"It has generally been apprehended," writes Reeves in the Preface to the First Edition of the _History of English Law_ (1783), "that much light might be thrown on our statutes by the civil history of the times in which they were made; but it will be found on enquiry that these expectations are rarely satisfied." It would be difficult to find in a single sentence a more complete measure of the gulf which separates Pollock and Maitland's _History of English Law_ from the book which it supplanted. Reeves wrote in an unhistorical age and with imperfect materials. "Let us think," wrote Maitland, "what Reeves had at his disposal, what we have at our disposal. He had the Statute Book, the Year Books in a bad and clumsy edition, the old text-books in bad and clumsy editions. He made no use of Domesday Book; he had not the _Placitorum Abbreviatio_ nor Palgrave's _Rotuli Curiæ Regis_; he had no Parliament rolls, Pipe, Patent, Close, Fine, Hundred Rolls, no proceedings of the King's Council, no early Chancery proceedings, not a cartulary, not a manorial extent nor a manorial roll; he had not Nichol's _Britton_, nor Pike's nor Harwood's _Year Books_, nor Stubbs' _Select Charters_, nor Bigelow's _Placita Anglo-Normannica_; he had no collection of Anglo-Saxon land-books, only a very faulty collection of Anglo-Saxon dooms, while the early history of law in Normandy was utter darkness." And in addition to this he did not believe that the general history of a people could throw illumination upon its law. It is a sufficient commentary upon such a view to read Maitland's opening paragraph upon the Norman Conquest. The state of English law in the twelfth century cannot be explained unless we look beyond the strict legal sphere. Explanations which seemed adequate even to the great Stubbs--the action of race upon race, the fusion of law with law, the analogy of a river formed by two streams, of a chemical compound formed of two elements--do not satisfy Maitland. The process was far more complex. It was affected by influences which had nothing whatever to do with the law of Normandy or with the law of England before the Conquest, by the rebellion of the Norman feudatories, by the characters of certain great men, by the strong political centralization, even by so accidental a fact as that the Conqueror had three sons instead of one. Economic, political, personal forces must all be reckoned up in the account.