There have never been wanting men who enjoyed a distinct insight into the value of our earliest constitutional history. From the days of Spelman, and Selden and Twisden, even to our own, this country has seen an unbroken succession of laborious thinkers, who, careless of self-sacrifice, have devoted themselves to record the facts which were to be recovered from the darkness of the past, and to connect them with the progress of our political and municipal laws. But peculiar advantages over these men, to whom this country owes a large debt of gratitude, are now enjoyed by ourselves. It is only within eight years that the “Ancient Laws and Ecclesiastical Institutes” of the Anglosaxons have been made fully accessible to us[1]: within nine years only, upwards of fourteen hundred documents containing the grants of kings and bishops, the settlements of private persons, the conventions of landlords and tenants, the technical forms of judicial proceedings, have been placed in our hands[2]; and to this last quarter of a century has it been given to attain a mastery never before attained over the language which our Anglosaxon ancestors spoke. To us therefore it more particularly belongs to perform the duty of illustrating that period, whose records are furnished to us so much more abundantly than they were to our predecessors; and it seemed to me that this duty was especially imposed upon him whom circumstances had made most familiar with the charters of the Anglosaxons. Footnote 1: Ancient Laws and Institutes of England; comprising Laws enacted under the Anglosaxon Kings from Æðelbirht to Cnut, with an English translation of the Saxon: the Laws called Edward the Confessor’s; the Laws of William the Conqueror, and those ascribed to Henry the First; also Monumenta Ecclesiastica Anglicana, from the seventh to the tenth century: and the ancient Latin version of the Anglosaxon Laws. With a copious Glossary, etc. (By B. Thorpe, Esq.). Printed by command of his late Majesty, King William the Fourth, under the direction of the Commissioners on the Public Records of the Kingdom. MDCCCXL. Footnote 2: Codex Diplomaticus Aevi Saxonici. Opera J. M. Kemble, M.A., vol. i. London, 1839; vol. ii. 1840; vol. iii. 1845; vol. iv. 1846; vol. v. 1847; vol. vi. 1848. Published by authority of the Historical Society of England. The history of our earliest institutions has come down to us in a fragmentary form: in a similar way has it here been treated,—in chapters, or rather essays, devoted to each particular principle or group of facts. But throughout these fragments a system is distinctly discernible: accordingly the chapters will be found also to follow a systematic plan.