the Celtic Church in Wales and the Roman Church in England each went its own way, until the sword of the Norman accomplished that which the eloquence of Augustine had failed to do, and the two Churches were merged into one. It is unfortunate that our knowledge of the famous Celtic Christians of the fifth century is so scanty. It was eminently an age of saints--Dewi, Cybi, Padarn, Illtud, Dyfrig, Cadog--and a host of others whose names have been perpetuated in hundreds of churches up and down the countryside. In the Celtic schools, too, were found scholars who represented the very flower of the culture of the period, far finer than anything that the England of the day could show. When we turn from the political annals of Wales to such topics as legal and social institutions we find that materials for forming a conception of what life was then like are fairly abundant. By far the most important source is the so-called Laws of Howel Dda. Historians have now long been convinced of the importance of the study of legal institutions, and of the assistance which such study {45} affords to the student of ordinary social history. There have been illustrious pioneers in the field, like Maine, Seebohm, Maitland, Pollock, and Vinogradoff. Codes of law, from India to Ireland, have been carefully analysed and compared, and from them decayed and vanished civilizations have been reconstructed. We find that, from the sixth century to the tenth, most of the rulers of western Europe were busy codifying the laws of the people over whom they ruled. For the greater part their work consisted of codifying in the strict sense of the word; that is to say, the collecting together of existing customs, and the setting of them forth clearly and dogmatically, with but a small infusion of new matter. Law was deemed to be something already in existence, something to be ascertained rather than something to be created. This theory is the foundation upon which the whole subsequent legal development of England was based. Judges exist to ascertain the law; and it is only indirectly, and often by means of convenient fictions, that they make new law. It is in this sense that the pre-Norman rulers of France, England, and Wales are law-makers. In Wales the work of codification was performed by Howel Dda, a prince who ruled in Dyfed, {46} as we have already seen, during the troubled period of Danish invaders. The fashion of code-making had already been set. The first conspicuous example of it was the codification of the Frankish laws by Charlemagne. But long before his time there had been Anglo-Saxon codes. Thus in 596 Æthelbert had codified the laws of Kent. Sometime between 688 and 725 Ine had codified those of the West Saxons. Then came the last and the greatest of the English pre-Norman codifiers, King Cnut. As to how far foreign influences played a part in the formation of these English and Welsh codes, scholars are divided in opinion.