs now practised in England are, for the most part, the same as the Anglo-Saxons brought with them from Germany."--_Rapin's Dissertation on the Government of the Anglo-Saxons_, vol. 2, Oct. Ed., p. 198. See _Kelham's Discourse before named_.] [Footnote 44: Hallam says, "The county of Sussex contains sixty-five ('hundreds'); that of Dorset forty-three; while Yorkshire has only twenty-six; and Lancashire but six."--_2 Middle Ages_, 391.] [Footnote 45: Excepting also matters pertaining to the collection of the revenue, which were determined in the king's court of exchequer. But even in this court it was the law "_that none be amerced but by his peers_."--_Mirror of Justices_, 49.]