BUT the irruption and establishment of the Danes in England which followed soon after, introduced new customs and caused this code of Alfred in many provinces to fall into disuse; or at least to be mixed and debased with other laws of a coarser alloy. So that about the beginning of the eleventh century there were three principal systems of laws prevailing in different districts. 1. The _Mercen-Lage_, or Mercian laws, which were observed in many of the midland counties, and those bordering on the principality of Wales; the retreat of the antient Britons; and therefore very probably intermixed with the British or Druidical customs. 2. The _West-Saxon-Lage_, or laws of the west Saxons, which obtained in the counties to the south and west of the island, from Kent to Devonshire. These were probably much the same with the laws of Alfred abovementioned, being the municipal law of the far most considerable part of his dominions, and particularly including Berkshire, the seat of his peculiar residence. 3. The _Dane-Lage_, or Danish law, the very name of which speaks it's original and composition. This was principally maintained in the rest of the midland counties, and also on the eastern coast, the seat of that piratical people. As for the very northern provinces, they were at that time under a distinct government[f]. [Footnote f: Hal. Hist. 55.] OUT of these three laws, Roger Hoveden[g] and Ranulphus Cestrensis[h] inform us, king Edward the confessor extracted one uniform law or digest of laws, to be observed throughout the whole kingdom; though Hoveden and the author of an old manuscript chronicle[i] assure us likewise, that this work was projected and begun by his grandfather king Edgar. And indeed a general digest of the same nature has been constantly found expedient, and therefore put in practice by other great nations, formed from an assemblage of little provinces, governed by peculiar customs. As in Portugal, under king Edward, about the beginning of the fifteenth century[k]. In Spain under Alonzo X, who about the year 1250 executed the plan of his father St. Ferdinand, and collected all the provincial customs into one uniform law, in the celebrated code entitled _las partidas_[l]. And in Sweden about the same aera, a universal body of common law was compiled out of the particular customs established by the laghman of every province, and intitled the _land's lagh_, being analogous to the _common law_ of England[m]. [Footnote g: _in Hen. II._] [Footnote h: _in Edw. Confessor._] [Footnote i: _in Seld. ad Eadmer._ 6.] [Footnote k: Mod. Un. Hist. xxii. 135.] [Footnote l: Ibid. xx. 211.] [Footnote m: Ibid. xxxiii. 21, 58.]