To this year, 1070, in which was begun the reformation of the Church, was assigned at a later time another work of constitutional interest. The unofficial compiler of a code of laws, the Leges Edwardi, written in the reign of Henry I, and drawn largely from the legislation of the Saxon kings, ascribed his work, after a fashion not unusual with writers of his kind, to the official act of an earlier king. He relates that a great national inquest was ordered by King William in this year, to ascertain and establish the laws of the English. Each county elected a jury of twelve men, who knew the laws, and these juries coming together in the presence of the king declared on oath what were the legal customs of the land. So runs the preface of the code which was given out as compiled from this testimony. Such a plan and procedure would not be out of harmony with what we know of William's methods and policy. The machinery of the jury, which was said to be employed, was certainly introduced into England by the first Norman king, and was used by him for the establishment of facts, both in national undertakings like the Domesday Book and very probably in local cases arising in the courts. We know also that he desired to leave the old laws undisturbed so far as possible, and the year 1070 is one in which an effort to define and settle the future legal code of the state would naturally fall. But the story must be rejected as unhistorical. An event of such importance as this inquisition must have been, if it took place, could hardly have occurred without leaving its traces in contemporary records of some sort, and an official code of this kind would have produced results in the history of English law of which we find no evidence. The Saxon law and the machinery of the local courts did survive the Conquest with little change, but no effort was made to reduce the customs of the land to systematic and written form until a later time, until a time indeed when the old law was beginning to give place to the new. [4] See H. Bohmer, Die Falschungen Erzbischof Lanfranks van Canterbury (Leipzig, 1902). [5] Böhmer, Kirche und Staat in England und in der Normandie, pp. 103-106. [6] Eadmer, Historia Novorum, p. 9. [7] Böhmer, Kirche und Staat, pp. 126 ff. [8] Eadmer, Hist. Nov., p. 10. CHAPTER III WILLIAM'S LATER YEARS